On April 9th, I reported that more than two dozen articles by National Science Foundation (NSF) director Sethuraman Panchanathan had been called out for verbatim copying without citing sources, some of which were copyrighted.
Two weeks later, on April 24th, Panchanathan announced his departure from NSF, but did not provide a reason. He returned to his employer, Arizona State University (ASU), where he had been an administrator.
On May 5th, ASU sued NSF (Civil Action No. 1:25-cv-11231-IT) for lowering the lucrative “indirect rate” the university collects to pay administrators. ASU and its co-plaintiffs estimated that the total annual administrative overhead exceeds $250 million.
The set of plaintiffs includes the University of Illinois, which employs Dr. Kelvin Droegemeier as “special advisor to the chancellor.” Droegemeier preceded Panchanathan as NSF director. Droegemeier published the senior project of a pair of students under his own name. He republished copyrighted work and republished the work of a former co-author.
Ex-director France Cordova is a member of the board of CalTech, which is likewise a plaintiff in the suit against NSF. Cordova wrote an article that was later retracted because it was a copy of a previously published and copyrighted article.
[RELATED: $15 Billion Saved from Indirect Costs Boosts Research]
Ex-director Subra Suresh returned to Brown University as a “professor at large.” Brown University is a plaintiff along with the other ex-directors’ universities. One of Suresh’s publications was called out by research-fraud investigator Elisabeth Bik because it contained duplicate images.
On June 20, 2025, a Massachusetts court agreed with the plaintiff universities. The court ordered NSF not to lower the administrative overhead rate. The plaintiff universities thus preserved their ability to flow funds to administrators such as former NSF directors who have passed through the revolving door.
If NSF wanted to push back against these universities, it certainly could do so. According to the NSF, an award may be suspended or terminated if the recipient fails to comply with the terms and conditions, and the NSF may impute improper conduct by any employee to the entire organization.
If NSF were to investigate violations of its ex-directors and suspend payment to the plaintiff universities during the investigation, the “direct costs” paid to the plaintiff universities would suddenly drop to zero. As a result, a reduction in the administrative overhead would have no effect on the plaintiff universities—the overhead of zero dollars is zero. Consequently, the plaintiffs would not face any harm from a reduction in the overhead rate and would lose standing to sue NSF about it.
NSF’s policy is to maintain a culture of scientific integrity. However, the NSF doesn’t have the stomach to suspend or terminate funding for universities, nor does it have the will to investigate its former directors. In 2024, NSF opened cases in only 40 percent of plagiarism disclosures. Of these, only seven resulted in “actions,” and just two—representing four percent of the total—resulted in the debarment of individual investigators.
On June 23, 2025, NSF notified the court that the administrative-overhead rate would not be reduced to 15 percent after all. Public money will continue to flow to universities, regardless of whether their personnel violated NSF’s prohibitions against misconduct.
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