Hopkins Official Appointed ORI Director of the Division of Education
About a month after HHS appointed Elisabeth “Lis” Handley director of the Office of Research Integrity, a Johns Hopkins University official has been named director of ORI’s Division of Education and Integrity (DEI), according to an April 2 blog post. ORI is responsible for making findings of research misconduct, defined as fabrication, falsification and plagiarism, in Public Health Service-funded research. Karen Wehner, who holds a doctorate in genetics from Yale University, previously was the associate director of the Division of Research Integrity at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where her duties included providing responsible conduct of research training. She also was the assistant research integrity official, offering “support for the institution’s response to allegations of research misconduct, and she handled other research integrity matters, such as authorship disputes and professional misconduct occurring in the research space.”
With the appointment of Wehner, all four of ORI’s leadership positions are now held by permanent versus acting officials. The DEI post has been vacant since Zoë Hammatt resigned in 2016. Susan Garfinkel, former director of the Division of Investigative Oversight, resigned in November 2017. Both departures were blamed on the management style of former ORI Director Kathy Partin, who was herself removed a month after Garfinkel left. Alex Runko was named as Garfinkel’s replacement in July. ORI also lost its deputy director in recent years, but HHS appointed Wanda Jones to the job permanently at the same time it announced Hadley’s hiring. Partin has been NIH’s integrity officer since December of 2018.
