While this story takes place in Canada, this is not a good standard for a scientific community that wishes to continue to receive money.
From the Article:
"A university researcher with a taste for flashy toys used his scientific grants to buy chrome exhaust pipes and aluminum wheels for his car, along with plasma televisions and a home entertainment system worth $17,624.63.
He also billed $800 for a 15 GB iPod, $976 for a Smartphone, and $1,165 for two top-of-the-line cellphones to his "research" grants, say documents obtained by Canwest News Service."
Hopefully this is purely an exception and not the start of a trend that exposes "corrupt" researchers in academia.
Michael A. Allen is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Boise State University. His research focuses on international conflict, military alliances, and quantitative methods in international relations and comparative politics.
You didn’t post the best paragraph from the article:
But the agency says it recovered $21,485.67 from the scientist who went on a spending spree with his research money in early 2003. It did not end until May, 2005, with his purchase of eight, 19-inch Dell computer monitors.
Maybe this guy has a shopping addiction. If he did, though, he definitely got into the wrong field.