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.
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.