Review of a US Geological Survey Scientific Misconduct Incident that Potentially Affected Mining and Land Management on Federal Land in Northern Arizona

The Inspector General of the U.S. Department of the Interior issued a “Final Report - Inspection of Scientific Integrity Incident at U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Energy Geochemistry Laboratory, Report No. 2016-EAU-010,” on June 15, 2016, that concluded a chemist at the USGS Energy Resource Program’s Inorganic Section of the Energy Geochemistry Laboratory (EGL) in Colorado was engaged in scientific misconduct since 2008 and intentionally manipulated data from a mass-spectrometer instrument until late 2014 (the report is included here as Appendix A). The investigation found that “Twenty-four research and assessment projects that have national and global interest were potentially affected by erroneous information” including the “assessment of uranium in the environment in and around Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona for possible groundwater restoration.”