Status as of August 2026: The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Research Integrity (ORI) closed a research-misconduct case in 2025 against Ryan Evanoff, a former Scientific Assistant in Washington State University’s (WSU) Department of Veterinary Microbiology and Pathology. ORI found that Evanoff engaged in research misconduct by intentionally falsifying and/or fabricating DNA sequencing data in research supported by a National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant. The case was resolved through a debarment rather than a contested finding.
This is a short, single-respondent case rather than an institutional settlement of the size CASRAI has covered in Northwestern’s $2.3M NIH Falsification Settlement or Dana-Farber’s $15 million FCA settlement. Its value for research-administration offices is different: it is a clean, recent illustration of what an ORI administrative-record finding looks like at the individual-respondent level, and of how a straightforward federal debarment functions as an alternative to a full misconduct hearing.
What ORI found
Per ORI’s published case summary, Ryan Evanoff was found to have intentionally and knowingly falsified and/or fabricated DNA sequences in research records, presenting each as the authentic result of a distinct sequencing reaction when it was not. ORI’s summary identifies six specific sequencing files affected by the finding, spanning what were represented as separate PCR/sequencing runs. Falsifying data in this way — reusing, altering, or inventing sequence-read output and presenting it as new experimental results — falls squarely within the federal research-misconduct definition’s falsification and fabrication categories under 42 C.F.R. Part 93, the Public Health Service (PHS) regulation ORI applies to PHS-funded research. See CASRAI’s comparison page, Falsification vs. Fabrication: What’s the Difference?, for how the two categories are distinguished in practice.
Institution and funding
The underlying research was conducted at Washington State University’s Department of Veterinary Microbiology and Pathology and was supported by NIH funding through the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) — grant R21 AI126304. As with most ORI case summaries, WSU is named only as the institutional setting where the conduct occurred; ORI’s public notice does not describe WSU’s own institutional investigation in detail, and the resolution here is a federal administrative action against the respondent individually, not an institutional settlement or penalty against WSU.
The administrative action: a three-year debarment
Evanoff did not contest ORI’s findings within the applicable response period. As a result, ORI closed the case with a federal debarment: Evanoff is excluded for three years, beginning June 16, 2025, from any role in PHS-supported research and from participating in “covered transactions” under federal procurement and non-procurement debarment/suspension regulations (2 C.F.R. Part 180, as implemented by HHS at 2 C.F.R. Part 376). In practice, this means no federal agency or federally funded institution may knowingly enter into a covered transaction with Evanoff during the debarment period — he cannot serve as PI, co-investigator, contractor, or in comparable capacities on PHS-supported work, and cannot serve on PHS advisory committees, boards, or peer-review panels.
A straight debarment of this kind is one of several closure paths ORI uses; it is distinct from a Voluntary Exclusion Agreement, which is a negotiated settlement a respondent affirmatively signs, typically without an admission of misconduct. Here, ORI’s finding stands as an actual misconduct determination, and the debarment followed because Evanoff did not exercise his right to contest it — not because he negotiated an alternative resolution.
What research-administration offices should take from this case
- Sequencing and other instrument-output data are a real falsification vector, not just imaging. Most high-profile misconduct coverage in recent years has centered on Western blot and microscopy image manipulation. This case is a reminder that raw sequencing files, PCR output, and similar instrument-generated records are equally susceptible to fabrication and equally subject to the same PHS misconduct definition — data-integrity review and RCR training should not implicitly treat sequence data as self-evidently authentic.
- Non-response has a default consequence. Evanoff’s three-year debarment followed directly from not contesting ORI’s findings in the allotted window. Institutions advising a respondent, or PIs and research staff who receive an ORI notice, should treat the response deadline as consequential in itself — silence is not neutral.
- A single junior staff role can carry a multi-year federal exclusion. Evanoff’s title, Scientific Assistant, is not a principal-investigator or faculty role. Grants and HR offices should not assume debarment risk is concentrated only at the PI level — any listed contributor to federally funded research records can trigger an individual ORI finding and exclusion.
- Debarment is a federal-government-wide restriction, not an institution-specific one. Because 2 C.F.R. Part 180/376 debarment is entered in the government-wide System for Award Management (SAM) exclusions list, it affects a respondent’s eligibility everywhere federal funds are involved, not only at the institution where the misconduct occurred. Any institution running standard debarment/SAM checks on new hires or collaborators in covered roles would surface this exclusion automatically for the length of the three-year period.
For the general mechanics of how an ORI case reaches this stage — from institutional inquiry through ORI oversight review — see CASRAI’s guide How a Research Misconduct Investigation Actually Works, and for the fuller range of possible outcomes, The Consequences of Research Misconduct: Career, Funding, and Legal Outcomes.
Sources
- U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Research Integrity, Case Summary: Evanoff, Ryan (ori.hhs.gov/content/case-summary-evanoff-ryan)
- ORI Case Summaries index, 2025 (ori.hhs.gov/case_summary)
