Washington, D.C. May 8, 2012. In a resounding reversal, the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit yesterday ordered that a whistleblower claim alleging research fraud by Harvard Teaching Hospial will proceed to trial. The case involves one of the largest Alzheimer's disease research grants awarded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Dr. Kenneth Jones, the chief statistician for the NIH grant, blew the whistle after realizing that measurements used to demonstrate the reliability of the study had been secretly altered. Without these alterations, Dr. Jones explained, there was no statistical significance to the major findings of the study. After Dr. Jones insisted that the altered measurements be subjected to a reliability study and that the results could not be presented as part of a $15 million federal grant extension application, he was terminated and his career came to an end.

I have challenged the FBI for covering up major problems in its Crime Lab for the past 20 years, and it's back on the front page again this week. The problems I witnessed distorted thousands of cases, and the faulty evidence from the FBI Lab has been used to imprison people for crimes they did not commit.

When I first blew the whistle on the FBI Lab, it was unheard of to take on such a large and powerful institution. Many people had their doubts. It was only the small, underfunded National Whistleblowers Center that believed in me.

The NWC and its supporters have been my trusted allies from the beginning. Help me continue my battle against the FBI by becoming a supporting member of the National Whistleblowers Center.

Frederic Whitehurst Vowed to Help Wronged Defendants

Washington, D.C. April 17, 2012. Dr. Frederic Whitehurst originally exposed forensic flaws that may have led to many wrongful convictions, as reported in today's Washington Post front-page story. For years, Dr. Whitehurst has urged the Justice Department to act on systemic flaws that he witnessed while serving as the top explosives expert in the FBI Crime Lab. The NWC and FBI whistleblower Dr. Frederic Whitehurst assisted the Washington Post in its investigation into the Justice Department's failure.

In response to Dr. Whitehurst's original whistleblower disclosures, the Justice Department formed a Task Force to review thousands of cases impacted by Dr. Whitehurst's allegations and to determine if any individuals were wrongly convicted. Although the Justice Department and FBI pledged to correct their mistakes, documents obtained by the NWC through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) suggest a government attempt to suppress embarrassing mistakes at the expense of innocent defendants.

As reported by the Washington Post today, convicted defendants were left uninformed of serious flaws in the forensic evidence presented in their cases long after the Justice Department had confirmed that serious problems existed.