Luk Van Parijs was an associate professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Center for Cancer Research. After investigating for a year, MIT fired Van Parijs for research misconduct. Van Parijs admitted to fabricating and falsifying research data in a paper, several unpublished manuscripts, and grant applications. In March 2011, Van Parijs pleaded guilty in a U.S. District Court in Boston to one count of making a false statement on a federal grant application. The government asked Judge Denise Casper for a 6-month jail term because of the seriousness of the fraud, which involved a $2-million grant. After several prominent scientists including Van Parijs' former post-doc supervisor pleading for clemency on his behalf, on 13 June, Van Parijs was finally sentenced six months of home detention with electronic monitoring, plus 400 hours of community service and a payment to MIT of $61,117 - restitution for the already-spent grant money that MIT had to return to the National Institutes of Health. Van Parijs' area of research was in the use of short-interference RNA in studying disease mechanisms, especially in autoimmune diseases. He was studying normal immune cell function and defects in these cells during disease development.

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