A former Western Kentucky University professor pleads “guilty” to federal program fraud.

The U.S. Attorney’s office says Katrina Phelps entered into a “plea agreement” today, where she admits intentionally misapplying $27,087.20 from Western Kentucky University.

[“Guilty”? “plea agreement”? Why the quotation marks? Did she not really plead guilty? Is it not really a plea agreement? Am I living in Upper Volta where we don’t use terms like guilty and plea agreement, so you have to put them in quotation marks to introduce them to me?]

Phelps admits from March 2005 to December 2007, she took the proceeds from 16 checks from a justice department grant, and misapplied the funds.

As part of her plea agreement, Phelps agrees to pay full restitution to WKU, prior to her sentencing.

The maximum potential penalties for Phelps’ offense, include ten years in prison, a $250,000 fine, and supervised release for up to 3 years.

Adds piquancy that these were from the justice department… “Background” “here.”

… and so far I’ve come across one alumna of University Diaries — the dread Jane L. Dolkart. Let’s take a careful trip down Memory Lane…

On Wednesday, June 8, testimony began in the case of [Southern Methodist University] Dedman School of Law professor Jane L. Dolkart, accused of hitting bicyclist Tommy Thomas with her car in May 2004.

Less than a week later, a Dallas jury found Dolkart guilty of aggravated assault but decided not to sentence her to jail time, opting instead for a penance of five years of probation and two years of community service.

The jury, according to media representatives inside the courtroom, ‘determined that Dolkart intentionally struck … Thomas with her car at White Rock Lake.’

In his testimony, Officer Craig Bennight explained that when told of Mr. Thomas” original accusation, Dolkart said she ‘only meant to tap him.’

After investigating the details with his partner, Bennight said, ‘We both concurred there was no evidence it was an accident. Ms. Dolkart never said it was an accident.’

Though she and defense attorney Mike Gibson were able to avoid the maximum of 20 years in prison and a $10,000 fine, Dolkart still elicited strong emotions from bicyclists across the metroplex.

One avid cyclist, who asked to remain anonymous, remarked, ‘As we all know, a “tap” from a two-ton auto can kill. … If there is justice in this world, she should pay big time.’

But the penalty from the city of Dallas is only half of the price Dolkart can expect to pay. A member of the Washington, D.C. bar association, Ms. Dolkart”s future as an SMU professor is under investigation.

The day after Dolkart”s sentence was handed down, the University issued the following statement:

“SMU is aware of the jury”s decision in the case involving Professor Jane Dolkart. Under University policy, SMU will conduct an internal review of the situation to determine an appropriate course of action.’

A Johns Hopkins professor who co-authored a study suggesting that huge numbers of civilians have died during the U.S. war in Iraq was accused of ethics violations yesterday by a prominent group of polling researchers, and university officials announced that they are conducting their own review.

The rebuke, by the American Association for Public Opinion Research, came after an investigation into how Dr. Gilbert Burnham of the Bloomberg School of Public Health determined that nearly 655,000 Iraqis had died as a result of the U.S.-led invasion and its bloody aftermath. The results – which estimated hundreds of thousands more deaths than the Bush administration had reported – were published in 2006 in The Lancet, a leading British medical journal.

Officials of the association, of which Burnham is not a member, said Burnham refused to disclose the wording of his questions and basic methodological details of his research, a violation of the group’s code of ethics and practices. That makes it impossible for other researchers to verify the work, said Mary E. Losch, chairwoman of the AAPOR’s Standards Committee….

Burnham does not seem to list the Lancet article on his webpage, though he has written other pieces for the Lancet.

Note the blizzard of skeptical questions for Burnham here.

Press release from AAPOR.

Recall the similar case of Michael Bellesiles.

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Update: A reader, David, points out that the likely article is indeed listed on Burnham’s website. I overlooked it because it’s the only listing that doesn’t include a date of publication. Here’s the citation:

Roberts L, Lafta R, Garfield R, Khudhairi J, Burnham G. Mortality before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: cluster sample survey. Lancet, 364:1857-64.

UD thanks her reader.