An academic who received a Maori research fellowship worth $50,000 a year from the Government was allowed to keep the money he received, despite never completing the work.
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters believes the problem is widespread and wants to see accountability introduced.
"There's an awful amount of money going into so-called research, the results of which no one has seen."
The Health Research Council, which awarded the fellowship, admitted yesterday that no procedures were in place to ensure it recovered money when people pulled out of scholarships.
Auckland-based researcher Paul Stanley resigned from the council's Hohua Tutengaehe research fellowship - named after a relative of Mr Stanley's - after about 10 months of study in 1997.
He spent about five months on the programme, suspended it for three months, then completed another five months before pulling out altogether, council communications officer Jenny Rankine said.
The council, citing privacy, has not disclosed how much money Mr Stanley received before he resigned but the three-year fellowship is worth $50,000 a year.
One of the conditions of the fellowship was that Mr Stanley complete his PhD, which he failed to do before leaving the programme.
"There was a burglary at the unit he was working at and all their computers were stolen and he didn't have a back-up," Ms Rankine said.
"They didn't have good protocols in place at that point and he didn't have a back-up for his PhD and it made it rather difficult," she said.
No attempts were made to recover the money from Mr Stanley.
"When that award was set up it wasn't [post-doctoral]," Ms Rankine said.
"The Maori health committee decided to make it a post doc after Mr Stanley resigned."
The council moved to full cost funding about four years ago, which meant fellowship contracts were held by the university rather than individual researchers.
"Instead of the HRC monitoring whether somebody has done their job, if we realise that we haven't had an annual report for, say, 14 months from that person, then it's the university's job to recover money.
"It was [Auckland] University's responsibility ... to chase up any money if they thought they should."
Mr Stanley's change of mind was just unfortunate, Ms Rankine said.
"We've had this happen before where people decide they want to change their direction.
"One of our people on a grant decided to become a nun, so any kind of thing can happen. It's not common but it's not uncommon either."
Ms Rankine was not aware of any cases where a university had recovered money on behalf of the council when an award recipient failed to complete the work.
The Maori health committee and the Health Research Council were disappointed when Mr Stanley withdrew from the fellowship because he had done some excellent work, she said.
During the fellowship, Mr Stanley worked on a council project interviewing 40 Ngai Te Rangi kaumatua for information about health service needs for elderly Maori in the Mt Maunganui area.
"He also developed kaupapa Maori methodologies, advising in various projects to do with the health of Maori men.
"These methodologies are based on Maori philosophy and are being developed by most Maori research groups.
"They involve projects that are controlled by Maori, the goal of which is Maori development, and the processes of which involve a partnership with communities rather than a researcher-subject relationship."
Mr Stanley received other grants from the council before his fellowship, but the council was unable to say how much the grants were worth, on the grounds of privacy.
The council awards about $1 million in Maori health research grants and scholarships each year.
- NZPA
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