Forgery of data and documents
The Penkowa case is really a collection of numerous individual cases. They involve manipulation and fabrication of research data, forgery of invoices and papers on Spanish trials with rats, and the use of research funds for private purposes.
She also invented a story of the death of her mother and sister in order to extend the deadline for submission of her PhD thesis.
In 2001, Milena Penkowa submitted her thesis to the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences. The adjudication committee unanimously recommended rejection of the thesis, because they questioned the suspiciously high number of experiments on rats that she claimed to have undertaken.