Interview with David Baltimore - Caltech Oral Histories

Baltimore-103
LIPPINCOTT: One of the papers had to be corrected, isn’t that right
BALTIMORE: We’ve since retracted two of the papers because of the problem, but not because
there was anything wrong with them—and in fact the retraction says that.
LIPPINCOTT: I understand what you’re saying—it’s more or less pro forma. A couple of
nonessential figures were just not right.
BALTIMORE: Right. But what he did at MIT was egregious; I mean, he invented a whole series
of experiments that had never been done, as far as I can tell. It’s never been formally, publicly
said what happened.
LIPPINCOTT: OK. Well, you resigned your presidency in October 2005. Now, this was a couple
of years ahead of time. You would have normally gone on to 2007, isn’t that right
BALTIMORE: I had said that I would probably be here for ten years. I was feeling that I had
accomplished much of what I had wanted to accomplish, and that I probably wasn’t going to
start any new big initiative of any sort, because I was going to wind down. At that point, I said,
“Why am I going to stay on as president, in that case” So I decided to resign after nine years
rather than ten years, but you have to announce it a year beforehand to give the school a chance
to find a new president.
LIPPINCOTT: So you continued.
BALTIMORE: So I continued, and I said I would continue, because I wasn’t under any real
personal pressure to do something else, and I had actually committed to this grant and other
things—
LIPPINCOTT: To the Gates Foundation.