Eisen-Suppressed-Inventions-and-other-Discoveries-True-Stories-of ...

The Suppression of Alternative Medical Therapies 15
Dr. Thereza Imanishi-Kari and a paper she published with Dr. David
Baltimore in the April, 1986, issue of the scientific journal Cell about the
basis of an immune reaction. Questions about the paper arose when Dr.
Margot O'Toole, a post-doctoral fellow in Dr. Imanishi-Kari's laboratory,
went to Dr. Baltimore (who was then at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology) and told him her reasons for doubting the authenticity of the
data in the article. She alleged that the paper made false statements, a conclusion
she reached after seeing seventeen pages of data that supposedly,
but did not, support claims in the paper. She persisted in her accusations,
and, as a result, two scientific reviews of the paper were conducted in
1986—one at MIT, where the work was done, and the other at Tufts
University, where Imanishi-Kari was seeking employment. Both of these
reviews found problems with the work but found no reason to believe misconduct
was involved. Dr. O'Toole, who was eventually fired from her job
at MIT, had been told by Dr. Baltimore that she could publish her objections
to the paper, but that if she did he would also publish his views of it.
The matter lay dormant for two years after the initial scientific reviews
conducted at MIT and Tufts, until Representative John D. Dingell, who
heads the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, asked
the Secret Service to examine Dr. Imanishi-Kari's notebooks for their
authenticity. This action raised the hackles of the scientific community.
Supporters of Dr. Baltimore criticized Dingell for prying into the notebooks
of science and, described his panel as the "science police." Dingell
revealed that his committee was soon buried in letters from scientists concerned
with the subcommittee's actions, but he also said that in perhaps
50 percent or more of the letters the scientists included disclaimers, saying
that they did not know the facts of the case. What had begun as a small
dispute within Dr. Imanishi-Kari's laboratory had become a national
debate, pitting Dr. Baltimore and his many supporters in the scientific
community against Dingell's House Subcommittee and generating bitter
controversy over a period of five years.
The controversy was eventually addressed by the National Institute of
Health's Office of Scientific Integrity and put to rest by its draft report. In
that report, the OSI concluded that Dr. O'Toole's actions were heroic and
that Dr. Baltimore's response was troubling because he, instead of ending
the matter within weeks of its beginning, allowed it to mushroom into a
national debate. Dr. O'Toole's allegations were vindicated, and most of
Dr. Baltimore's supporters have withdrawn their objections to the
Congressional action after confronting the evidence uncovered by the OSI
and presented in their draft report.
This case of scientific fraud illustrates the need for an office such as the
Office of Scientific Integrity. Dr. David Goodstein, Vice-Provost of the