SCIENCE can tolerate many vices: self-interest, self-promotion, sabotage,
even plagiarism. Fraud, however, is fatal. Cooked data and dishonest scientists
undermine the trust that is essential to build rapidly on existing work. Funny,
then, how imprecise our idea is even of what constitutes scientific misconduct,
let alone its prevalence or in whose bailiwick it falls.

Daniel Kevles highlights these issues by analysing one of the most celebrated
cases of scientific misconduct in recent history. To call this important and
well-written book “The Baltimore Case” reveals its political nature. At issue
was a paper resulting from a collaboration between the research group of David
Baltimore, a molecular biologist and Nobel laureate then at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, and Thereza Imanishi-Kari, a junior faculty member at
MIT.

The affair began as a dispute between Imanishi-Kari and her postdoctoral
fellow, Margot O’Toole, over data reported in the paper. Baltimore performed no
experiments. But as the paper’s most distinguished, articulate, and savvy
author, he became its lead defender. Those same qualities made him a totem of
scientific arrogance for some of those challenging the paper and helped escalate
a misconduct investigation into a vendetta.

The contested paper claimed a surprising finding about antibodies. Antibodies
are aggregates of several proteins, each encoded by its own gene. The authors
inserted a gene for a type of antibody protein from one strain of mouse into the
cells of another strain. Cells from these transgenic mice produced hybrid
antibodies, combining proteins from the foreign gene and native ones. To the
researchers’ surprise, the transplanted gene remained silent in the chromosomes
of its new host. It seemed to induce native genes to promote the foreign
protein—without being activated itself. It appeared to be altering the
behaviour of other, native genes.

This result suggested several possibilities about how genes interacted in an
immune response. The paper, referred to colloquially as “Weaver et al, (1986)”
after one of the collaborating scientists appeared in the journal Cell
in April 1986 (vol 45, p 247).

O’Toole joined Imanishi-Kari’s lab in 1986 and began experiments to trim the
list of possibilities implied by the paper. But in her hands, a crucial reagent
designed to distinguish between the protein coded by the foreign gene and that
of its native counterpart did not produce consistent results. If the reagent was
not specific to the foreign protein, the central claim of the paper was
undermined.

Browsing through a laboratory notebook in May 1986, O’Toole stumbled across
17 pages that seemed to contradict the Cell paper—and to support
her own findings that the reagent did not work as advertised. Unsatisfied with
Imanishi-Kari’s responses to her questions, O’Toole took the problem to several
senior members of the faculty at Tufts University, where she and Imanishi-Kari
had moved. A preliminary investigation did indeed find errors in the paper.
Neither O’Toole nor the investigating committee charged misconduct, only
error.

A sequence of zealotry was to escalate this scientific dispute into the
Baltimore case. In 1986, Charles Maplethorpe, a disgruntled former graduate
student of Imanishi-Kari’s, heard about O’Toole’s dilemma and mutual friends
urged her to call him. Needing a sympathetic ear, she did. Maplethorpe then
contacted Ned Feder and Walter Stewart, two researchers at the National
Institutes of Health who were moonlighting as vigilante fraudbusters.

In 1988, thwarted in turns by Baltimore, NIH brass, and the scientific
publishing media, Stewart and Feder approached John Dingell, chairman of
Congress’s powerful energy and commerce committee, long-time friend of science,
and recent foe of scientific fraud. The case went national.

Dingell and Baltimore squared up like hippos in a mudhole: big, mean critters
determined to make the other back off. The result was about as graceful as you’d
expect. Both mounted campaigns, gathered evidence and supporters. They had
showdowns. Baltimore won some, Dingell won some.

Caught between the scientists and Congress, which signed the cheques, the NIH
could not get ahead of the snowballing politicisation of the case. And this is
where I found the only serious analytical flaw in Kevles’s book: he fails to
probe the complex relations between the NIH and Congress.

In winter 1989, the case seemed closed, when James Wyngaarden, director of
the NIH, issued its final decision, which charged serious errors in need of
correction but no intentional misconduct. But within three months new evidence
made him reopen the case. By 1990, passions and egos had escalated the
allegations from error into fraud. The problem was that no one could agree how
to prove misconduct. Dingell subpoenaed laboratory notebooks and enlisted the
Secret Service to analyse laboratory paper, ink and printer fonts. The
principals were interviewed, reinterviewed, cross-interviewed. In hearings that
became tragicomic, Congressmen and lawyers struggled with “subcloning data” and
the “BET-1 reagent”.

Could scientists be trusted to police themselves? Were non-scientists
equipped to evaluate the charges? The opinion and editorial pages of newspapers
and scientific journals were awash with commentary, polemic and allegation.

The final report in 1994 found Imanishi-Kari guilty of misconduct on several
counts. She was suspended from the Tufts faculty, and appealed. Her lawyer
gained access to the evidence against her, bringing in his own experts. On 21
June 1996, the decision was overturned: Imanishi-Kari was exonerated. The
Baltimore case at last seemed to be over.

In Kevles’s portrait, O’Toole emerges as well-intentioned yet insecure,
driven by an intense need for respect. Imanishi-Kari is untidy but honest, a
victim of politics run amok. Baltimore is proud, as befits a lion, a staunch
defender of science against misguided government intrusion. Kevles portrays them
mainly as responding to events begun by the zealous villains. That Baltimore
could be represented as essentially passive, that his antagonism was purely
defensive, is testament to Kevles’s rhetorical skill.

Kevles is convinced no fraud occurred. His account is convincing, yet the
evidence remains ambiguous. His narrative gives more credence to some expert
witnesses than others. It requires us to believe that Nobel laureates, personal
friends of Baltimore, and disinterested scientists were duped into siding with
O’Toole. Retint this portrait—paint Baltimore as arrogant and aggressive,
Imanishi-Kari as sloppy, deceptive, and uncooperative, O’Toole as powerless and
misunderstood—and a different picture emerges.

Like other recent events in the US, the “case” has become more significant
than the events that engendered it. Weaver et al (1986) was cited 15 times
between 1992 and 1994 (four citations by Imanishi-Kari and three editorials).
The research problem is no longer considered a hot topic. But the Baltimore case
is likely to become a sort of white mouse for historical studies of scientific
fraud.

If they are successful and manage to land a job as a leader of a research group, or principal investigator, they are rewarded by being thrust out of the lab and into a managerial position. In short, today’s biomedical scientists spend between seven and ten years training for one job, and then move on to another with which it has little or nothing in common. Enlightened scientists have for years recognised the paradoxes of their lot, and some have even talked of attending management seminars to learn some of the new skills required of them. But who has the time? And if you did go, would you dare charge it to your grant?

Alice Sapienza’s Managing ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´s offers a painless way to improve the psychological health of just about any lab. It adapts recent insights in organisational behaviour, developed for the business world, to the needs of the biomedical research lab. The lab has a wrinkle of complexity not always found in the boardroom: the personnel tend to be unusually bright and creative. Managing creative – and therefore independent, persistent, and strong-willed – people is even harder than managing regular folk.

The book covers the bases of modern scientific management: motivation, communication, creativity, as well as managing conflict and change. Some of the most useful sections contain exercises to help readers to understand their own motivation and that of other lab members. Most managers, Sapienza argues, are driven strongly by one of three factors: achievement, power or relationships. Understanding your lab’s array of these factors – and those of your group – can help to analyse what seem like inexplicable and unavoidable conflicts.

Organisational behaviour is not most scientists’ idea of light evening reading. Sapienza manages to weave the results of social studies of groups into a deft, breezy narrative.

Don’t expect this book to be a magic bullet. Most of its recommendations are common sense: provide adequate working conditions, ensure your workers are treated fairly, don’t ask them to perform the impossible, but make sure they are challenged. The chief value of Managing ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´s is in provoking scientists to analyse their own laboratory situation. It will have done its job if it persuades the reader to reflect on her laboratory’s social environment and becomes the grain of sand that irritates the oyster into making a pearl.

For the specialist, it will be a handy guide to vital statistics, though the level of scientific detail is insufficient to do more than jog the memory regarding the significance of the individual’s contribution to science. For the dabbler, for example, a historian of physics curious about his or her subject’s peers in subjects such as physiology, or a scientist settling a bet over what is the middle name of Kary Mullis (Banks), these sketches will be a handy plug for small gaps in knowledge.

It is remarkable how thorough a compendium of 2200 scientists is. The editor has found room to include not only the major contributors to astronomy, physics, chemistry, physiology, medicine, geology and mathematics, but also those, such as Alfred Nobel (foundation of Nobel prizes) and Steven Jobs (Apple computers), who are important to the development of scientific thought and technology. And, within the fields with which I am familiar, the names included reach deep into the second echelon of important contributors to Western science, scientific medicine and scientific technology. I came away impressed with how few people have contributed to the major currents in the natural sciences.

Noteworthy is the inclusion of about 500 living scientists. The editor notes the difficulty of making such selections, and doubtless some readers will be miffed that their particular favourite was not included. The defence is that none of the entries is trivial – the only sins are those of omission.

A few of these sins, though, are more serious than others, though none egregious. The biographical sketches often omit an individual’s contributions to the institution of science. For example, Justus von Liebig, a 19th-century German chemist, is noted for his work on isomerism, oxidation and agricultural chemistry, but only passing mention is made of his enormously successful laboratory which pioneered the modern scientific research and teaching laboratory.

Some omissions seem to be politically motivated. Luc Montagnier, co-discoverer of HIV-1, is listed, but not the controversial and excitable Robert Gallo, although he is mentioned in Montagnier’s entry. Charles Davenport, an early proponent of quantitative evolutionary biology and leader of the US eugenics movement, is also omitted. On the other hand, women such as Ada Lovelace and Rosalind Franklin – often overlooked in science – are well represented.

Larousse is the Everyman’s dictionary of scientists: thorough, readable, compact and relatively inexpensive. An appendix of Nobel laureates in physics, chemistry and physiology or medicine, extending through 1993, is a welcome, if not a unique, addition. For those who don’t need the OED of scientist dictionaries, this is a good choice.