Articles by Bernard Davis

My commentary on the National Institutes of Health's Office of Scientific Integrity in the May 13, 1991, issue of The Scientist [page 12] referred to its overreaction to political pressure in combating fraud. I think it's important to add a mention of some related history. In an earlier era of red-baiting, NIH refused to award grants to such distinguished scientists as Linus Pauling and Elvin Kabat, because they were accused (without trial) of misconduct. Because most readers are probably not

When techniques for sequencing segments of DNA became available, it seemed self-evident that the most valuable material to analyze was the regions that could be associated with a function or a disease. More than 95 percent of the human genome did not seem interesting to explore in detail because it does not code for the kinds of functions that we can recognize, and so it is temporarily called "junk." A few years ago, however, it was proposed that systematic sequencing of the entire human genome

Fraud in research has recently aroused the interest of Congress because it wastes tax dollars. But scientists share this concern for even stronger reasons: We build our whole enterprise on a foundation of communal trust. Since the record of some of our academic instituiton has been a sorry one, we should be pleased that public criticism is leading to improved procedures. If the matter had stopped there, the outcome would have been very salutary. Unfortunately, the reaction has gone much farthe