Let's Get Serious About Scientific Misconduct

So, with the public's trust in its institutions already crumbling, the scientific community must get serious about the way it deals with alleged fraud and misconduct. To be convinced of this, we can call to mind the protracted, torturous unwinding of the notorious Baltimore case. As most of us are aware, it was back in 1986 that a paper bearing the name of Nobelist David Baltimore was published in the journal Cell (45:247, 1986). It contained an important conclusion based on data that did not exist. A young postdoc--Margot O'Toole--blew the whistle and, for her efforts, was mugged by a powerful establishment that closed ranks. Eventually, she lost her job, becoming, as she put it, "subjected to five years of slander and libel from Dr. Baltimore [and colleagues]" (Nature, 351:180, 1991). Pretty bad--but it gets worse. What most people, including scientists, don't know is that the editors of Science and Cell rejected a paper--in 1987--by NIH fraud specialists Walter Stewart and Ned Feder showing that Baltimore and his colleagues had described, in the controversial paper, experiments that were not supported by their data. Last May, a Baltimore apology to O'Toole--though five years late--was, in the opinion of Nature (351:85, 1991), "enough to restore his reputation." That Baltimore subsequently resigned from his post as president of Rockefeller University in New York was not the sign of a dependable self-regulatory process in action; rather, it resulted from the pressure of some of his peers, who were unable to reconcile the integrity of their profession with the whitewashing of fraud and the trashing of an honest scientist. My own exposure to scientific wrongdoing has come in the process of collaborating on an analysis of the human sexuality research of Dr. Alfred Kinsey--analysis that resulted in the book Kinsey, Sex and Fraud by J.A. Reisman and E.W. Eichel (Lafayette, La., Huntington House, 1990). Investigation overseen by the coauthors found outrageous misconduct in research that, after more than 40 years, still is regarded as having provided society with what U.S. News & World Report (Jan. 9, 1989) called "the cornerstone of almost everything known about human sexuality." Among the findings of the investigation was that in their work, Kinsey and colleagues passed off as a "carefully planned population survey" results from a male interviewee sample containing approximately 25 percent prisoners or ex-prisoners, an abnormal percentage of sex offenders, and other sexually unconventional groups in numbers unrepresentative of society. Other Kinsey findings depended on data derived from the experimental masturbation of several hundred children--some as young as two months and some stimulated over periods of 24 hours (A.C. Kinsey, W.B. Pomeroy, C.E. Martin, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, Philadelphia, W.B. Saunders Co., 1948, pages 176-80). The results--based on stopwatch measurements and observations of orgasmic response--claimed to provide a picture of the normal "sexual history of the human male." The notion of this as "science" is grotesque. Kinsey Institute officials have repeatedly declined debate in public forums. And again, fraud investigator Stewart comes into play: His description of allegations against Kinsey as "serious" and "disturbing" elicited a letter from the Kinsey Institute to NIH--which Stewart sees as an attempt to discourage his interest in the Kinsey matter. Today, as was the case with the Baltimore scandal, Kinsey's research cries out for investigation. It's not too late for this to be undertaken--for the sake of science and the public's perception of it. Meanwhile, a cynical public must stand in wonder. J. Gordon Muir is a pharmaceutical company executive and former medical research physician based in Research Triangle Park, N.C.

Let's Get Serious About Scientific Misconduct

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