The subcommittee seems to have overstepped its mission as a watchdog of public funds. The recent hearings, held in May, leave the impression that Dingell is presiding over a kangaroo court, not a congressional inquiry.
The Dingell subcommittee has focused specifically on a disputed 1986 paper published in Cell (vol. 45, pages 247-259) and coauthored by David Baltimore, a Nobel laureate. Two university reviews and an official NIH investigation of the paper agree that certain data were misinterpreted but not intentionally misrepresented. All agree that the paper is an example of scientific error, not fraud.
This important distinction is lost on Dingell. At the May hearings, Dingell stressed his interest in preventing the waste of taxpayers' money on "faked" research. He has implied that a composite autoradiograph in the paper was a "fabrication," despite the authors' explanation that composites are commonly used.
Dingell's obvious bias has alarmed scientists and his ...
