Good Scientists, Bad Science? How To Respond To 'Renegade' Researchers

Case One: The Molecular biologist who refuses to believe that AIDS is caused by a virus BERKELEY, CALIF.—On a Saturday early in April, as Washington’s famous cherry trees began to blossom, eight of the nation’s top AIDS researchers gathered at George Washington University for a special meeting. But they weren’t there to discuss their latest findings, or to devise new strategies for fighting the deadly disease, or even to enjoy the Washington spring. Instead, says Berkeley molecular biologist Harry Rubin, one of the participants, “the forum was called to lynch Peter Duesberg.” That description may be a bit too strong, a bit too bitter. But then, feelings run deep when it comes to Peter Duesberg. As anyone who reads Science or Spin or most newspapers knows by now, the Berkeley biologist has had the temerity not just to challenge the current dogma of AIDS—that the disease is caused by the human immunodeficiency virus—but to do it in a flamboyant and highly public fashion. Duesberg’s stance, argue such prominent scientists as Robert Gab of the National Institutes of Health and David Baltimore of the Whitehead Institute, is more than scientific folly; it is irresponsible and dangerous as well, a road-block to public health efforts to combat the spread of the virus. In the course of his crusade, Duesberg has been reviled as a crackpot by AIDS researchers and lionized as a hero by the gay press. Puzzled friends and colleagues want to know why such an eminent scientist—a member of the National Academy of Sciences, no less—persists in seriously damaging his reputation. But most important, Duesberg has caused scientists to wrestle with a painful question: How should the scientific community respond when one of its own takes a highly publicized leap out of the mainstream? The whole controversy began quietly enough in March 1987, when Duesberg published a review article in Cancer Research (volume 47, pages 1199-1220, March 1, 1987) attacking the idea that HIV causes AIDS. The virus cannot be the cause, he argued, because it infects too few cells to seriously damage the immune system, and because the disease develops in the presence of anti-HIV antibodies, which should neutralize the virus. The paper was dismissed by AIDS researchers as being full of inaccuracies, old data, and misinterpretations. For virtually every scientist, the simple fact that all transfusion-linked cases of AIDS can be traced to HIV-tainted blood is ample evidence that Duesberg is wrong. AIDS researchers acknowledge that HIV seems to operate differently than most viruses, and that some of Duesberg’s points could fuel constructive discussion. But those points are mixed up with others that are just plain silly, says one colleague, “and Peter doesn’t seem to know the difference.” If the science community ignored Duesberg's radical ideas, the gay community did not. Shortly after the Berkeley biologist’s article appeared in Cancer Research, the New York Native (a gay paper) published a lengthy interview with him, in which Duesberg’s parting comment was, “I would not worry about being antibody positive.” To those struggling to cope with positive antibody tests, which seemed tantamount to a sentence of death, such words—especially coming from an eminent scientist—were provocative, to say the least. The news of this iconoclastic scientist spread. By the fall, Duesberg was being besieged for interviews and public appearances. He accommodated them all, from radio talk shows to an interview with Spin magazine (which covers pop music and culture), and did little to hide his scorn for conventional wisdom about AIDS. He ridiculed the notion that a virus could “choose between boys and girls,” for example, and lambasted HIV researchers as self-promoting egotists who have been craving clinical relevance for their research and see a causal role for HIV in AIDS as their last chance. These outbursts helped endear Duesberg to the gay community. John Ziegler, associate chief of staff for AIDS education at the Veteran’s Administration Medical Center in San Francisco, explains Duesberg’s popularity among gays as a result of their frustration at the perceived slow pace of AIDS research. When Duesberg rails at the AIDS establishment, he is expressing the anger they feel. Duesberg even insisted that he would put his own life on the line— by being injected with HIV—so certain is he that the virus is not the culprit. “If you are convinced of what you are saying, you might as well put your virus where your mouth is,” he says. But no one believes that Duesberg has any intention of actually injecting himself with the virus. As angry as his critics have become, they are unlikely to press the point. Why has Duesberg attacked the accepted dogma of AIDS so vigorously, especially when his scientific footing is so shaky? Some say he’s just plain argumentative. They point to a similar, but less well-known crusade Duesberg began in 1983, when he decided cellular oncogenes were being oversold as the cause of human cancer. At conferences and in a series of papers, he argued the extreme position that oncogenes are actually irrelevant to human cancer. Duesberg had spent his career studying oncogenes, building an enviable reputation for brilliant research, and his views, which were based on his interpretations of his own experiments and those of others, were given consideration. While they didn’t lead to any drastic changes in experimental approaches, they helped shift the mainstream view on oncogenes toward the conclusion that one oncogene alone is probably insufficient to cause human cancer. Duesberg’s extreme statements on both oncogenes and AIDS often seem like rhetorical devices, designed to provoke debate, rather than to be taken literally. “Peter never believes everything he is saying,” says Malcolm Martin, chief of molecular biology at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease. “I’ve known him for quite a while. He has a way of exaggerating in a very comical way, to make a point.” But what is so exasperating to both friends and foes of Duesberg is that he will not admit to exaggerating. He stands stubbornly behind every point, from the plausible to the ridiculous. Arguing is his way of life, says Michael Nunn, an AIDS researcher at Pharmacia Genetic Engineering in San Diego and a former graduate student of the controversial scientist. Sometimes, Duesberg’s arguments bear fruit, says Nunn. “He finds flaws in an awful lot of things that other people take for granted.” But colleagues note that much of Duesberg’s flaw finding amounts to hairsplitting or clinging to rules that don’t apply, such as his insis- tence that antibodies to HIV must necessarily neutralize the virus. In other cases, his points may be valid, but not testable. Some of Duesberg’s less generous colleagues suggest that his hypercritical stances are rooted in jealousy of those who garnered fame for discovering cellular oncogenes and HIV. Duesberg denies the charge, although the fame of his colleagues clearly provokes him. Accused of attention seeking in his campaign against HIV he quips, “I’m only trying to catch up with Gab and [Anthony] Fauci [of NIH]. If they say I want fame, they should look at themselves.” Credit sbould be reserved, he says, until theories are proven correct. “The one reward in science is to find out what’s really going on, rather than something that sounds cute now, gets you all the awards, and 10 years later you laugh about,” he says. Duesberg says his rebel stand on AIDS arises from the same motivations as his campaign against the oncogene/cancer link; he simply wanted to expose flaws in the reasoning of AIDS researchers and further the cause of science. But the response to this crusade has been very different. This time, the science community ignored his ideas, and that clearly irked him. “Why won’t they respond to me?” he has repeatedly asked the reporters who have flocked around him. Why indeed? Researchers who noticed the Cancer Research article say they discussed it, and decided not to respond. Murray Gardner, of the University of California, Davis, for example, saw that it was full of inaccuracies and put it aside. “It was a huge article, almost more than you could take on, and we’re all so busy fighting the battle against AIDS that it was a diversion to have to stop and refute it,” says Gardner. The case presented one of the classic dilemmas in science. When a respected colleague seemingly wanders off the deep end, what is the proper response? In instances when the aberrant ideas are relatively harmless, or when they have little chance of interesting the public, the better part of valor may be to simply ignore the maverick scientist and hope that the ideas fade away (see story on Hillman, page 5). When the notions can cause public harm, however, refutation becomes almost a social responsibility. But there’s a gut-twisting catch: By challenging the maverick, scientists might cause a public brouhaha that exposes innocent members of the public to the bizarre and potentially harmful ideas. In the case of Duesberg, some of those involved now wonder whether an early response to his criticism may have kept the debate within academic circles, and saved a lot of anguish. “Perhaps it was our obligation to refute it immediately,” says Winkelstein. Duesberg’s former student, Nunn, thinks some effort should have been made to separate the wheat from the chaff in Duesberg’s position. “It’s hard not to be critical of Peter, because he’s a very flamboy- ant person,” he says, “but his arguments should have been looked at.” But once they had missed their chance to tackle Duesberg in the privacy of scientific circles, AIDS researchers were faced with the tough question. Should they debate Duesberg publicly and run the risk of appearing to give him more credibility? Or should they stay quiet and hope the whole thing would blow over? The stakes were high. “I know people who were hurting themselves, based on his arguments,” says one gay AIDS researcher. “People who have more active sex lives anyway, and who hadn’t been able to find a way to shut that off, were using him as a justification.” Berkeley epidemiologist Warren Winkelstein considered challenging Duesberg in public but decided against it for fear that it would draw more attention to Duesberg’s claims. Privately he tried to convince Duesberg he was endangering public safety, but, he says, it was to no avail. AIDS researchers quickly learned that publicly ignoring Duesberg did not dampen his enthusiasm. In fact, it may even have driven him into the arms of the press. By March, the realization that Duesberg was reaching a wide audience scared the science community into breaking its silence, says Malcolm Martin. The first salvo was fired in the March 25 issue of Science. An unusually long story in the News and Comment section took on Duesberg and refuted his scientific claims point by point. “We gave it four pages because the thing had been percolating along in the popular press,” says the author, William Booth. “The AIDS research community was gnashing its teeth over some of the coverage.” Booth felt that the only way to report the story was to give Duesberg’s views and the scientific responses to them a full airing, and he says scientists were willing to break their silence on the issue when they realized that was his intent. Soon after, eight AIDS researchers agreed to the public meeting in Washington in April. It was not the most constructive of debates. By then, feelings were running so high that most of the participants wouldn’t listen to Duesberg they simply attacked all his scientific claims. Duesberg didn’t appear to be listening either, frequently getting up to wander around and chat with members of the audience. But Harold Ginsberg of Columbia University, who chaired the panel, says the meeting served its purpose, clarifying for the press the yawning gaps in Duesberg's reasoning. I don’t think he can ever again argue that the scientific community didn’t respond to him,” says forum participant Roger Detels, a principal investigator on the Los Angeles arm of the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study. The forum has apparently served its purpose. As the news of Duesberg’s “lynching” spread through the gay community, support for the maverick scientist declined. While the New York Native continued to take Duesberg’s side—its article on the debate began with a banner headline declaring “More HIV Fraud”—far fewer gays were listening. In addition, the mainstream press has moved on to new, fresher stories. Still, Duesberg vows to keep up the fight. “If you give up too early,” he says, “then they say, ‘Okay, he didn’t have the guts, he just wanted to get some attention, and we killed him.”’ The only lasting consequence of the unfortunate affair may be the effect on Duesberg’s own career. His reputation as a “crackpot” is growing, although those who know his research say it is still top quality. “I just reviewed a very pretty paper of his,” says one colleague. Duesberg acknowledges that the AIDS debate has dominated his recent life, and, despite his fighting words, appears ready to give up the battle. He says that he hopes soon to turn his attention back to his own research, putting the AIDS issue behind him long before his seven-year Outstanding Investigator grant from NIH is up for renewal in 1992. He is relieved, he says, that he needn’t worry about grant renewal until then. “If I didn’t have tenure and didn’t have the grant, I think I might be in trouble,” he says. “I might be driving trucks.” “In the retrovirus business, I am now like an AIDS patient,” he laughs. “They only touch me with condoms.” Marcia Barinaga is a freelance writer based in Berkeley, Calif

Good Scientists, Bad Science? How To Respond To 'Renegade' Researchers

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