Rockefeller University Regaining Balance Under Its New President

As the eminent institution moves to recover from the David Baltimore scandal, some scientists continue in assessing its impact A business-as-usual mood prevails these days at New York City's Rockefeller University. The prestigious research institution is moving to regain its balance following the dizzying chain of events leading to the December resignation of scandal-hounded scientist David Baltimore from its presidency. Meanwhile, university scientists and administrators around the United States continue to assess the impact of the six-year- long controversy leading to the Nobelist's fall from grace, not only on Rockefeller, but also on the research community at large. Sources interviewed for this article generally agree that the university, now under new leadership, will recover from the negative publicity it received as the result of its association with Baltimore, an otherwise highly esteemed Nobel Prize-winning molecular biologist. The university had named Baltimore as its president in mid-1990; only a year and a half later, he resigned, his reputation sullied as a result of his coauthorship and vigorous defense of a 1986 Cell paper that was deemed fraudulent. Many academics agree that since the research in question did not occur at Rockefeller, the institution will have no trouble regaining its full stature. The univer- sity's impeccable reputation in the scientific community, they say, will be diminished only slightly because the controversial Baltimore was named as president. Torsten Wiesel, Rockefeller University's new president, wants to put the downfall of his predecessor, David Baltimore, behind him and move swiftly to restore full luster to his institution's somewhat tarnished image. "Rockefeller is a unique institution," says Wiesel, "because here a scientist can do research, have access to graduate students, yet not have a large teaching load. Most of us who are addicted to science have a preference to spend as much time as possible doing our research, but like to have access to young minds who keep us alive in our thinking." Rockefeller has about 120 students who live and work on its campus. About 20 receive doctoral degrees each year. More than 60 independent laboratories are headed by faculty members who provide the opportunities to do research for some 200 other faculty members, 250 postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students. Rockefeller is renowned for graduating a significant number of students who later go on to win Nobel Prizes and other scientific kudos. Wiesel identifies the recruitment of both senior and junior faculty as his immediate top priority. Since many of the senior professors at Rockefeller will be retiring within the next decade and new laboratory facilities are being built, Wiesel realizes that he can play an important role in shaping the future scientific bent of the university--a project that Baltimore had begun during his tenure. The university currently has faculty search committees in chemistry, structural biology, immunology, and neuroscience. Wiesel also wants to strengthen Rockefeller's faculty in the physical sciences and mathematics, particularly those with an interest in interfacing with the life sciences. "Rockefeller is a university, not a biomedical research institute," he says. "I'd like to see that it remains broad-based in its interests." Members of the star-studded faculty he will be depending on to support his efforts include two former Rockefeller presidents who, like Wiesel, are Nobel Prize winners: Baltimore himself, who intends to stay on at the university and focus his attention on AIDS research; and Joshua Lederberg, who won the Nobel in 1958 for his work on genetic recombination and was Baltimore's immediate predecessor. (Neither Baltimore nor Lederberg was available for comment at press time.) Wiesel was elected to succeed Baltimore by Rockefeller's board of trustees late last year as an "acting" president. But he now is the formally appointed president, with the full responsibilities of that post. Born in Uppsala, Sweden, in 1924, Wiesel studied medicine and trained there before moving to Johns Hopkins Medical School in Baltimore in 1955. In 1959, he joined the faculty of Harvard Medical School, and in 1983 he became a professor at Rockefeller. He is a neurobiologist whose research helped elucidate how visual information is transmitted from the retina to the brain. For that work, he shared the 1981 Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology with David H. Hubert. Wiesel was elected to Rockefeller's presidency, he feels, because he had been chairman of the faculty and had a good rapport with them and the members of the board. Says Wiesel: "I have spoken to the faculty, they've trusted me, and I've also dealt with the board. That made people feel, in a crisis situation, that I would be a plausible person for a while." Raising money will be key to Rockefeller's success, since the university currently is operating at a budget deficit. Although Baltimore raised some $40 million during his tenure, the money is not all available for operating costs. Baltimore froze salaries at the university last year, at the same time the school's administration began to cut back on support for laboratories. This came as a shock to many faculty who were used to relying on money from Rockefeller's $500 million endowment. As part of the founding charter, "Rockefeller University professors initially weren't allowed to ask for funds from the NIH," says Wiesel. "Some of the professors [here] are living in the tradition of receiving generous support from the university and so [the cuts] in part are a weaning off from that process." The university receives half of its annual operating budget of some $100 million from the federal government; one third from the endowment; and the rest from grants and gifts from individuals, foundations, and corporations. Unlike scientists at Rockefeller, other university researchers still have to rely more on grant money rather than institutional support to fund their research. --R.E. At the time that concerns about the Cell paper were first raised by a junior research associate in May 1986, Baltimore was director of the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, Mass. As the Rockefeller-Baltimore connection becomes less of a gossip point for scientists and the news media, the institution's new president, 1981 Nobel-winning neurobiologist Torsten Wiesel, says he is able to channel his energies on research, the recruitment of junior and senior faculty, and fund raising--all efforts that had been invigorated during Baltimore's brief tenure. Baltimore, although controversial, did help bring in young blood to Rockefeller, say insiders. While things are quieting down at Rockefeller, the aftershock of the Baltimore affair still can be felt at research institutions throughout the U.S., sources say. Most significantly, these sources say, Baltimore's inappropriately vigorous defense of the Cell paper, the apparent deficiencies in the lab procedures that produced it, and the role that a supervising scientist plays in relation to subordinates continue to be the objects of heated debate. Indeed, the paper, Baltimore's behavior, and other related matters have emerged in some quarters to constitute a case study in how all scientists should approach lab research and the subsequent publication of results. Rockefeller's new president, who also is a faculty member at the school, says that Baltimore's conduct has already affected the way other scientists in the U.S. have dealt with allegations of research wrongdoing. For example, he cites how molecular biologist Leroy Hood, when affiliated with the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, quickly and publicly acknowledged his responsibility last September for not catching in a published paper the fact that a coauthor misleadingly used the same photograph to illustrate two different experiments. "Hood immediately dealt with it openly, in a way he might not have done if [Baltimore's case] hadn't happened," says Wiesel. The coauthor was censured and fired. Other academic administrators say the resignation of Baltimore is a needed catharsis for the scientific community and for the public, which has a right to trust in the integrity of the scientific enterprise it supports with its tax dollars. Stanley Korenman, a professor of medicine and associate dean at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Medicine, says: "Our society demands punishment." It wasn't right that "such a prestigious position should be held by a diminished person," he adds. Korenman agrees with Wiesel that the negative effect of Baltimore's defensive posture has changed the way other scientists will handle possible cases of misconduct. "They are more open and are more willing to say `mea culpa,' " he says. Pragmatic as well as ideological concerns demand a deeper awareness of ethical issues such as those raised by the Baltimore paper's publication, many scientists agree. One observer, Barry Cooperman--vice provost for research at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia--points out the potential threat that professional misconduct poses to the public's funding, through the taxes it pays, of laboratory research. "The larger society is taking notice of this big enterprise of biomedical research," he says. Cooperman adds that the public has a right to expect that scientists be above reproach, especially in light of the fact that the impact of much research--particularly in health-related areas of study-- is by no means parochial, but of great consequence to millions of taxpayers. Daniel Larkin, a Philadelphia attorney who handles scientific misconduct cases on behalf of accused scientists and investigating universities, says that the Baltimore case underscores the need for universities to improve the ways in which they address instances of alleged misconduct. Had documentation of testimony at the initial stages of the investigation occurred in the Cell paper case, some of the issues still in question might be long-since resolved, says Larkin. "The procedures that currently exist in universities to investigate these things are haphazard," he says. Evidence collected would not stand up in court; and if fraud did occur, eventually the courts might have to intervene and take over from the university's investigation, the attorney says. The problem with current university procedures, says Larkin, is that reviewing allegations of misconduct is undertaken by academic science officials with approximately the same degree of intensity as they use when reviewing an article for publication. But, he says, the implications of not accepting an article for publication are different from the determination, for example, of whether an experiment was done as described in a paper. The consequence of fraudulent or otherwise flawed research in clinical medical investigations, Larkin points out, could have tragically detrimental effects on the public. Paul Friedman, dean of academic affairs at the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine, feels, however, that the current methods to investigate misconduct cases at universities are adequate. "We don't want to have a police state," says Friedman. He does say, though, that the lesson of the Baltimore case is that it might remind scientists to be a bit more skeptical of the colleagues they otherwise might jump to defend during a misconduct investigation. "Skepticism is what scientists are supposed to have in the face of observation of facts," he says. "Although scientists are supposed to trust each other and what is in the literature, the [Baltimore] case raises the question of when do you become skeptical of your colleague; when should you suspend trust?"

Rockefeller University Regaining Balance Under Its New President

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