It is true that they ventured outside biomedical research in using their "plagiarism machine" to examine a biography of Abraham Lincoln, but this took them only about a month, whereas their work on scientific integrity has been proceeding for more than 10 years. What they did involved a natural extension of scientific curiosity. The NIH authorities, who had been giving their work consistently "excellent" ratings, could have delegated someone to talk with them about the matter, perhaps with advice to get back closer to problems of scientific integrity. Instead, the authorities swooped down upon them, ordered all their files to be locked up, and proposed to reassign them.
I consider this extraordinary punitive action to have been a grave violation of proper relations between administrators and the investigators for whom they are responsible. It is well known that the work of Stewart and Feder is controversial; there are influential people ...
