They call him the “terrorist of the lab,” but this self-appointed scourge of scientific fraud has reason to suspect that as much as 25 percentof all research papers maybeintentionally fudged

hen | was young, and colleague Ned Feder | always assumed have decided to redressthis scientists told wrong. For their efforts, the truth,” says fraud investi- they have earned the enmity gator Walter Stewart. Today of a numberof luminaries, he knowsotherwise. Some among them Nobellaureate scientists, maybe many, David Baltimore, who has he says, fiddle with their data. warned angrily that their ac- A few scientists lie. And tivities could’serve to “cripple lots publish erroneous results. American science.” Other “But when something is colleagues just don’t seem to published that turns out to be appreciate their dedication. wrong,” Stewart points out Reviewing someof Stewart's with indignation, “you almost early research, J. Edward never see a retraction.” Rall, a deputy director at the In courtrooms and before National Institutes of Health congressional panels, Stewart (NIH), painted Stewart as a PHOTOGRAPH BY MIKE MITCHELL 65

brilliant laboratory investigator who has the other way instead of investig

unfortunately chosen to waste his time earnest. A three-man panel cho “grubbing around in the sewers of sci- the NIH to look into the matter included: entific stupidity, sloth, and fraud.” former student of Baltimore's who had - Officially, Stewart, is a researcher at the collaborated extensively with him NIH in Bethesda, Maryland, where his prominent scientist who had rec current project is the genetic control of coauthored a textbook with him. The*re- the shape of nerve cells in snails. Much searcher who had stepped forward after of his researchtime in récent years, how- discovering the 17 pages of lab notes, ever, has on his owninitiative been spent meanwhile, found herself publicly de- aeweren't apt to cast un- investigating cases of questioned sci- nounced and outof a job. popular votes if it made them feel con- ence. Stewart and Feder receive more Whatever problems there were, Balti- lesignedandbuilt a port-

than 100 allegations a year that pub- more respondedangrily, arose frori:mi- ‘able'voting chine ‘for:classelections, lished work is wrong or crooked—afig- norerrors, not fraud. Stewart and Feder using parts he scavenged at sécond- ure at least four times higher than the asked to see the rest of the lab records hand shops. His creation,finished with number of complaints lodged with the just to check. Baltimore refused. “Exter- NIH’s official misconductoffice. nal reviews of data are relevant,”:hé:

Last summerStewartjoined magician/ gued, “only when probable cail investigator and ed- fraud have been established:' itor John Maddoxto investigate a mys- more’s stand was seconded by terious experiment that had just been in the scientific community. Oth published in Nature and that was making . preted the messageas,“Let the. headlines around the world. A team of network take careofit.” Baltimore finally This honoris given to scholars not en- Parisian scientists led by Jacques Ben- agreed to release his team’s records.to rolled in doctoral programs, letting them veniste of the French Medical Research pursue individual studies. He came to the

Council had supposedly discovered and NIH in the late Sixties. Though Stewart documented a biological effect caused has worked as a scientist for some 20 byinfinitesimal amounts of a human an- years, he never earned a Ph.D. tibody known as anti-IgE, or anti-immu- he shares a windowlessbase- noglobulin E. The experiment suggested @/ noticedthe nBethesda’‘with’Feder and a a scientific underpinning for homeo- journal paper included ‘ge'collection of snails. Stewart is con- pathy, a pseudoscience that purports to _ aseventeen- sidered ‘a talented researcher who has cure patients with vanishingly small doses made.a numberofuseful discoveries, in- of medication. The scientific world was year-old with the disease... cluding the synthesis of Lucifer yellow, a baffled by Benveniste’s claims. A num- He was listed dyé.used to study nervecells. In recent ber of experis considered the effect Ben- years, however, the NIH hierarchyis said veniste claimed to have observed—bio- as having four children, to be dissatisfied with his lack of scien- logical effects due to solutions diluted including an ~ tific productivity, an unhappiness re- past the point where they could contain eight-year-old daughter? flected in cutbacks in his lab space and molecules of anti-lgE—to be impossible. equipment. Lately Stewart has been After seeing the experiment repeated. spendingless time in the NIH basement seven times under various conditions and and more on Capitol Hill. The NIH has after examining the laboratory records for acquiescedin loaning him to a congres- the last five years, Maddox, Randi and sional subcommittee headed by Michi- Stewart decided the “impossible reac- an investigating committee provided, gan’s John Dingell. The subcommittee is tion” was a case of self-delusion. Ben- among other things, that Stewart and looking into . veniste, however, dismissed the three- Feder promise in advance to drop public Putting in 80-hour weeks on fraud some as witch-hunters. They had discussion of the matter if the committee sleuthing hasleft him less time than he’d unleashed, he said, a “tornado of ... found no fraud. The pair refused, saying like for his family and no time at all for suspicion, fear, psychological and intel- they were engaging in the scientific tra- such choresas lawn mowingat their sub- lectual pressure” and had “terrorized”his dition of free and open debate. They have, urban home. His resulting experimentin staff. “Never let these people into your . however, stopped talking about the case - “meadow gardening” has outraged his lab!” Benveniste warned the world. publicly while it is being investigated. neighbors. The county government cited Back home Stewart and Feder’s chal- Stewart argues that their involvement the incipient jungle under the so-called lenge to a paper published by high-pro- in caseslike this is science, not med- weedlaw, which creates the legal pre- file. immunologist David Baltimore and co- dling. Science is a search for new and sumption that plants over 12 inches are workers attracted’ congressional atten- unknowntruths, and as such is bound to dangerous to the public. Stewart, char- tion. Stewart and Federclaimed that the involve errors. But, he says, scientists acteristically, has fought the neighbors published paper was contradicted by the have a responsibility to correct pub-. and county to a standoff. group's own experimental data. They lished error. Stewart insists that he wel- Interviewer Doug Stewart(no relation) based their assertions on 17 pages of comescriticism but prefers it be focused found scientist Stewart to be a man ob- data discovered by Margot O'Toole, a on correcting factual mistakes or meth- sessed. Impulsive, excitable, precise, and postdoctoral feliow in the lab of one of the odological errors he has made, rather utterly serious, he would be the quintes- coauthors. O’Toole thought the data than attacking his right to carry on inves- sential eccentric were it not for the per- showed the paper contained errors that tigations in the first place. His critics sel- fectly reasonable explanations he offers ought to be correctedin the scientific lit- dom feel thus constrained. Daniel Kosh- for everything he does. erature. Baltimore and his coauthors dis- land, editor of Science, has written that _ agreed, and they were backed up by two Stewart's and Feder's activities smack of Omni: The editor of Science magazine university committees at Tufts and MIT McCarthyism. Arnold Relman, editor. suggestedthat “99.9999 percent” of that investigated the matter. The New England Journal of Medicine iblished‘scientific reports are truthful. Stewart and Federalso argued that the warns more ominouslythat“truth squads Do you‘agree? scientific establishment wastrying to look and special investigative teams are not ‘Stewart: ‘Daniel Koshland’s estimateis al- 66 OMNI CONTINUED ON PAGE.87

ence—unlike, say, accounting—we have as muchof a dissolved subsiance as you UTI to expect that people will make lots and started with. After you've madefifteen di- lutions in a row, the chancesare there's CONTINUED FROM PAGE 66 lots of errors. And that means we have a just a single molecule of the substance responsibility to deal with those errors, most certainly wrong. Most working sci- whether it's our own, a colleague's, or still in solution. Make five more dilutions, entists assume that misconduct is no anybodyelse's. It may be okay to make and there is only one chancein one hun- problem atall. It's alarming howlittle we errors, Dut unless they're minor, it’s not dred thousandthat you've got any mole- actually know aboutthe level of scientific okay notto fix them. cules of the anti-IgE left at ail. That's only misconduct. Dr. Jerome Jacobstein, for- Omni: You recently returned from an in- twenty dilutions, but Benveniste re- merly at Cornell University Medica! Col- vestigation of the so-called “impossible ported that after twenty-five dilutions, he lege, testified before Congress that he experiment” of Dr. . was still observing a strong effect! His believed twenty-five percent of scientific Whatreaction did he say he saw? researchers did experiments with one papers may be based in part on data Stewart: The researchers were measur- hundred twenty dilutions in a row, and that’s been intentionally fudged. That’s a ing the way white blood cells react to an theystill claimed to get an effect. shocking figure, butit’s conceivable. from the human immune sys- Omni: Did they try the experiment using Omni: What's the difference between tem. The antibody, anti-lgE [anti-immu- just water? misconduct and fraud? noglobulin E], causes white blood cells Stewart: Yes. They said plain water didn't Stewart: Fraud is fabricating results with to release histamine, which is what hap- give the effect. the intent to deceive. Misconductis sim- pens when people have anallergy at- Omni: Berveniste’s paper in Nature last ply behavior that most scientists con- tack. When you add a particular blue stain summer caused quite an uproar. Were sider unacceptable. If researchers cut to asample of white blood cells, the cells he correct, what would the implications corners they'd be ashamedto admitto in that have not released their histamine turn have been? public and go ahead and publish the re- red. You measure the strength of the re- Stewart: It would have meant,first of all, search anyway, that might be miscon- action by counting the red-stained cells that doctors could expectto treat certain duct. If they're simply ignorant of correct in your sample under a microscope. diseases with water instead of medicine. methodology, that's just poor science. The researchersin Paris were measur- But more broadly, the whole basis for ex- Omni: How much misconduct do you ing the reaction using progressively perimental biological science would be supposeis out-and-out fraud and how weaker solutions of anti-lgE in water. They called into question. The universal ex- much is error? made a series of one-to-ten dilutions— perience of scientists has been that the Stewart: Wait a minute. | wasn't talking that is, they poured onetenth of the IgE effects in any reaction are due to whatis about error. Error is absolutely intrinsic to solution into a new test tube and filled the there, not to what wasthere. Benveniste's the process of science.In trying to roll other nine tenths with water. Now, if you results seemed to show that water mole- back the frontiers of knowledge, you're make these dilutions four times in a row, cules “remember,” so to speak, previous guaranteed to make mistakes. In sci- you're left with only one ten thousandth contacts they've had with other mole-

cules long after those other molecules are Omni: Whendid youfirst notice anything of Benveniste’s team turned ‘out to be a gone. Benveniste’s findings were abso- unusual? practicing homeopath, which hadn't been lutely extraordinary, especially because Stewart: We learned as soon as we got mentioned before our visit. his work appeared to have been so care- to the lab that the experiments weren't Omni: How did your own investigation fully done. always successful. This flabbergasted me proceed? Omni: | understand that homeopaths because up until then it had been either Stewart: Atfirst the three of us just stayed were cheeredbyhis results. said or implied that the experiment never out of the way while Davenascarried out Stewart: Yes. Benveniste’s results failed. If Benveniste’s article hac said, “We the experiment three times. Thefirst ex- seemed to show that has a sometimes observe these results,” it periment wasfairly successful, the sec- scientific basis. Homeopathy claims to would have been a great deal less pub- ond and third spectacularly so. In the treat human ailments with solutions so lishable. He'd first have had to answer the fourth experiment, we agreed that she enormously diluted that they actually don't question, What are you doing sometimes would read the slides in a blind fashion, contain any molecules other than water. that you're not doing at others? meaning she would look through the mi- It's a branch of pseudosciencethat sci- Omni: Did you notice other odd things? croscope and count the numberof red- entists don't take seriously. Stewart: Well, one astonishing thing we stained cells without knowing what dilu- Omni: How did you get the opportunity found out was that the experiments tion they had beentreated with. This ex- to test Benveniste’s findings? worked best—by far—whenone partic- periment, too, was a striking success.. Stewart: | was one of several scientists ular scientist, a.Dr. Elisabeth Davenas, Omni: So in every case a strong reaction John Maddox, the editor of Nature, asked was doing them. Her salary, we also seemed to occur even using astronomi-: to review Benveniste’s original manu- learned, was being paid by a French cally diluted solutions? script in 1987. Benveniste let an inspec- companyselling homeopathic medi- Stewart: Yes. Finally we did three more tion team visit his lab because Maddox cines. Now,to put the kindest interpreta- experiments. This time Davenas pre- made this inspection a condition of Na- tion on this, one researcher can have a pared the dilutions while | watched very ture’s publishing the paper. The team “touch” that another lacks. But even so, carefully. The test tubes were then placed consisted of Maddox, me, and James right away the scienceis less convincing. in front of a video camera, and Davenas Randi, a professional magician knownfor Experiments that work intermittently pose left the room. The video camera made an his outstanding work showing that var- a problem. When you havetrouble re- objective, unbroken record of what we ious paranormal clairns have no factual peating an experiment, you've gottofix did. In that way we couldn't be accused basis. Randi’s job was to ensure that that before you publish the result, not af- later of mistakes or deliberately intro- Benveniste’s people were doing what they terward. And other odd things turned up. ducederrors. We then relabeledall of the said they were doing—to preventtrick- - Researchers had to agitate the series of test tubes with a random code. The key ery in other words. My job was to make solutions violently for exactly fifteen sec- to the code was sealed in an envelope sure they weren't doing something wrong onds, as ! recall, for the experiment to and tapedto the ceiling of the fab in full without realizing it, like putting their work. That sort of thing is a tenet of hom- view of everyone.At the last minute | sug- thumbsin their samples. eopathy, as it happens. Another member gested we add five controls—test tubes with plain water only. Once we beganin- sisting on ground rules for the experi- . av ment, the atmospherein the lab grew in- creasingly tense. We began to encounter objections, even animosity, from the staff.

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Stewart: Yes, we arranged for two re- was pretty certain the experiments would homeopathy remedies advertised all over searchers to read the slides without turn out to be failures and wasfeeling ex- the place. . . knowledge of the other person's counts. tremely uncomfortable. Maddox, Randi, and all felt it was im- | These people had never attempted to Benveniste is an emotional man. portant at this point to inform Benveniste take into account observer bias and didn't Everything was being videotaped, and of the grave reservations we had about seem to understand the necessity of he was saying things like, “Someday the way he and his staff had conducted doing so! Whenever you're measuring these videotapeswill be famous.” He even their experiments. Randi made the point something, you have to ask whatyour er- told Maddox that whenthis was over he'd that extraordinary claims require extraor- rors in measuring are. Counting chickens be happyto offer him a job. He was ap- dinary proof, explaining that if a man is relatively simple. But in counting ceils parently serious, but | was flabber- claims to have a goat in his backyard, with red granules under a microscope, gasted. Even the world’s top scientists you might verify this by calling up a you have anumberof decisions to make. don't go around offering jobs to John neighbor and asking him to look over his fence to check. But if the man claims to Do you count cells with bluish-red gran- Maddox, who, as editor of Nature, al- ules? What about cells with purple gran- ready has a rather distinguished job. | be keeping a unicorn in his backyard, ules or faded pink granules? People found Benveniste's euphoria little eerie. you'd want a higher standard of proof. a sometimes count the same celis twice. Omni: Were the experiments a failure? Omni: Did Benveniste argue with you? Whenever you use a human as a scien- Stewart: Well, when we were abouteight Stewart: Yes, fiercely, almost angrily. | ac- tific instrument, as you do when you have or ten test tubes into decoding the first tually thought Benveniste had taken ad- an observer count or measure some- experiment, Benveniste said, “That vantage of us. We'd wasted lot of effort a thing by eye, you have to find out how blood’s not working. Try another.” His comingthere simply because he had not prone they are to making mistakes. comment seemed to be a metaphorfor disclosed all the facts he knew.| thought Omni: So no one knew how successful what they had been doingall along. It was | had a duty to advocate my belief as these final tests were until the codes were soon clear that none of the experiments forcefully as possible. It was never a unsealed at the end of the day? had worked. As we were working out the screaming match, but | wouldn't call it a Stewart: That's right. And as the time results in the conference room, one of casual conversation. The whole situation came to pull the envelope containing the Benveniste’s secretaries put her head in was unpleasant for everybody. People in codes off the ceiling in order to decode through the door and said, “Dr. Benven- the lab were crying. On our way out we iste, the TV cameras are here.” And he noticed oneof the staff putting away bot- the observations, the tension present during the experiments dissolved into said, “Tell them to go away.Tell them we tles of champagne, unopened. euphoria. Benveniste seemed enor- will be in discussion all day.” There was Omni: Did Davenas cheat or not? mously confident that the results were enormous excitement in the French me- Stewart: That's certainly one explana- going to be positive. He had even sched- dia about this, you see. Homeopathy tion. But whether Davenas was cheating uled a press conference immediately after seems to be much more popular in or not, amongall of the gross breaches the code was to be broken. Bythis time | France than it is here. In Paris you see of properscientific practice that we saw

Jack Bateman, FiteBTN (BCR UNCCNMeLCl 3 since 1956. ; eran the makers of Jack Daniels...

there, observer bias was certainly a key see had fabricated no more than three Instead, it was published right there in factor. Numerous studies have shownthat isolated pieces of evidencein his career. Figure 1 of the lead article in what is when you know whatresult is expected As scientists, we knew that the evidence widely consideredto be the leading jour- of you, you're morelikely to reach the re- the.Harvard committee reviewed couldn't nal of medicine. When | phoned up Dr. sult that fits your theory. When Davenas possibly have supported that conclu- Arnold Relman, the journal's editor, to call counted the sameslide more than once, sion. When the NIH reinvestigated the his attention to this, he said instantly, her duplicate counts were too good— matter some time later, it discovered a “That’s a misprint.” Well, obviously it they were in closeragreement than sam- huge amountof fraud. Darsee had fabri- wasn't. The seventeen-year-old’s age was pling error and the lawsof probability al- cated data on an absolutely blatant scale mentioned twice elsewherein thearticle. lowed. When wepointedthis out to Ben- throughouthis career. Omni: How did Darsee’s coauthors react veniste, he said, “But you don’t Omni: Whom did youinvestigate? when you started calling them up? understand how meticulous her tech- Stewart: We decided it would be inter- Stewart: Those who were completely co- niqueis.” He just didn’t understand. esting to tabulate the practicesof the sci- operative were a minority. Somefelt quite Omni: What wasyour first investigation of entists who had coauthored papers with threatened, which is understandable. One scientific misconduct? Darsee. We simply read the reports the Harvard professor refused totalk to us at Stewart: The John Darsee case, al- investigative committees at Harvard and all. Our overall tally showedthirty-five of though it wasn't actually Darsee whom Emory had written and then Darsee’s pa- the forty-seven coauthors engaging in Ned Federand | investigated. A heart ex- pers. There were eighieen full-length re- scientific practices that would not gen- pert, Darsee had worked at Emory Uni- search papers, three book chapters, and erally be considered acceptable. Some versity and Harvard Medical School. His eighty-eight abstracts. had made false statements that they peers considered him to be brilliant re- We were astonished to see that Dar- either knew or, in our judgment, shouid searcher. He had published an unusually see's papers contained a very large have known were false. An example large numberof papers for someone so numberof obvious errors. For example, would be hiding the fact that the control young. In 1981 he was being offered an one paper, published in The New Eng- for an experiment had been done a year assistant professorship at Harvard when land Journal of Medicine, introduced a before. This would make the experiment some people in his lab noticed that he human pedigree [genealogy] showing look muchstrongerthanit actually was. had fabricated a piece of evidence. When the inheritance of a new diseasethat the Many of the errors were minor, proba- confronted, Darsee admitted to only this paper described. lt later turned out the bly caused by haste. But some—like the one fabrication. entire pedigree wasfabricated. | noticed seventeen-year-old with four chiidren— As Harvard aiumni, Feder and | re- the paperincluded a seventeen-year-old were so fundamental as to undermine the ceived a report from the school detailing with this disease. He waslisted as having truthfulness of the paper as a whole. its own investigation of the matter. We im- four children, including an eight-year-old Some statements gave the appearance mediately saw very serious flaws in this daughter. We thought the journal's refer- of an intent to deceive. | believe coau- investigation, which concluded that Dar- ees should have caughtthis kind of thing. thors, except in cases where they're col- 90 OMNI laborating across disciplines, have a re- It's amazing how the longer you wait, the peatable. A published report can never sponsibility to ensure the accuracy and more flexible you become. Nature pub- disclose everything youdid in the lab. But truthfulness of the entire paper. lished it in 1987. No one was sued. We you have an obligation to describe the Omni: What became of your report on didn’t even receive angry letters. We got most important parts. A scientist trying to Darsee’s coauthors? hundreds of letters from the scientific repeat another scientist’s work is essen- Stewart: We sent a draft off in 1983 to community, many saying the problem was tially like someone reading a recipe out Maddox, who was quite interested in worse than we'd described. of a cookbook. publishing it. The draft also went to many Omni: Have you any concrete sugges- Omni: But famous chefs are notorious for of the coauthors. Shortly after that, Na- tions for raising report standards? concealing hard-won secrets. ture, the NIH, and Ned and | began to Stewart: Individual scientists can make a Stewart: Look, the whole idea of science receive letters from lawyers clearly im- personal commitment to keeping their is to communicate your findings and plying that we'd all be sued for libel if Na- data. Many of Darsee’s collaborators had methods. One of the beautiful things ture published our report. We spent a year failed to retain all their lab records—re- about scienceis that you build on others’ and a half replying to these arguments sults of experiments, measurements on results. Two or three centuries ago sci- and wrote about fifty different drafts, patients, things like that. Raw data should entists often held back essential parts of trying to accommodate the lawyers. be saved for a few years. a procedure to protect their positions. Finally we withdrew the paper and sent With present attitudes it's difficult for Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, who was it informally to about fifteen other jour- an outsider to ask for a scientist’s raw data honored by [Britain's] Royal Society for without appearing to question that per- discovering microbes, never revealed nals. All but one said, “No, we couldn't even consider it." Cel/, a journal at MIT, son's integrity. But that attitude abso- how he built his microscopes. Today no was actively moving toward publication lutely has to change. You have to distin- onethinks that’s satisfactory, although it’s but then made two unusual stipulations. guish among three things: new ideas; still sometimes done. The first was that we take complete finan- proving them with experiments; and fi- Omni: You haven't published very much cial responsibility for anylitigation involv- nally documenting your proof and pub- yourself—less than a dozen papersafter ing the journal or MIT. We agreed, al- lishing it. 've never suggested that any- nearly twenty years of research. Why? though I'd never dothat again. The body has a right to anybody else’s Stewart: | publish only when | have second wasthat we agree neverto dis- unpublished research. But once you something | think is worth communicat- cuss the subject with anyone in any publish a paper, you're in essence giving ing to other scientists. That hasn't hap- forum. This was later softened to five its ideas away.In return for benefits you pened frequently. If | were pressured to years but was still unacceptable to us. gain from that--fame, recognition, or publish more papers, it's doubtful I'd Wefeel that scientists have an absolute whatever—you should be willing to make make more discoveries. There are some- right to say what they believe. your lab records and data available. And thing like eight thousand biomedicaljour- Eventually we resubmittedit to Nature, there is another reasonforfull disclosure. nals publishing papers today, and most reluctantly agreeing to a few last changes. Published experiments should be re- of these papers are unimportant and un-

bearably dull. What's importantis not how Omni: What research have you worked Journal of Medicine. We had been wad- muchyou publish but what you discover on more recently? ing through all these very complex med- and whetherit’s useful. Stewart: One very exciting piece of work ical papers, and it wasn't obvious what Omni: Onesignificant discovery of yours | did that's proved useful to others is the we were going to find, if anything. All of has to do with something called wildfire synthesis of Lucifer yellow,a fluorescent a sudden to make this unexpected dis- toxin. Whatis it? dye. Youinject it with a thin glass needle covery—it was exhilarating. | felt the joy Stewart: Wildfire toxin is a chemical se- into nerve cells that are maybeonefifth of discovery that| think all scientists feel creted by a bacterium that causesa dis- the width of a human hair, and all of the when they suddenly understand some- ease of tobacco plants. The disease used nerve endings become not only visible thing they didn’t before. to spreadlike wildfire, hence the name, but fluorescent. The dye never existed Omni: Arnold Relman recently accused althoughit was brought undercontrol long before—I had to invent it. ! must have you and Feder of having “arrogated a ago. The late D. W. Woolley,a brilliant ex- made a hundreddifferent dyestrying to mission that nobody has given [you ... perimental scientist [despite being totally find one with the properties | wanted. It and] haveset [yourselves] up as more or blind since the age of twenty-five], had was an obsessive, mad hunt for a miracle less grand inquisitors.” studied the toxin. In the Fifties he pub- reagent. When| finally succeeded and Stewart: That's inaccurate. We've used lished a paper describing its molecular beganto get these images underthe mi- ordinary scientific methods in our inves- structure, butit later proved to be wrong. croscopethat no one had ever seen be- tigations of scientific papers. We've had | decided to use modern methodsto fore, beautiful images of nerve celis no unusual powers to get this material. determine the molecule’s structure. | glowing against a black background,it It's true that nobody specifically gave us thought | could do it using old chemicals wasincredibly exciting. this mission, but nobody told me to syn- that Woolley had left behind in his fab at Omni: What do you think about-NIH dep- thesize Lucifer yellow either. | just de- Rockefeller University, where | had been uty director J. Edward Rall’s comment cided | was going to do it. As | recall, a graduate student after he died. His about you'wasting your talent? Relman’s comment refers to our chal- widow and | wentoverhis old test tubes. Stewart: Perhaps he believes investigat- lenge to the accuracy of the paper David and notebooks,looking for his results. The ing scientific practices isn’t important.If Baltimore’s group published in Celf in experience turned outto be fascinating: so, | disagree. Scientific misconductaf- 1986. Scientists must feel free to chal- Here's a practical exampleoferrorin sci- fects not only the health of science but lenge a paperif they have evidence sug- ence being corrected through the shar- also the public’s perception of whether or gesting it’s wrong. ing of data. Woolley was sharing his data not scientists care aboutthis sort of thing. Omni. The Benveniste affair wasn'tthefirst with me after his death by meansof his in doing an investigation, I'm both using time you contributed a published rebut- carefully kept lab records and chemi- myskills as a scientist and following my tal of someone's paperin Nature. cals. | was actually able to pick up the owninterests. Stewart: Right. There was the scoto- research whereheieft off. After | went to | remembernoticing that pedigree of phobin paperin 1972. Scotophobin was the NIH, | solved the toxin's molecular the seventeen-year-old with the eight- the name given to a chemical that was structure and published it in Nature. year-old daughter in The New England said to transfer learned information be- tween rats. You'd allow a rat to enter a

advanced our und 1S “Nature manuscript

pressed with the data, and | suggested that Nature ask the authors to put their best evidence together, then ask an ex- to;writea rebuttal. Nature chose me

brains could have been any numberof misrepresent your results in a grant ap- tem work.If anything, they're a bit naive things. The authors were allowed _a fif- plication,‘you're lying to.the government about their:chances. teen-hundred-word reply to my analysis, to get money,’and that'sillegal. Second, Omni: lt has been widely publicized that in which, as | recall, they complained of the problem of fraud is so complicated you refused to mow your lawn and that not having enoughtime to reply’and ad- and poorly understood that using legis- your neighbors are furious. vanced some.‘pretty’ poorscientific ar- lation as a remedy could do more harm Stewart: First of all, we do mow an acre guments. No -one.:beliéves in the exist- than good. | would prefer to see scien- around the house but havelet the other ence of scotophobin.today. tists solve the problem themselves. six acres become a meadow. The house Omni: You said several other labs had Omni: How coes the NIH now handle al- is in aneighborhood of large homeswith confirmed the scotophobin phenome- legations of misconductthatit receives? large lawns. The first year we owned the non. How do you explain that? Stewart: Until recently it had an office house, we bought a tractor and mowed Stewart: Observer bias—wishful think- staffed by two full-time people and one everything. The following year | began to ing. It happensall the time. Just after the part-time secretary, responsible for re- question why we were mowing the whole turn.of the century a.respected French viewing allegations on approximately five seven acres, maintaining an ecological physicist namedBlondlot discovered a billion dollars’ worth of research. The of- monoculture. We thought it would be bet- phenomenon he.‘called N-rays. This was fice received allegations about only a tiny ter just tolet it go wild, giving birds and supposedly.a new,kindof radiation given ; amountiL of misconduct, pppronmetey maramelsahabitat they sorely need. / ‘Ourfive-year-old figured out ‘that the reason we haverabbits and our: neighbors«don't is that rabbits need p. [ undred allegations a tall «grass‘to hop‘off into. Now we've had num prism'tofocus:‘theradiation.A:num- year. The rate has probably gone up since four or five hummingbird pairs, hawks, ber of otherlaboratories confirmed his then. Typically, researchers who believe bluebirds, a pileated woodpecker, a fox observations. Nature got involved too, they have evidence of fraud or miscon- for a while, and all sorts of mice, wood- agreeing to publish a report by American chucks, raccoons, opossums, even deer. physicist R. W. Wood, who wentto France The county cited our meadow as a health to see for himself. When Blondlot wasn't hazard, and it was going to take us to looking, Wood slipped the aluminum court to make us mowit. There is a real prism into his pocket. The effect contin- question about whetherthat would have ued to work perfectly, utterly demolishing. beénconstitutional. | told the prosecutor the basis of Blondlot's theory, which was almost neve detectedby we were planning to bring in nine or ten instantly discredited in-most of the sci- peer.review-or- national experts on our side—it was going entific community. But-as so often hap- to be trial to end all trials. She said, pens, Blondlot and some colleagues re- by attempts.at.re lication. “Maybe wejust won't go forward with this.” mained:convincedof the validity of what It's ‘usually Omni: Didn't Science run a half-page ar- they thought they'd observed. So the next ticle on your lawn? . time you hear someone arguing that in- discovered only when an Stewart: The way Science handled that -Gependent. repetition. of, experimentswill insidertells ~ WaS.a disgrace, especially.because showup badresults:quickly, you can re- someoneelse: Someonerats. ; they’vegiven my work: tersof sci-

mind them of Njprays. ence little.coverag Ws alf, page, to te ‘Omni: ‘Arnold Rélman and othersinsist my lawn. Ofall:the articles aboutthis, ae

:thatspeer reviews:weed.out bad science Science’s:was among:theleast thought- enon

beforeit:gets .into journals. So why are ful and. most gossipy,*Even the article mate,

investigations necessary? People did.on our lawn battlewas more AL

Stewart: Peer review, to Dr. Relman, thoughtful. The scientific establishment TKES

means‘thatbad stuff:doesn't getinto his is obviously unhappy with someof the pare things Ned and | are doing.’I’m:notthe only person to see the Sciencearticle as an attemptto discredit me personally. tion peer review ever serves is to decide Omni: The editors of the two top Ameri- which’ magazine an article gets pub* legations to anyone, it ‘usually gets back can scientific journals, Science and The lished in,-There's virtually no article so bad to their-university..Universities in:the.past New.EnglandJournal, criticize your in- it's'not,publishable somewhere. Peerre- haven't been very: sympathetic to these vestigative work.‘Doesthis bother you? view. oesn't Control the quality of what's so-called whistle-biowers, Stewart: Themain.thing that bothers me published: it just assigns a rating. Jour- Jerome Jacobstein, for. example, ac- is that | don’t understand their criti- nals have a’pecking order. If your piece cused a colleague at Cornell of improper cisms—Relman’s comment that we're doesn’t get accepted bya first-rate jour- conduct. The colleague was exonerated “needlessly inflaming” the issues in the nal-like ‘The New England Journal, you in a meeting that lasted only two hours Baltimore case, for instance. We've asked can always drop downto a third- or fourth- and resulted in a single handwritten slip people to criticize our work on the basis rate journal. As for fraud, it's almost never of paper. The disruption to Jacobstein's of its factual accuracy or appropriate- detected by peer review or by attempts career afterward was enormous. He had ness to specific issues. When people at replication. Fraud is usually discov- to spendthirteen thousand dollars of his make general criticismslike that, | don’t ered only whenaninsidertelis someone own money on legal fees related to de- even know whatthey're trying to say. Ina else aboutit, as with Darsee. Somebody fending his charges. The NIH finally con- way, these editors are agreeing with us, rats. Bear in mind, though, that the results cluded that he wasright in aimost all of because now they're at least discussing of a fraudulent experiment may be per- his allegations. The people who make the question of misconduct publicly. We fectly correct. their charges stick are usually, like Ja- wanted a public debate—not with this Omni: There have been suggestions in cobstein, extraordinarily tenacious. degree of acrimony, perhaps, but a de- Congressthat scientific fraud be treated Whistle-blowers are often accused of bate—andthat's starting to happen. as a white-collar crime. being malcontents, but that’s not been my You're pointing out a success of ours: We Stewart: | don’t agree. First, scientific perceptionatall. They tend to be people aroused the attention of two very promi- fraud already breaks various laws. If you whobelieve strongly in making the sys- nent editors.0O 94 OMNI