Subject: REVIEW & OUTLOOK (Editorial):  The Science Police
Date: Published: 5/15/89 (100 lines)
Source:  Wall Street Journal.  Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc. 

    REVIEW & OUTLOOK (Editorial):  
    The Science Police

    American science is the best in the world, racking up new
 discoveries and the lion's share of Nobel Prizes each year.  A
 U. S. Congress worried about "competitiveness" should want
 that to continue.  Instead, Rep. John Dingell is taking steps
 that would police science and eventually cripple it.  He'll
 succeed unless science fights back.
    The threat is occurring as part of a broad Dingell
 investigation into "scientific fraud."  Under the guise of
 protecting taxpayers' money and "whistle-blowers," Mr. 
 Dingell and his staff of zealots are harassing scientists at
 MIT, Duke, Tufts and the National Institutes of Health, among
 other places.
    The Dingell team so far has focused on David Baltimore, a
 Nobel laureate and one of the world's premier molecular
 biologists.  Dr. Baltimore's research has expanded our
 knowledge of the viruses that cause cancer, AIDS and other
 diseases of the human immune system.  Yet for more than a
 year, Mr. Dingell and his staff of prosecutors have been
 hounding him about a single scientific paper he published
 with several colleagues in 1986 in the journal, Cell.
    Outside scientists already have investigated the paper
 three times, finding technical errors and omissions but no
 fraud or misconduct.  That didn't stop Mr. Dingell from
 dragging Dr. Baltimore, his co-authors and other scientists
 before public hearings recently to raise "concerns" about
 their "integrity."  Mr. Dingell was splashing around with
 "transgenic mice," "bet-1 antibodies" and other knowledge
 clearly beyond his ken.
    He implied that the authors had fabricated a photographic
 "composite."  But the authors explained that composites are
 routine in microbiology.  He brought in the Secret Service to
 show that one of the co-authors, Thereza Imanishi-Kari of
 Tufts, had altered her lab notes.  But she and others
 explained that she keeps messy records.  As for motive, Dr. 
 Imanishi-Kari added that she hardly could want to mislead
 other scientists since her research might lead to a cure for
 lupus, an immune disease that killed her sister and is even
 now killing her.  Chairman John was unmoved.
    At least a few scientists are appalled by the spectacle.
 David Nathan, physician in chief at Children's Hospital in
 Boston and a Harvard Medical School professor, denounced the
 campaign in a letter to Mr. Dingell last month.
    "Though you may see David Baltimore as a big fish who can
 attract television cameras to your cause, we see him as one
 of the most remarkable contributors to patient care we have
 ever known," Dr. Nathan writes.  "An attack on him is an
 attack on our patients.  We deeply resent it and we have only
 begun to fight it...  .  I will move heaven and earth, if I
 can, to prevent this kind of irresponsible behavior."
    Dr. Nathan explains that 50% of his patients have a malady
 with a genetic basis.  So it is precisely Dr. Baltimore's area
 of research that offers the best hope for discovering
 treatments or cures.  Congress may want to improve science,
 Dr. Nathan adds, but it is "not equipped to do it; ...  in
 the end the scientific review process weeds out the
 incompetent."  As it happens, the conclusion of Dr. 
 Baltimore's 1986 paper has so far held up under peer review.
    Unfortunately, others in the science establishment are
 starting to buckle under Big John's intimidation.  James
 Wyngaarden, outgoing director of NIH, already has bowed to
 Mr. Dingell by establishing a new Office of Scientific
 Integrity that sounds suspiciously like an ethics police for
 science.  Dr. Wyngaarden says he set up the office "before
 Congress did something more drastic" -- such as impose an
 "inspector general" who knew little about science.
    Mr. Dingell already is playing godfather to two NIH
 researchers, Walter Stewart and Ned Feder, who claim to be
 "whistle-blowers."  But while the Dingell committee has
 championed and publicized their efforts, others at NIH
 privately call what is going on the "lionization of the
 turkeys."
    No doubt fraud exists in science, as it does everywhere,
 but important science is self-correcting.  Plagiarists and con
 men eventually are discovered, which is more than one can say
 about Congress.
    There are other issues for the science community to
 consider.  Despite science's long association with federal
 funding, there are signs that sources outside government will
 have to be developed.  NIH, for example, has been rethinking
 its compensation program for top researchers.  But to the
 extent NIH diversifies, a John Dingell loses control over its
 operation.  Similarly, some health-care thinkers, and even a
 few large corporations, are talking about a national health
 system to escape rising medical costs.  Guess who'll have
 "oversight" of all that.
    David Baltimore's travail is only the beginning if
 scientists remain silent and let John Dingell become the
 Auditor General of American science.

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