June 24, 1996

Abroad at Home; Tale Of A Bully

By ANTHONY LEWIS

shameful mark of the long years when Democrats controlled the House of Representatives was the abusive record of John D. Dingell of Michigan, chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee. In the arrogance of his power, he terrorized individuals and institutions that he wanted to humble.

One of Mr. Dingell's most savage and prolonged attacks was on David Baltimore, the Nobel Prize-winning biologist, and an associate of his at M.I.T., Thereza Imanishi-Kari. The ground of the assault was a paper published in the journal Cell in 1986: a paper based on experiments by Dr. Imanishi-Kari and co-authored by Professor Baltimore.

The paper took a new view of how an aspect of the immune system may work. A junior scientist at M.I.T., Margot O'Toole, charged that it did not accurately reflect Dr. Imanishi-Kari's experiments with mice. From that first internal suggestion of error, the issue exploded into a nationally trumpeted charge of fraud.

Representative Dingell did the trumpeting. He was fed by two scientists at the National Institutes of Health, Walter Stewart and Ned Feder, self-appointed scourges of scientific fraud. Thereza Imanishi-Kari and David Baltimore were hounded for the better part of a decade, their careers and their lives torn apart.

In 1989 a Dingell subcommittee held hearings. As in other Dingell hearings over the years, there was something close to a presumption of guilt. Dr. Imanishi-Kari's lawyer in those years, Bruce Singal of Boston, said: "The so-called hearings were a sham, driven by a predetermined result and with no due process whatever."

The National Institutes of Health had investigated the Cell paper because N.I.H. grants were used. The inquiry found "no evidence of fraud." But under pressure from Representative Dingell, the agency decided to have its new Office of Scientific Integrity look again.

By ordinary legal standards it was a travesty of a proceeding. The O.S.I. would not show Dr. Imanishi-Kari the evidence against her, let her cross-examine witnesses or even tell her what they said. At the end, in 1991, it leaked to the press a confidential draft report finding her guilty of fraud.

Dr. Imanishi-Kari appealed to a review board set up by the Department of Health and Human Services to hear appeals from scientists found to have engaged in fraud. The board held six weeks of hearings last summer, and there at last she got due process: the right to know the evidence and cross-examine her accusers.

Last week the review board made its report. It found Dr. Imanishi-Kari not guilty of misconduct. And it added blistering criticisms of the earlier findings against her. Much of the material offered in support of those findings, it said, "was irrelevant . . . was internally inconsistent, lacked reliability or foundation, was not credible or not corroborated."

The board did not, and of course could not, point to the principal villain of this ugly tale of persecution, Representative Dingell. He went after Professor Baltimore, and through him M.I.T., with a viciousness that suggested a desire to humiliate the academic establishment. (I should say that I know and greatly respect Professor Baltimore.)

The precedent Mr. Dingell set was truly dangerous: an ambitious Congressman using his power to decide what is true or false in science. The question is why this travesty went so far. In Congress, no one likes to tangle with someone as nasty as John Dingell. The press did a poor job.

The scientific community has much to answer for as well. Too many scientists were deceived by the Savonarolas of the N.I.H., Drs. Stewart and Feder, or perhaps were numbed by the lure of Federal grants. Rockefeller University had made David Baltimore its president, but people there -- to their shame -- made him feel so uncomfortable that he resigned.

The sorry tale was brilliantly told in The New Yorker last month by Daniel J. Kevles -- up to the denouement. Professor Baltimore is back at M.I.T., Dr. Imanishi-Kari at Tufts University. They have won -- but at an appalling price. Bruce Singal, the lawyer, said: "The triumph is also a tragedy. It reflects very poorly on government, and on science. A lot of scientists jumped on the bandwagon, on the basis of methods they would never countenance in the laboratory."

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