A post-doctoral fellow at MIT (Margot O’Toole) accused an assistant professor (Thereza Imanishi-Kari) of having falsified or fabricated data used in an important research paper published in 1986. A professor (Nobel Laureate David Baltimore) was lead author of the paper. He supported Imanishi-Kari and became embroiled in the matter. Enormous publicity resulted, leading to an NIH investigation, Congressional hearings, and inflammatory headlines. Public trust in science and in academia undoubtedly suffered.

Imanishi-Kari and, to some extent, Baltimore, were at first convicted of scientific misconduct, i.e., fraud, in the news media and in Congress, but were finally officially exonerated after a thorough investigation and hearing. "The case dragged on for a decade, leaving wrecked careers in its wake, pitting congressmen against scientists, and producing both martyrs and tormentors."*

While the investigators were exonerated of deliberate fraud, serious errors were made. Imanishi-Kari was guilty of poor data-acquisition, data-processing, and record-keeping practices, which led to errors in the published paper and provided fuel for accusations of fraud. For example, she filed raw data on loose pieces of paper, sometimes waiting months before entering them in her notebook. Baltimore did not check the data first-hand at the time the paper was submitted. The book cited below* contains a scientific horror story—an encyclopedia of how things should not be done from the laboratory to Washington. Good data acquisition and management could have avoided the problems.

*Kevles, D.K., "The Baltimore Case," W.W. Norton & Co., New York, London, 1998, p. 10.