, Science
Justified caution
Bernard Dixon
Last November in these columns I described with almost tiresome reserve some new research that seemed to suggest a way of preventing the body's rejection of transplanted organs and tissues. Emanating from the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research, New York, and a young scientist called William Summerlin, the work in question apparently provided a spectacular solution to one of the outstanding problems of modern surgery and medical science. Yet so unexpected and dramatic were Dr Summerlin's results that I felt it necessary to urge "extreme wariness" and "profound scep
ticism" in their assessment. At the time — and mindful of the distinguished institute from which the reports came — I frankly suspected that I had overdone the caution.
Not so, it seems. In the last few weeks Dr Summerlin and his investigations have been plunged into a fierce controversy, of a sort rare in scientific circles, centred on allegations of the falsification of research data. According to the New York Times, which has carried the fullest account of the affair yet published, the alarm was first raised by an animal attendant at the Sloan-Kettering Institute. He passed certain information to some of Summerlin's colleagues, who in turn informed the Institute's director, Dr Robert Good. Uncannily reminiscent of the alleged injection of black ink into a 'midwife toad' by the Austrian zoologist Paul Kammerer in the 1920s, the allegation here is that black patches were painted on white mice, to make it seem that the animals had received skin grafts from black mice.
Dr Summerlin, a thirty-fiveyear-old pathologist, has been temporarily suspended while an investigation is conducted into his work. Meanwhile, several other research groups, who had tried to follow up his discovery in view of its potentially immense practical (and indeed theoretical) value, have failed to reproduce the type of results he has described. The gist of Summerlin's work, it may be remembered, is that skin, cornea, and several other tissues, if they are cultured artificially outside the body, for a time after removal from the donor, can then be transplanted without being rejected in the usual way. This is possible, he claims, even when donor and recipient are not related and when no 'immunosuppressive' drugs are given to thwart the normal rejection reaction. Such a technique would have momentous consequences for organ grafting.
Among those who have tried but failed to repeat Summerlin's work is Sir Peter Medawar, who himself won a Nobel prize in 1960 for brilliant pioneer work on immunological rejection. Just as ominous is the failure of the most recent tests at the Sloan-Kettering Institute itself.
Whatever the eventual outcome of the affair (one possible explanation of which is that Summerlin himself was misled by his earlier findings), there are lessons to be learned about the dangers that can arise when science is pursued in a climate where competition for funds is fast and furious. In such conditions, the enticements to gain positive results can be too great, as can the temptations to solicit publicity for the most sketchy and preliminary of research findings.
It can, of course, be argued that the falsification of research data is bound to be found out. This is true, certainly in a field that is so important as to attract immediate, widespread interest among other scientists. For this reason, outright cheating is probably extremely rare in science. What is perhaps more common is the situation where a research worker, sincerely convinced about the meaning of his experiments, 'improves' the data to make them look more conclusive. The trouble, alas, is that there is no distinct boundary between these two practices.
Bernard Dixon, who writes weekly in The Spectator, is editor of New Scientist.
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