The S.K.I. Affair

So far as he could make it intelligible to a layman, Francis told me about the fraud. A paper of Howard's, published in collaboration with his professor... had been attacked by American workers in the same field-and the attack had said that the experimental results could not be repeated.

This incident of scientific fakery, described in C.P. Snow's 1960 novel The Affair, was fiction. But the drama now unfolding at Manhattan's Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research is real. In 1970 Dr. William Summerlin, 35, reported that he had discovered a way that might make it possible to circumvent the immune-system reaction that causes the body to reject transplanted tissues or organs. Last week he stood accused by his colleagues of faking at least some of his later experiments, and was suspended from S.K.I, while a panel of scientists investigated the charges against him.

Black on White. Summerlin made his discovery in 1969, while working at Stanford University and treating burn victims by grafting skin from other parts of their bodies onto the injured areas. He had learned from earlier experience that skin taken from a burn victim and kept in culture for up to three months could be successfully grafted back onto its donor-despite its decomposed appearance. But a chance experiment showed that it could also be grafted onto an unrelated recipient. While grafting skin back onto a black man, Summerlin noticed that he also had a piece of cultured white skin in his incubator. With the permission of his patient, he applied it to him, expecting that it would be rejected by the immune reaction. To his surprise, the white skin "took."

Reasoning that keeping the skin in culture had somehow washed off its antigens (surface proteins that enable the body to distinguish its own cells from foreign material), Summerlin moved to the University of Minnesota to continue his work under Immunologist Robert Good (TIME cover, March 19, 1973). In 1972 he reported that he had succeeded in grafting white skin onto black mice and black skin onto white animals. Last year he told the American Society for Clinical Investigation that he had crossed species barriers and grafted skin from humans, guinea pigs and pigs onto mice.

Summerlin's work stirred considerable interest among immunologists and surgeons, who saw in the technique a possible way of avoiding the rejection problems that have plagued attempts at transplanting organs. Good, who co-authored papers and presentations with Summerlin, was equally excited. When he left Minnesota to become director of S.K.I, last year, he brought Summerlin with him.

Although Summerlin's work was pushed by Good and approved by an independent scientific advisory committee, it soon came under criticism. Several scientists-including Britain's Sir Peter Medawar, winner of a 1960 Nobel Prize for his work on tissue grafting -tried but were unable to duplicate Summerlin's results. Apparently Sum-merlin himself could not repeat his earlier experiments; in a paper now awaiting publication in the scientific journal Transplantation, Good, Summerlin and Dr. John Ninnemann report that although they tried five different transplantation techniques on 500 mice, they were unable to get the new tissue to take.

Pressure to Produce. Because of this report, researchers at S.K.I, became suspicious last month when Summerlin showed Good some mice he claimed had been recently and successfully grafted. They charged that Summerlin had dyed the animals' skins to make it appear that new tissue had been accepted. Reacting quickly, Good temporarily suspended his protege and asked a committee of S.K.I, scientists to report promptly on the accusation.

S.K.I, researchers are embarrassed by the case, which suggests, at the very least, that the early enthusiasm about Summerlin's work may have been premature. But many of them are nonetheless sympathetic to Summerlin. They feel that even if the charges against him should prove to be true, he may be a victim of the overly competitive spirit now pervading science. Caught between the enthusiasm of his superiors and a federal-grant system that tends to award funds for results rather than research, Summerlin has been under enormous pressure to reproduce the results of his first experiments. There is no excuse for any scientist to fake his findings in order to gain more time to prove his theory. But any researcher who has ever submitted a grant application or sweated out a decision as to whether or not his work will be allowed to continue can understand why a colleague might be tempted.

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