Sir

Jon Turney's generally favourable review of my book The Baltimore Case offers the judgement that the affair was “not of enormous significance, except for the victims” (Nature 395, 30–31; 1998). That is to miss the point of historical importance of the case, and a major point of the book. The case had great significance for the civil rights of scientists charged with fraud.

Thereza Imanishi-Kari was investigated relentlessly by a congressional subcommittee and by an entity in the US Department of Health and Human Services now named the Office of Research Integrity (ORI). In both venues, she was denied elementary protections of due process, especially the right to see and evaluate evidence and the right to confront and cross-examine witnesses against her. So she could not defend herself effectively. The miscarriage of justice was put right because Imanishi-Kari's tenacious refusal to concede ultimately gained her access to an appeals board that afforded her full due-process rights.

I think it perfectly legitimate — indeed, obligatory — for government authorities to call to account publicly supported scientists who cheat. My quarrel with the investigation of Imanishi-Kari is not primarily, as Turney says, that the authorities went after “the wrong people”. It is that the ORI went after Imanishi-Kari in the manner of a Star Chamber. The denial of due-process rights to anyone, innocent or guilty, is indefensible. The ORI investigators defended their procedures on the grounds that they were not conducting a legal inquiry but engaging in a dialogue between scientists. But, if a criminal penalty was not necessarily at stake, careers and reputations were.

The case has already had a major impact on how such charges in biomedical research are handled in the United States — by, for example, establishing the right of all accused scientists to use the appeals process. The case is deeply instructive for scientists and policymakers in the United States, where the procedures for handling fraud cases are still evolving, and in other countries, where questions of how charges of scientific fraud should be adjudicated are commanding increasing attention. The ORI's original procedures threatened the civil rights of every scientist who might be charged with fraud.