Everything about David Baltimore totally explained
David Baltimore (b.
March 7,
1938) is an
American biologist who is a well-known and controversial figure in the sciences. He was awarded a
Nobel Prize in 1975, and served as president of the
California Institute of Technology (Caltech) from 1997 to 2006. He currently remains the
Robert A. Millikan Professor of Biology at Caltech. He also served as president of
Rockefeller University from 1990 to 1991, and was president of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2007. As is traditional in the AAAS, he now serves as the Chairman of the Board of Directors.
For ten years beginning mid-1986, Baltimore played a prominent role in escalating a scientific challenge of one of his research papers into an infamous case of alleged research misconduct and cover-up — indeed, a
cause célèbre. Although never himself accused of falsifying scientific data, he vigorously defended the paper, himself, and the paper's other authors. Only one co-author,
Thereza Imanishi-Kari, was ever accused by the U.S. government of any wrongdoing - falsifying data.
Career
Baltimore was born in
New York City and graduated from
Great Neck High School in 1956. He earned a
BA at
Swarthmore College in 1960, and received his
Ph.D. at
Rockefeller University in 1964. After postdoctoral fellowships at
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) &
Albert Einstein College of Medicine and a non-faculty research position at the
Salk Institute, he joined the MIT faculty in 1968.
In 1975 at the age of 37, he shared the Nobel Prize for
Physiology or Medicine with
Howard Temin and
Renato Dulbecco. The citation reads, "for their discoveries concerning the interaction between tumour viruses and the genetic material of the cell." At the time, Baltimore's greatest contribution to virology was his discovery of
reverse transcriptase (RTase). Independently about the same time, Mizutani & Temin had also discovered RTase. RTase is essential for the reproduction of
retroviruses such as
HIV.
Also in 1975, Baltimore was an organizer of the
Asilomar conference on recombinant DNA. In 1982, Baltimore was appointed the founding director of MIT's
Whitehead Institute, where he remained through June 1990.
Baltimore then relocated to New York City and assumed the office of the president of Rockefeller University 1 July. After resigning the office 3 December 1991, Baltimore remained on the Rockefeller U. faculty and continued research until Spring 1994. He then rejoined the MIT faculty.
Baltimore has had profound influence on national policy concerning recombinant DNA research and the
AIDS epidemic. He has trained many doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows, several of whom have enjoyed quite notable and distinguished research careers. Dr. Baltimore is a member of the
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' Board of Sponsors, National Academy of Sciences USA (NAS), NAS Institute of Medicine (IOM), Amgen, Inc. Board of Directors, BB Biotech AG Board of Directors,
National Institutes of Health (NIH) AIDS Vaccine Research Committee (AVRC), and numerous other organizations and their boards. He is married to Dr. Alice S. Huang.
Imanishi-Kari case
To most people outside of the sciences, Baltimore is best known for his role in an affair of alleged
scientific misconduct. In 1986, when a Professor of Biology at MIT and Director at Whitehead, Baltimore co-authored a scientific paper on
immunology with
Thereza Imanishi-Kari, an Assistant Professor of Biology at MIT, and four others. A postdoctoral fellow in Imanishi-Kari's laboratory, Dr. Margot O'Toole, who wasn't an author, couldn't reproduce some of the experiments in the paper and discovered laboratory data that contradicted the published data. O'Toole then challenged the authors to explain the discrepancies and ultimately accused Imanishi-Kari of fabricating data in a cover-up. Baltimore initially refused to retract the paper, although he did so four years later with three co-authors (Imanishi-Kari and Moema H. Reis didn't sign the retraction). In the meantime, O'Toole soon dropped her challenge but two scientists at NIH (
Health & Human Services (HHS)), Walter W. Stewart and Ned Feder, picked it up. Because they and the authors also couldn't resolve the challenge, NIH, which had funded the contested paper's research, began investigating. It was then also taken up in the
United States Congress by Representative
John Dingell (D-MI) who aggressively pursued it, eventually calling in
U.S. Secret Service (USSS;
U.S. Treasury) document examiners. The
House of Representatives' Subcommittee on Oversight & Investigations of the Committee on Energy & Commerce, chaired by Mr. Dingell, held four hearings analyzing the case. In a draft report dated 14 March 1991 and based mainly on USSS forensics findings, NIH's fraud unit, then called the Office of Scientific Integrity (OSI), accused Dr. Imanishi-Kari of falsifying and fabricating data both in the paper and, in a cover-up later, in notebooks. It also harshly criticized Baltimore for failing to embrace O'Toole's challenge. After the report was soon leaked to the press, Baltimore stated he'd retract the paper.
The ensuing controversy/uproar was remarkable. It included Baltimore's both apologizing publicly and, later, endorsing strongly the paper publicly (for example, retracting his retraction). The Rockefeller University faculty subsequently pressured President Baltimore to resign December 1991, after only 1.5 years in the office. July 1992 the US Attorney for the District of MD, who had been investigating the case, announced he'd bring neither criminal nor civil charges against Imanishi-Kari. Baltimore then declared he'd publish a retraction of his retraction. (No withdrawal of the retraction has appeared in
Cell.) An extensive file/analysis of the case assembled/written by Yale University mathematician
Serge Lang entitled, "Questions of Scientific Responsibility: The Baltimore Case" was published in 1993. Spring 1994 Baltimore departed the Rockefeller U. faculty and rejoined the MIT Biology faculty. 26 October 1994 OSI's successor, the
Office of Research Integrity (ORI; HHS) reviewed the case and found Imanishi-Kari guilty on 19 counts of research misconduct; it recommended she be barred from receiving HHS research grants for 10 years. In June 1996, a HHS appeals panel reviewed the case again and dismissed all charges. Neither OSI nor ORI ever accused Baltimore of research misconduct.
Baltimore has been both admired for defending a junior faculty member at great personal and professional cost and criticized for failing to be a responsible scientist. Because Baltimore asserted himself spokesman of the paper's authors, stonewalled inquiring scientists and investigators, and led an aggressive public relations campaign that included law and lobbyist firms, the affair was named for him.
Daniel Kevles' book,
The Baltimore Case recounts the affair but is sympathetic to Baltimore and Imanishi-Kari. For a different perspective, see Lang's study (also reprinted updated in his book,
Challenges) or
Horace Freeland Judson's book,
The Great Betrayal.
Caltech Presidency
13 May 1997 Baltimore was appointed to the Office of the President,
California Institute of Technology (CIT/Caltech). He began serving in the office 15 October 1997 and was inaugurated 9 March 1998.
President
Bill Clinton awarded Baltimore the
National Medal of Science in 1999 for his numerous contributions to the scientific world. 8 June 2004 Rockefeller U. conferred upon Baltimore its highest honor, Doctor of Science (
honoris causa).
3 October 2005 Baltimore resigned the office of the president for not very specific reasons (reported by
Los Angeles Times only). "‘This isn't a decision that I've made easily,’ Baltimore announced to the Caltech trustees, faculty, staff, and students, ‘but I'm convinced that the interests of the Institute will be best served by a presidential transition at this particular time in its history...’" Three days later, Caltech began investigating the work Dr.
Luk van Parijs had conducted while training in Baltimore's laboratory. Baltimore had requested the investigation when
New Scientist questioned data in papers that van Parijs had authored with Baltimore at Caltech. Concluding March 2007, the investigation found van Parijs alone committed research misconduct and that four papers co-authored by Baltimore, van Parijs, and others require correction.
1 September 2006 engineer and Georgia Tech Provost Dr.
Jean-Lou Chameau succeeded Baltimore. Dr. Baltimore remains the Millikan Professor of Biology at Caltech and is an active member of the Institute's community.
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