Instances of Scientific Misconduct


David Baltimore

Dr. David Baltimore the president of Rockefeller University, a private university in New York, resigned from his job after being accused of fraud. His work on cells was retracted do this fraud, work that originally allowed David Baltimore to win a Nobel Prize in 1975. His work was originally important for finding advancements in ways for humans to ward off infections. However, David Baltimore had this work retracted due to the duplications of images, concerns/issues about data, and errors in methods. Much of Baltimore’s work was not outright fraud, but contained many errors that Baltimore refused to recognize. Eventually, Baltimore left to continue his work for the California Institute of Technology without punishment.


An Interview with David Baltimore (Discover Magazine, September 1, 2006)

Baltimore Accepts Post Despite Faculty Outrcry (The New York Times, October 18, 1989)

Biologist spared jail for grant fraud (Nature, June 28, 2011)

Conduct Unbecoming (The New York Times, October 29, 1989)

Nobel Winner is Caught up in a Dispute Over Study (The New York Times, April 12, 1988)

Once-Disgraced Scientist Gets Public Embrace (The LA Times, June 9, 2004)

Panel Clears MIT Scientist of Fraud (MIT, June 26, 1996)

Science and the Stain of Scandal (The New York Times, December 4, 1991)

Science on Trial: The Baltimore Case NYTimes Archives (The New York Times, 1998)

The Assault on David Baltimore (The New Yorker, May 27, 1996)

The “Baltimore Case” (Time, January 12, 2012)

The Discover Interview: David Baltimore (Discover, August 31, 2006)

The Science Police (The New York Times, September 20, 1998)

U.S. Attorney: Leave ‘Baltimore Case’ to the Scientists (The Chronicle of Higher Education, June 22, 1992)