Steven S. Rosenfeld

Steven S. Rosenfeld (born 1953) is an American biochemist and former researcher, who was found to have published irreproducible research, as well as having forged recommendations for himself.[1] This was one of the first events which brought the issue of scientific misconduct to the attention of the scientific community and the American public.[2][3][4]

Scientific misconduct

Rosenfeld was a Harvard undergraduate (Class of 1975) doing research on transfer factor in the laboratory of Dr. David Dressler. His research showed that a subcellular fraction prepared from cells of the immune system of an animal having cell-mediated immunity to the hapten dinitrochlorobenzene could transfer that specific immunity to a second, previously non-immune animal. Further it showed that the active component of this transfer factor appeared to be RNA.[5][6]

It was soon discovered that Rosenfeld had forged various letters of recommendation for himself and signed Dressler's name to them. This led to re-examination of Rosenfeld's experiments, which could not be successfully repeated by other scientists. Two articles describing Rosenfeld's research on transfer factor had been published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Subsequently, Dressler published an Authors' Statement "about the existence and nature of 'transfer factor'" in this same journal, making a "statement of uncertainty and potential retraction with our sincere apologies".[7] Similarly, an article published in Annals of Internal Medicine[8] was withdrawn.[9]

This incident, along with the contemporary falsification of data by William Summerlin at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, was one of the first events which brought the issue of scientific misconduct to the attention of the scientific community and the American public.[2][3][4][10]

References
  1. "Immunological Immunity: The Rosenfeld Case | News | The Harvard Crimson". www.thecrimson.com. 28 February 1975. Retrieved 21 December 2018.
  2. Chedd G (1974-12-26). "Transfer factor - Another scandal?". New Scientist. Vol. 64, no. 929. pp. 920–1.
  3. Reinhold, Robert (16 December 1974). "Student's Forgery Perils Key Harvard Research". The New York Times.
  4. "Science: The Model Student". Time. 30 December 1974.
  5. Rosenfeld, S; Dressler, D (June 1974). "Transfer factor: a subcellular component that transmits information for specific immune responses". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 71 (6): 2473–7. Bibcode:1974PNAS...71.2473R. doi:10.1073/pnas.71.6.2473. PMC 388481. PMID 4135308.
  6. Dressler, D; Rosenfeld, S (November 1974). "On the chemical nature of transfer factor". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 71 (11): 4429–34. Bibcode:1974PNAS...71.4429D. doi:10.1073/pnas.71.11.4429. PMC 433899. PMID 4530993.
  7. Dressler, D; Potter, H (January 1975). "Authors' statement: the existence and nature of "transfer factor/be/". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 72 (1): 409. Bibcode:1975PNAS...72..409D. doi:10.1073/pnas.72.1.409-b. PMC 432317. PMID 1088829.
  8. Potter, H; Rosenfeld, S; Dressler, D (December 1974). "Transfer factor". Annals of Internal Medicine. 81 (6): 838–47. doi:10.7326/0003-4819-81-6-838. PMID 4530646.
  9. Dressler, D; Potter, H (February 1975). "Transfer factor: warning on uncertainty of results". Annals of Internal Medicine. 82 (2): 279. doi:10.7326/0003-4819-82-2-279_1. PMID 1115452.
  10. Reinhold, Robert (29 December 1974). "Research Pressures Are Great, As Are the Rewards". The New York Times.
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