The Model Student

A group of Harvard biochemists gathered last April in the spartan office of Assistant Professor David Dressier to toast one another with champagne. They had ample cause for celebration: their ten months of experiments on a "transfer factor" in animal immunology had produced spectacular results, gaining publication in scientific journals and the attention of immunologists round the world. Furthermore, one of the group, Steven Rosenfeld, an undergraduate Wunderkind who had started the research as a summer project--had just been elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

Last week the once proud group was in disarray. Rosenfeld, 21, was in hiding after a disciplinary board had forced him to leave Harvard in disgrace. The reputation of Dressier, a respected scientist, had been somewhat tarnished. Most important, serious doubt had been cast on the validity of the transfer factor experiments.

Tampering Denied. The scandal, which came to light as a result of hard investigative reporting by the Harvard Crimson, began with Dressler's discovery that Rosenfeld had written his own recommendation for a Harvard-M.I.T. medical program--and forged Dressler's signature on the bottom. Further investigation revealed that Rosenfeld had also fabricated at least three other letters recommending him for Phi Beta Kappa and a fellowship. The deceptions might have gone unnoticed even longer had not Rosenfeld exaggerated his own importance. One of the letters of recommendation over Dressler's signature indicated that Rosenfeld single-handed had thought up the whole idea for the research project. That hyperbole aroused the suspicion of M.I.T. Immunologist Herman Eisen, who had reviewed the recommendation. Eisen mentioned it to Dressier--and the chain of forgeries was unfolded.

Through a lawyer last week, Rosenfeld issued a statement admitting that he had "committed several irrational, highly regrettable and unquestionably wrong acts," but he strongly denied that he had tampered with the immunology experiments. "I can understand how my behavior may have raised doubts about the validity of our results," he conceded, "but it would be tragic if work were to stop on experiments in which we have invested so much time, and which I firmly feel will eventually be successful."

Those experiments had confirmed the existence of a transfer factor, a substance that apparently enabled the scientists to transfer immunity against foreign substances from one animal to another. The research had far-reaching implications for immunology and cancer research. In fact, the early results were so significant that one paper reporting them was sponsored for publication in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by James D. Watson, the Harvard biochemist who shared the Nobel Prize for helping to decipher the structure of the genetic material DNA. Since April, however, attempts by Dressler's group to duplicate the results have been unsuccessful, raising doubts among scientists about the experiments. In the light of the revelations about Rosenfeld, the April cutoff date seems significant; it suggests to some researchers that news of last spring's fake research scandal at Manhattan's Sloan Kettering Institute (TIME, April 29) may have given pause to anyone tampering with the Harvard experiments.

For his part, Dressier, 33, has written a "statement of uncertainty and potential retraction" to the scientific journals that had published papers about the project. Dressier says that he will try to reproduce the experiments for another six months before giving up, but adds, "It's only human to have doubts." James Watson is more definite. Says he: "I think it's best to conclude that the transfer factor doesn't exist."

The irony of the affair is that Rosenfeld, the son of a Lancaster, Pa., rabbi and a straight-A student, did not have to falsify either experiments or documents to guarantee his future. Dressier says that he would have been admitted to any medical school in the country just on the basis of his grades.

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