Misconduct: Caltech's trial by fire

CALTECH, UNLIKE A NUMBER OF OTHER PREmier universities, had not been hit with a single case ofresearch fraud-until last year. But when trouble came, it came in spades. Last summer university officials acknowledged that two research fellows in the lab of one of its stars, biologist Leroy Hood, were under investigation for two apparently unrelated cases of fraud. Now those investigations are complete, and both postdocs have been found to have fabricated data-a conclusion that has rocked the prestigious campus. Three papers have been retracted; the most recent just last July. Hood was a coauthor on the papers but was never accused of any wrongdoing. In stark contrast to the way the principal investigators and their institutions handled the so-called Baltimore case, Hood and Caltech seemed to have dealt with these two cases in an exemplary manner, say Hood's supporters. University officials pulled out their new fraud guidelines, crafted just the year before, immediately launched two extensive investigations, and notified all concerned. Hood swiftly retracted three questionable papers even before the investigations were complete. "That is the right way to do it, instead of waiting and waiting," says James Allison, an immunologist at the University of California, Berkeley-a reference to the Baltimore case, in which a suspect paper was retracted only after several years of wrenching debate, congressional hearings, and Secret Service investigations. But among all the praise, there is one vocal dissenter: Eli Sercarz, an immunologist and Hood collaborator at the University of California, Los Angeles. Sercarz followed the