A case of scientific fraud? : a statistical approach

Abstract

In 1986 Thereza Imanishi-Kari, then an assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was at the peak of her career. She had just coauthored a paper in the prestigious journal Cell with David Baltimore, a Nobel laureate. Their research was exciting and their findings promising.Margot O'Toole, Imanishi-Kari's postdoctoral fellow at the time, was unable to reproduce some of the experimental results published in the paper and could not resolve this with her postdoctoral supervisor. Subsequently, O'Toole became convinced that there were serious errors in the paper and, shortly afterwards, the National Institutes of Health began officially investigating the questions she raised about it.It may have been simply a character clash between Imanishi-Kari and O'Toole but partly due to the involvement of a figure such as Baltimore, this clash possibly ruined their careers, took 10 years to settle down, cost millions of dollars of public money, polarized the scientific community, and went down in history as one of the most widely followed cases of scientific fraud.Based on statistical, forensic and other evidence, Imanishi-Kari was found guilty of scientific misconduct and banned from receiving public funding for 10 years. This was not the end of the matter, however, because Imanishi-Kari appealed the decision and was later exonerated.In this thesis, we tell the statistical story by putting forward the statistical arguments that were used against Imanishi-Kari and the counterarguments to them