That was interesting

[petmoosie]

I don't ever remember seeing Alan Alda as a bad guy before. He did a great job with it, of course. He was arrogant to a T. He played Dr. Robert Gallo. And Gallo credits Dr. David Baltimore for getting him interested in retroviruses.


Dr. Gallo did NOT receive the Nobel Prize in 2008, when his rivals, Dr. Montagnier and Dr. Francoise Barre-Sinoussi did get it for the discovery of the virus that causes AIDS.

Dr. Gallo and Dr. Baltimore were separately involved in the biggest investigations for scientific misconduct ever conducted by NIH's Office of Research Integrity. ETA: Both investigations were eventually dropped and the leaders of the investigations were believed to be engaging in a vendetta at one point. I can't find the names of the leaders, but they were all over Science in the early 90s. Science is the magazine published by the American Association for Advancement in Science and is the premier wide-ranging science journal in the United States.

Any way, the movie was fun. Unfortunately, we didn't recognize any of the famous faces at the end.

Comments

[holzman.livejournal.com]

Given that Dr. Gallo was cleared of all wrongdoing in that investigation, it's not clear to me that Mr. Alda played a bad guy in this instance. However, he did play the villain in Murder at 1600.

[petmoosie.livejournal.com]

The book and movie clearly play his intent to receive the credit and willingness to throw his power around to foil the French. The book definitely accuses him of delaying the antibody test. It also documents his refusal to provide reagents to his former postdoc, Dr. V. S. Kalyanaraman. That is an attempt to kill his career. It's not a crime, per se, but it is a breath-taking violation of common scientific courtesy.

Those two cases are why I sat through scientific ethics training every year from 1990 to at least 1995. That is why the heads of the Institutes in NIH established a whistle-blower line for the post-docs and graduate students. That is why the heads came down fast and hard when my adviser tried to prevent one of his postdocs from going to Yale as an assistant professor.

Killing or severely wounding a post-doc's career isn't illegal and it happens, but it is wrong-doing!

[petmoosie.livejournal.com]

On a different note, did you like Murder at 1600? I haven't seen it, but I'd like to see more of Alan Alda's stuff. He was absolutely convincing in And the Band Played On.

[holzman.livejournal.com]

I loved Murder at 1600, especially Alda's delivery when it becomes clear that he's the bad guy. I bet he'd wanted to do that for decades.