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Strong Verbs, Short Sentences · Revisionist History

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin.
0:19
Speaker 2: The following podcast contains explicit language. August first, nineteen ninety one, Washington,
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Speaker 2: d C. One of those sweltering DC summer days, Room
0:36
Speaker 2: twenty three to twenty two of the Rayburn House Office building,
0:40
Speaker 2: the big grand Congressional building right across from the Capitol.
0:43
Speaker 2: It's packed press, lawyers aids, a long row of congressman
0:49
Speaker 2: up on the dais, and in the chairman's seat is
0:51
Speaker 2: John Dingall, Democrat of Michigan, A big man, well pass
0:57
Speaker 2: six feet gruff, intimidating, giant bald head, thick black glasses,
1:03
Speaker 2: a bouncer in a business suit. In his heyday, Dingle
1:08
Speaker 2: was perhaps hups the most powerful man in Congress. And
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Speaker 2: on this August afternoon he's called in a who's who
1:15
Speaker 2: of the American scientific establishment for a reckoning. The hearing
1:21
Speaker 2: was not recorded. All we have is a transcript. Dingle begins.
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Speaker 2: It is the practice of this subcommittee, since it was
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Speaker 2: first constituted by Sam Rayburn in nineteen fifty eight, that
1:34
Speaker 2: all witnesses testify under oath. Do any of you have
1:38
Speaker 2: any objection to testifying under oath? This morning they raised
1:42
Speaker 2: their right hands a chorus of No's A masterpiece of
1:47
Speaker 2: choreographed congressional theater until in our five it all goes
1:52
Speaker 2: off the rails. My name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening
1:59
Speaker 2: to Revisionist History, my podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood.
2:09
Speaker 2: This episode is the second of two parts about the
2:12
Speaker 2: bizarre outbreak of insanity that swept the United States a
2:16
Speaker 2: quarter century ago, a time when otherwise thoughtful and intelligent
2:20
Speaker 2: people took temporary leave of their senses and convinced themselves,
2:24
Speaker 2: against all evidence to the contrary, that American science was
2:28
Speaker 2: riddled with fraud. And if you haven't listened to the
2:35
Speaker 2: first part, you should before continuing on. Part one is
2:39
Speaker 2: about how the panic started. This episode is about how
2:43
Speaker 2: it ended when the immovable object named John Dingle ran
2:47
Speaker 2: into an unstoppable force named Bernardine Healy. I remember it well.
2:53
Speaker 2: I was there.
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Speaker 3: My parents, and particularly my father, thought it was wonderful
3:01
Speaker 3: for a woman to be a doctor.
3:04
Speaker 2: The story of how the panic over science fraud ended
3:07
Speaker 2: revolves around three people, Congressman John Dingle, a brilliant scientist
3:12
Speaker 2: named Remey Sharma, and Bernardin Heey. Bernardin Heely was the
3:17
Speaker 2: first woman to run the National Institutes of Health, the
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Speaker 2: most important biomedical research institution in the world, with billions
3:25
Speaker 2: of dollars at its disposal. This is Healey in an
3:28
Speaker 2: interview a few years after she left the NIH when
3:31
Speaker 2: she was head of the American Red Cross.
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Speaker 3: When I was growing up, it was really exceptional, unusual
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Speaker 3: for a woman to pursue a career in medicine, and
3:41
Speaker 3: as far as my father was concerned, it was the
3:43
Speaker 3: perfect place for me to go. It was a place
3:45
Speaker 3: where I could use my intelligence and my hard work,
3:48
Speaker 3: but also make a difference.
3:52
Speaker 2: Heally grew up in a little apartment in Queen's upstairs
3:55
Speaker 2: from her family's perfume business. Her parents were of Irish descent.
4:00
Speaker 2: She graduated number one in her class at Hunter College
4:02
Speaker 2: High School, then Vassar, Harvard Medical School JOHNS. Hopkins.
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Speaker 3: When I went to Harvard Medical School, roughly ten percent
4:10
Speaker 3: less than ten percent of the class were women. And
4:14
Speaker 3: in those days, although they probably don't like to remember this,
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Speaker 3: medical schools head quotas, and there was the prevailing attitude
4:21
Speaker 3: that women were taking up a spot that wasn't necessarily
4:25
Speaker 3: going to be used as well as a spot filled
4:27
Speaker 3: by a man. Women had to have I think better
4:31
Speaker 3: academic credentials and often go through much tougher screening.
4:37
Speaker 2: When Heally was young, she wanted to be a nun,
4:40
Speaker 2: but her father said no, because that would mean she'd
4:42
Speaker 2: have to be bossed around by a priest. And it
4:44
Speaker 2: must have been obvious even then that Bernard and Healely
4:47
Speaker 2: was not cut out to be bossed around by anyone.
4:50
Speaker 2: She liked to quote Saint Augustine. She cut her own hair,
4:54
Speaker 2: she wore a scott of suits.
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Speaker 4: She was brilliant and I've worked for a lot of
5:02
Speaker 4: really wonderful and accomplished people.
5:05
Speaker 2: This is Joanna Schneider, who was Healey's right hand during
5:08
Speaker 2: her years at the NAH.
5:10
Speaker 4: She could take a problem and sift through it quickly
5:16
Speaker 4: and come up with a couple of solutions, very very
5:21
Speaker 4: very brightly, and it was a beautiful thing to watch.
5:26
Speaker 4: Her writing was beautiful, but the way she spoke was
5:29
Speaker 4: beautiful as well. It was just a natural talent. It
5:33
Speaker 4: was a god given talent, and so she was a
5:36
Speaker 4: bit of a force of nature when you met her,
5:40
Speaker 4: and I think most people felt the same way.
5:43
Speaker 2: Tell me more so describe for listeners who have never
5:49
Speaker 2: may never have refer seen the picture of her.
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Speaker 4: Let's see. Bernardine was tall, statuesque, blonde. She was beautiful,
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Speaker 4: but didn't know it, didn't understand the impact I think
6:05
Speaker 4: that she had on people physically.
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Speaker 2: I talked to someone else who worked with Heally back then,
6:10
Speaker 2: a senior NIH official who knew five separate NIH directors,
6:15
Speaker 2: countless Nobel laureates, and he said she was the most
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Speaker 2: brilliant person he'd ever met. They only worked together for
6:21
Speaker 2: three years, twenty five years ago. And what struck me
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Speaker 2: is that he used the present tense in describing her,
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Speaker 2: even though Healey has been dead for years. He said,
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Speaker 2: her influence on me is everlasting.
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Speaker 4: Her first instinct was always fairness and justice, and I
6:40
Speaker 4: just she was my father.
6:43
Speaker 5: My father was.
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Speaker 4: All about fairness and justice. She is a mix of
6:54
Speaker 4: Joan of Arc, Madame Curie, and Florence Nightingale. You know,
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Speaker 4: she's all Repta in a scotta. Absolutely absolutely.
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Speaker 2: I met Heally years ago. I once followed her around
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Speaker 2: for a few days and wrote a profile of her
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Speaker 2: for the Washington Post. And I have to say that
7:13
Speaker 2: none of this is hyperbole. She spoke in casual conversation
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Speaker 2: the way the rest of us could only speak if
7:20
Speaker 2: we had a week to prepare.
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Speaker 4: She had a wooden sign on her desk that said
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Speaker 4: strong verbs, short sentences, and that was Bernie Back.
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Speaker 2: When Healey was on the faculty of Johns Hopkins Medical School,
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Speaker 2: there was an all male eating club called the Pittotomy Club.
7:42
Speaker 2: They had an annual comedy show, and one year the
7:45
Speaker 2: mainskit consisted of a man dressed in a long blonde wig,
7:49
Speaker 2: fishnet stockings, and coconut half brazier performing pornographic acts on
7:53
Speaker 2: other physicians at the hospital. It was supposed to be Healy.
7:59
Speaker 2: Heally heard about it and complained one person on staff.
8:03
Speaker 2: Another woman came to her defense. One person people told
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Speaker 2: her she had no sense of humor, that she should
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Speaker 2: drop it, Bernardine, knock it off. Boys will be boys.
8:12
Speaker 2: But she wouldn't. She kept bringing it up at staff meetings.
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Speaker 2: They told her she's hurting her career, and in fact
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Speaker 2: it does. She doesn't last long at Hopkins. But this
8:21
Speaker 2: is Bernardine Patricia Healey disciple of fairness and justice. She
8:26
Speaker 2: forces a face to face with the officers of the club.
8:30
Speaker 2: Heally didn't volunteer that story to me. I found out
8:34
Speaker 2: about it when I was doing research for my profile.
8:36
Speaker 2: At first, she didn't want to talk about it. Finally
8:39
Speaker 2: she told me this quote. I made every one of
8:43
Speaker 2: them answer how they would have felt if the skit
8:46
Speaker 2: was about their sister, their mother, or their wife. I
8:50
Speaker 2: went around the table and questioned their integrity, their sensitivity,
8:55
Speaker 2: their character. We're talking about an incident from nineteen eighty two.
9:00
Speaker 2: Mind you, Heally was a single mom, newly divorced, a
9:03
Speaker 2: young academic, trying to make a name for herself in
9:06
Speaker 2: a world that at the time was probably ninety five
9:08
Speaker 2: percent male. But oh wow, Bernie in full Bernie mode,
9:13
Speaker 2: strong verbs and short sentences. I would not have wanted
9:18
Speaker 2: to be one of those men around the table when
9:20
Speaker 2: you said that she came to Washington and there were
9:23
Speaker 2: things she wanted to accomplish. Yeah, what was she what
9:27
Speaker 2: was on her mind when she first started the Nah,
9:29
Speaker 2: what is it she wanted to do?
9:30
Speaker 4: And she just said, women have been locked out of
9:33
Speaker 4: clinical trials. They've you know, they've they've constantly the scientific
9:37
Speaker 4: community has always just extrapolated all these trials on men
9:43
Speaker 4: to women, and it just it isn't necessarily good medicine.
9:49
Speaker 4: So we need to get women into trials. We need
9:52
Speaker 4: to open up an office for minorities. And she just said,
9:57
Speaker 4: this is what we're going to do at the NIAH,
9:59
Speaker 4: and we're going to open science up, We're going to
10:01
Speaker 4: change it. We're going to double our budget. Wow, okay.
10:08
Speaker 2: What was the reception within? And I aged her cold? Cold, cold?
10:15
Speaker 4: Why chili? They thought she was just being too aggressive,
10:21
Speaker 4: to pushy, and you could feel it in the meetings,
10:25
Speaker 4: you could feel it in the halls.
10:28
Speaker 2: How does she react to that chili reception?
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Speaker 4: I don't know why, but it never bothered her ever.
10:36
Speaker 4: Never she said, I wasn't brought here to make friends
10:42
Speaker 4: or to get a group of people to like me.
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Speaker 4: I came here to make changes. And you know, God
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Speaker 4: willing and the creek don't rise, We're going to do that.
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Speaker 4: And it never. She didn't need affirmation. And that was
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Speaker 4: I was always fascinated by that.
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Speaker 2: At the risk of stating the obvious, you really don't
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Speaker 2: want to pick a fight with Bernardine Healy.
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Speaker 5: Does Vaughn and nineteen thirty five December. At that time
11:12
Speaker 5: British sales ruled REMAE.
11:14
Speaker 2: Sharma, the second character in this story. Sharma came to
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Speaker 2: America in nineteen sixty. He got his PhD, became a
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Speaker 2: full professor and made a revolutionary discovery of an entirely
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Speaker 2: new cell signaling pathway, which is best described by the
11:31
Speaker 2: following analogy. If you want to drive from New York
11:35
Speaker 2: City to Miami, you take the I ninety five interstate.
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Speaker 2: That's the main transportation corridor of the American Eastern Seaboard.
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Speaker 2: Now imagine somebody says, wait, I've just discovered another interstate
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Speaker 2: just as wide and long that also runs straight down
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Speaker 2: the East coast. Remay Sharma found the body's second interstate.
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Speaker 2: In the late nineteen eighties, Sharma is in demand and
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Speaker 2: he gets a fantastic offer to set up his own
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Speaker 2: laboratory at the Cleveland Clinic, one of the world's great
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Speaker 2: research institutions. And who's running the Cleveland Clinic at that time,
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Speaker 2: a young dynamo named Bernardine Healey. Before she moves to
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Speaker 2: the nih, he comes, starts work, and one day in
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Speaker 2: the spring of nineteen ninety he comes back from lunch
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Speaker 2: and gets a message He's wanted in Healey's office. One
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Speaker 2: of Sharma's colleagues has accused him of fraud. There's an investigation,
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Speaker 2: Sharma is cleared, there's a second investigation, then a third,
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Speaker 2: the whole business ends up at the Office of Scientific Integrity,
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Speaker 2: the NIH's anti fraud unit, which is in the middle
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Speaker 2: of its full fledged hysteria mode, and the result unfolds
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Speaker 2: just as it did in the cases that I spoke
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Speaker 2: about in the last episode. There are leaks to the media,
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Speaker 2: sensational allegations, and in all of it the same puzzling
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Speaker 2: feature as the other cases, almost no mention of what
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Speaker 2: the accused is supposed to have done. So let me
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Speaker 2: tell you what Sharma was accused of. Sharma writes a
13:18
Speaker 2: grant application to the NAH many thousands of words, a
13:21
Speaker 2: small portion of which concerns two proteins, Alpha two A
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Speaker 2: and Alpha two GC. And on page twenty one of
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Speaker 2: the grant application, he has a line where he says,
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Speaker 2: he did such and such work with alpha two GC,
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Speaker 2: and it isn't true. He hasn't done that particular work
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Speaker 2: with alpha two GC. So the OSI says that's fraud,
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Speaker 2: but Sharma says, no, it isn't.
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Speaker 5: When I was diving and I do not much diving,
13:50
Speaker 5: so I would consult with my wife. She how how
13:55
Speaker 5: I can do and so forth these emissions. Let me
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Speaker 5: help you, So she helped.
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Speaker 2: Me This is the late nineteen eighties. Word processes are primitive,
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Speaker 2: and to type the name of a protein, as Sharma
14:07
Speaker 2: had to do, required the use of Greek letters and subscripts.
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Speaker 2: It was a pretty tedious, complicated process, a process he
14:14
Speaker 2: had to do at least one hundred and thirty times.
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Speaker 2: So Sharma's wife programmed shortcut keystrokes for each of those
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Speaker 2: two proteins. Shama showed me how it worked on an
14:24
Speaker 2: actual keyboard. Or they were side by side.
14:27
Speaker 5: Side and she put side by side. Yeah, she could
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Speaker 5: twelve the macross the two keys side by side. And
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Speaker 5: he says, when I needed alpha two A, press this,
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Speaker 5: and I needed al for two GC appress this, and
14:40
Speaker 5: that is how I kept on doing.
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Speaker 2: But on page twenty one of the Grand Application, Sharma's
14:46
Speaker 2: wife made a mistake a typo. She hit the alpha
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Speaker 2: two GC key when she meant to hit the alpha
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Speaker 2: two A key because they're right next to each other,
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Speaker 2: which is how typos happen. How could they conclude that
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Speaker 2: a single typographical error constituted misconduct?
15:03
Speaker 5: You tell me that that is what I have been
15:05
Speaker 5: asking them all over and the iost the same thing
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Speaker 5: two appeals more. Can you magine in a document of
15:15
Speaker 5: thirty nine are paging two grants for seventy eight pages,
15:18
Speaker 5: the only fine single typographical.
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Speaker 2: Raaler seventy eight pages one typo, and the OSI gets
15:26
Speaker 2: so worked up that at one point they fly in
15:29
Speaker 2: a team of its investigators to interrogate Sharma booked a
15:32
Speaker 2: room near the airport.
15:35
Speaker 5: At at the airport, they asked me terrible questions, and
15:40
Speaker 5: in talibrable. When they asked me some terrible questions, I
15:43
Speaker 5: think they started to really bully me.
15:46
Speaker 2: As they were bullying him, Sharma happened to look at
15:49
Speaker 2: the cover page of the document they had given him
15:51
Speaker 2: to sign. The date was wrong off by a year
15:55
Speaker 2: in the summary of charges against him over a typo.
15:59
Speaker 2: They had made a typo. Just remembering the absurdity of
16:03
Speaker 2: it all makes him jab the table and anger.
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Speaker 5: I said, you yourself are dnamost turney even didn't know
16:10
Speaker 5: I saw it. Are you yourself done a mistake here?
16:13
Speaker 5: Now you have put wrong year, one year wrong. You
16:16
Speaker 5: can do a mistake, and you are trying to take
16:19
Speaker 5: me to the goals with one typographical subscript. There didn't
16:26
Speaker 5: answer me and then they left.
16:31
Speaker 2: Sharma's contract at the Cleveland Clinic was not renewed. Doors
16:35
Speaker 2: that were once opened to him were closed.
16:39
Speaker 5: I was stained and I never recovered. My wife Satra
16:46
Speaker 5: mesh All. What you did recame from India and originally
16:50
Speaker 5: in nineteen sixty is all gone down with Those are
16:56
Speaker 5: the consequences, and here we are talking about him today.
17:03
Speaker 5: I still get emotional about it.
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Speaker 2: The man who discovered the body's second cellular pathway now
17:10
Speaker 2: works at a small university outside of Philadelphia. In the
17:17
Speaker 2: middle of all of this fear over Sharma's typo, Bernardine
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Speaker 2: Healy was tapped to lead the NIH, and when she
17:24
Speaker 2: leaves the Cleveland clinic and arrives in Washington, she realizes
17:29
Speaker 2: that what happened to Sharma is happening to a lot
17:31
Speaker 2: of other scientists as well, that the anti fraud unit
17:35
Speaker 2: at the NIH is in the grip of a hysteria.
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Speaker 1: I'm proud of the little things I've been able to
17:50
Speaker 1: do while I've been here, and I'm to eat proud
17:53
Speaker 1: or even still more of the people that I've been
17:57
Speaker 1: able to serve and help.
18:00
Speaker 2: John Dingle, the third character in this story. Dingle is
18:07
Speaker 2: Washington Royalty. His father, John Dingall Senior, was elected to
18:11
Speaker 2: Congress in nineteen thirty three. As a kid, Dingall was
18:16
Speaker 2: a Congressional page. When his dad died in nineteen fifty five,
18:21
Speaker 2: Dingle ran for the family seat and won. He served
18:24
Speaker 2: until twenty fifteen, almost sixty years, and when he retired,
18:28
Speaker 2: his wife, Debbie, ran for his seat and won, meaning
18:31
Speaker 2: that we are now in the ninth decade of Dingle's
18:34
Speaker 2: occupying that chair in the House. During the long years
18:37
Speaker 2: when the Democrats controlled Congress, Dingall was as powerful as
18:41
Speaker 2: anyone in Washington, and his self assumed role was congressional watchdog,
18:48
Speaker 2: scourge of fraud and abuse.
18:51
Speaker 6: When I was chairman of the Commresce Committee, I was
18:52
Speaker 6: also a chairman of the Oversight Investigations Committee, and I was,
18:57
Speaker 6: I think one of the better investigators they've ever had here.
19:01
Speaker 2: This is Dingall in an interview with the Edward M.
19:04
Speaker 2: Kennedy Institute a few years ago.
19:07
Speaker 6: Sure was a bad year when we didn't make defense
19:10
Speaker 6: contractors give back a million a billion to two billion.
19:14
Speaker 6: And it was a bad year when we didn't frankly,
19:18
Speaker 6: send a fair number of folks to jail or force
19:21
Speaker 6: major changes either in policy or personnel or both in
19:25
Speaker 6: the federal government. I kept a picture of Joe McCarthy
19:29
Speaker 6: on the wall to remind me what I did not
19:32
Speaker 6: want to be and what a bad investigator was.
19:37
Speaker 2: Dingle's oversight committee had its own squad of investigators, and
19:41
Speaker 2: they were famous, big aggressive guys, very much in the
19:45
Speaker 2: image of their boss. What they loved to do was
19:47
Speaker 2: pester the agencies on their watch, the NIH, the Food
19:51
Speaker 2: and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control. They would
19:56
Speaker 2: send what were called Dingle grams, letters demanding action, expressing outrage,
20:01
Speaker 2: requesting boxes and boxes of documents. I once asked the
20:05
Speaker 2: director of the FDA to count the number of letters
20:08
Speaker 2: dingle staff had sent him in a year and a half,
20:11
Speaker 2: one hundred and seventy five. One hundred and seventy five.
20:15
Speaker 2: Romeo and Juliet did not send each other one hundred
20:18
Speaker 2: and seventy five letters, and each of those one hundred
20:21
Speaker 2: and seventy five letters required immediate attention. They would accuse
20:25
Speaker 2: the FDA of not being tough enough on the pharmaceutical industry.
20:29
Speaker 2: Then when the FDA got tough, Dingle would write them
20:32
Speaker 2: letters accusing him of being too tough on the industry.
20:35
Speaker 4: He was sort of the scourge of the NIH and
20:38
Speaker 4: his staff used to write us letters all the time
20:42
Speaker 4: saying what about this.
20:43
Speaker 2: I want to see that John Dingell and his staff
20:46
Speaker 2: did not pursue a coherent ideological agenda. They were just bullies.
20:51
Speaker 2: Johanna Schneider remembers Dingle looming over Healey's time at NIH.
20:56
Speaker 4: What got under her skin was we spent so much time, energy, resources,
21:02
Speaker 4: and man hours answering those queries when she felt like,
21:07
Speaker 4: this is wrong. We should be trying to change the world.
21:11
Speaker 4: We should be looking at clinical trials, we should be
21:13
Speaker 4: looking at minority health. So I think what happened with
21:18
Speaker 4: John Dingall was she just felt like, this is politics,
21:20
Speaker 4: This isn't science, this is I'm not going to do
21:24
Speaker 4: this anymore.
21:25
Speaker 2: The Office of Scientific Integrity at the NIH, the group
21:29
Speaker 2: responsible for science fraud investigations, answered to Dingle. Sometimes people
21:34
Speaker 2: at the OSI would simply transfer to Dingle and set
21:38
Speaker 2: up shop in his oversight office. The leaks that arrived
21:41
Speaker 2: on my desk at the Washington Post came as often
21:44
Speaker 2: as not from Dingle's office. I said in the last
21:47
Speaker 2: episode that I think of the science fraud panic as
21:50
Speaker 2: a consequence of our fear of AIDS, but panic needs fuel.
21:55
Speaker 2: Dingle was the fuel.
21:57
Speaker 7: People were afraid, John Denk, and I think that made
22:02
Speaker 7: an enormous difference.
22:04
Speaker 2: That's Joe Onic. He was one of Rames Sharma's lawyers,
22:08
Speaker 2: a leader in the small group who spent the early
22:10
Speaker 2: nineties trying to fend off the science fraud hysteria. How
22:13
Speaker 2: did the OSI investigators have the freedom to run amok,
22:17
Speaker 2: to spend years investigating typos? And I never said how
22:21
Speaker 2: they got away with that for so long, John Dingall,
22:24
Speaker 2: you think it's just all John Dix.
22:26
Speaker 7: I think that they had protection, and they could they
22:31
Speaker 7: knew they had protection, or I don't know how much
22:34
Speaker 7: they work aware of it in them most kinds of that.
22:36
Speaker 7: They understood they had protection, and I think they felt
22:42
Speaker 7: that they could get away with it.
22:46
Speaker 2: So Bernardine Healy thinks that the science fraud investigations are
22:49
Speaker 2: out of control, and she moves in to restore some
22:52
Speaker 2: kind of sanity. Dingle hears about her plan. He isn't happy. Thus,
23:01
Speaker 2: the hearing of August first, nineteen ninety one, Dingle invites
23:07
Speaker 2: two people from the OSI to give his side of
23:10
Speaker 2: the story, and then he lines up everyone in Healey's
23:13
Speaker 2: chain of command, her boss, her deputy, her legal counsel,
23:17
Speaker 2: and of course her. Over the course of the day,
23:20
Speaker 2: Dingle will slowly build the case against her. She will
23:23
Speaker 2: testify last when the trap is good and ready. And
23:27
Speaker 2: what's the trap? Ramee Sharma? Heally was at the Cleveland
23:33
Speaker 2: clinic when the clinic allowed Sharma's outrageous fraud to be perpetrated.
23:38
Speaker 2: What does that say about her leadership and character in
23:41
Speaker 2: the face of one of the gravest crises to hit
23:42
Speaker 2: American signs. Since he wants to humiliate her, Dingle wants
23:50
Speaker 2: to pick a fight with Bernardine Healing. Two weeks before
23:58
Speaker 2: the hearing, on July nineteenth, nineteen ninety one, two of
24:01
Speaker 2: Dingle's staffers went up to the NIH campus in Bethesda,
24:05
Speaker 2: just outside of Washington, to meet Bernardine Healey. They were
24:10
Speaker 2: laying the trap for the big day. I will say
24:19
Speaker 2: that I tried very, very hard to get someone from
24:21
Speaker 2: the Dingle camp to give their side of what happened
24:24
Speaker 2: that day. Dingall is now retired. I contacted his former
24:28
Speaker 2: press person, who promised to help but then vanished. I
24:33
Speaker 2: tried repeatedly to reach Dingall through his wife's press person,
24:36
Speaker 2: who now handles his press inquiries. She promised to help
24:40
Speaker 2: until I told her what I was interested in talking about.
24:43
Speaker 2: Then she vanished. Dingle's former chief of staff declined to talk.
24:48
Speaker 2: He emailed me. That was about twenty five years ago,
24:52
Speaker 2: and my recollections at this point are limited at best,
24:56
Speaker 2: which is funny because I have yet to encounter memory
24:59
Speaker 2: problems from anyone who was on the receiving end of
25:02
Speaker 2: the Dingle staff in those years. So what I'm relying
25:05
Speaker 2: on is a meticulously sourced account from Daniel Kevlis, now
25:09
Speaker 2: a distinguished historian at Yale who in nineteen ninety eight
25:12
Speaker 2: published an exhaustive history of this era. Kevlis tracked down
25:17
Speaker 2: as many people as he could who participated in the
25:19
Speaker 2: meeting between Healey and Dingle's staff. I'm reading now. They
25:26
Speaker 2: asked her about the house she was living in on
25:28
Speaker 2: the NIH campus, Did she pay rent? Did she have
25:32
Speaker 2: expensive commodes? Commodes I'm quoting again from Kevlis. Healey adds
25:40
Speaker 2: that they demeaned the NAH leaders. We were lap dogs,
25:44
Speaker 2: not scientific watchdogs, they said. Then they quote gloated unquote
25:51
Speaker 2: about having taken down some of the biggest names in science,
25:54
Speaker 2: and when Healey pointed out that those scientists hadn't been
25:57
Speaker 2: granted anything like due process. They said they didn't care
26:01
Speaker 2: because they knew they were guilty. Heally says, they meaning
26:06
Speaker 2: the Dingle staffers, behaved like quote thugs, absolute thugs. She
26:12
Speaker 2: later told a reporter that they laced their talk with
26:15
Speaker 2: four letter words, yelling, screaming insults. Then comes this. One
26:23
Speaker 2: of Dingle's men turns to Healey's deputy, who is in
26:26
Speaker 2: the meeting, and insinuates that Healey quote had a personal
26:31
Speaker 2: relationship unquote with David Baltimore, the Nobel Prize winning scientist
26:36
Speaker 2: who had been wrapped up in one of the longest
26:38
Speaker 2: and most absurd of the OSI's fraud investigations. I think
26:42
Speaker 2: we can be certain that the phrase personal relationship is
26:47
Speaker 2: a sanitized version of what was actually said. One of
26:53
Speaker 2: Dingle's henchmen goes to the office of one of the
26:56
Speaker 2: most senior science officials in the land, a woman of
27:00
Speaker 2: principle and dignity and accomplishment, a woman who quotes Saint
27:04
Speaker 2: Augustine for goodness sake and in front of her in
27:08
Speaker 2: her presence, turns to her male deputy and says, I
27:13
Speaker 2: know why she's standing up for Baltimore. She's fucking him.
27:18
Speaker 2: Do you know what Healy says when she tells kevlis
27:22
Speaker 2: that story, Just how slimmy is that one short sentences
27:29
Speaker 2: strong verbs. Two weeks after all this, Bernardine Heally makes
27:39
Speaker 2: the track down to Capitol Hill for her scheduled humiliation.
27:44
Speaker 2: She waits her turn. She raises her right hand and
27:48
Speaker 2: calmly answers question after question about Ramae Sharma's typo and
27:53
Speaker 2: the Cleveland Clinic. I would direct you to the exchange
27:56
Speaker 2: beginning on page two hundred and twenty three of the transcript,
28:00
Speaker 2: where one of Dingle's fellow committee members, Norman Lent, Republican
28:04
Speaker 2: of Long Island, starts to question Healey about the signature
28:08
Speaker 2: page of Remei Sharma's grant application. As I said at
28:12
Speaker 2: the beginning, this hearing was not recorded, but it deserves
28:16
Speaker 2: theatrical reenactment.
28:19
Speaker 8: Congressman Lent, doctor Healy, there is something about these grand
28:24
Speaker 8: applications that intrigues me, particularly Grand Application NS two three
28:28
Speaker 8: seven four four oh one, which is the one dated
28:31
Speaker 8: February twenty fourth, nineteen eighty nine.
28:34
Speaker 2: He's talking about Remee Sharma's grant.
28:37
Speaker 8: You evidently signed and dated the grand application on February
28:41
Speaker 8: twenty second, nineteen eighty nine, while the principal investigator evidently
28:45
Speaker 8: did not sign and date the grand application until February
28:48
Speaker 8: twenty fourth, nineteen eighty nine.
28:51
Speaker 2: Lent's point is that when a scientist signs a grant application,
28:55
Speaker 2: he or she is testifying that it's true. So if
28:58
Speaker 2: Healey signed first, then she was signing onto something before
29:02
Speaker 2: it had been certified as true. I guess Lent goes
29:07
Speaker 2: on and on, and the room is starting to get restless,
29:12
Speaker 2: because the promise of a Dingle hearing is a powerful
29:14
Speaker 2: climax when the hammer comes down on some hapless victim.
29:18
Speaker 2: But after a long day, all we've got is Congressman
29:21
Speaker 2: Lent yammering on about a signature page to someone who
29:24
Speaker 2: probably signed hundreds of signature pages a year. Big John
29:28
Speaker 2: Dingle up on the dais, looks over it, Lent.
29:32
Speaker 9: Would the gentleman yield.
29:35
Speaker 2: And then he lunges for healing.
29:38
Speaker 9: Why is it that the application was done up? Everything
29:42
Speaker 9: was there except the signature of the investigator, and you
29:46
Speaker 9: signed it. My problem here is that I see the
29:50
Speaker 9: institution signs first, and then the investigator signs. I would
29:54
Speaker 9: assume that it would be the investigator that signs and
29:56
Speaker 9: then you say everything he says is true, and I
29:58
Speaker 9: am relying on the content and my own knowledge, and
30:01
Speaker 9: I am also relying on his signature.
30:05
Speaker 2: At this point, all of us in the audience realize something.
30:09
Speaker 2: This was all Dingle had. He had no case. This
30:13
Speaker 2: is congressional theater, and the best he can offer is
30:16
Speaker 2: a jesuitical discussion of grant application signing procedures.
30:21
Speaker 9: Here you didn't even have the signature.
30:25
Speaker 10: If he had signed first and then I had signed,
30:29
Speaker 10: you could argue, how could he have signed before I
30:32
Speaker 10: gave my assurances that we were going to give him
30:34
Speaker 10: the space. Somebody had to sign first.
30:39
Speaker 2: Because the hearing has been going on for five hours,
30:42
Speaker 2: and she cannot believe that she, Bernardine Healy, is in
30:46
Speaker 2: charge of the world's most important medical research institution, and
30:49
Speaker 2: she's being forced to sit and be interrogated on the
30:53
Speaker 2: sequence of signatures on a grant application that just happened
30:57
Speaker 2: to include a completely meaningless typo on page twenty one,
31:01
Speaker 2: interrogated by the same man whose lackeys came to her
31:05
Speaker 2: office and in front of her made the most violent incasuations.
31:10
Speaker 9: The question, though, is why was it you had to
31:14
Speaker 9: sign first?
31:16
Speaker 10: I didn't have to sign first. This is the way
31:19
Speaker 10: it was brought to me.
31:21
Speaker 9: He signed second, and you signed first.
31:25
Speaker 10: Who's on third?
31:32
Speaker 2: And in that moment, as the room erupts in laughter
31:35
Speaker 2: and Chairman Dingle's giant bald head turns the color of
31:38
Speaker 2: a radish, the spell is broken. Every time I think
31:42
Speaker 2: of that moment, I go back to my childhood memories
31:45
Speaker 2: of Danny k playing the little boy in the king's
31:48
Speaker 2: new clothes. The King is in the y all together,
31:52
Speaker 2: the y all together. The Heally goes back to her
32:00
Speaker 2: office and she says, that's it. From now on, if
32:04
Speaker 2: you've been accused of scientific fraud by the NAH, you
32:07
Speaker 2: have the right to an appeal, meaning no more conclusions
32:11
Speaker 2: leaked to the press before the accused is a chance
32:14
Speaker 2: to respond. You can take your case to a panel
32:16
Speaker 2: of judges and lo and behold. Once the accused had
32:20
Speaker 2: a chance to defend themselves, the cases against them fell apart.
32:24
Speaker 2: The Appeals Board said, in the Remeis Sharma case, it's
32:28
Speaker 2: a typo. Heally called him up.
32:32
Speaker 5: Ramesh. Truth always events, You are honest, and you won.
32:41
Speaker 2: The NIH stops persecuting its grantees. The case against David
32:45
Speaker 2: Baltimore gets thrown out. The OSI drops its case against
32:49
Speaker 2: the Georgetown scientist Marguerite Hamish Mika Popovic, the AIDS researcher
32:54
Speaker 2: who was hounded out of his job over the meaning
32:56
Speaker 2: of the abbreviation ND, was vindicated. The verdict against him
33:01
Speaker 2: was thrown out by Healey's Appeals Board. With this choice line,
33:06
Speaker 2: one might anticipate that from all this evidence, after all
33:10
Speaker 2: the sound and fury, there would be at least a
33:13
Speaker 2: residue of palpable wrongdoing. That is not the case.
33:18
Speaker 4: I went to her and said, we need a private
33:20
Speaker 4: meeting with John Dingle. I'm going to set it up.
33:24
Speaker 5: Will you go?
33:25
Speaker 4: She said yes, called a friend, who called a friend,
33:29
Speaker 4: got a private meeting with John Dingle, and she and
33:32
Speaker 4: I went.
33:33
Speaker 2: Healy's right hand, Johanna Schneider, sought a truce. Dingle was
33:37
Speaker 2: the most powerful man in Congress, and heally wanted to
33:40
Speaker 2: double the budget of the NAH. She needed him. But
33:44
Speaker 2: you can imagine how it went. The unstoppable force and
33:47
Speaker 2: the immovable object.
33:49
Speaker 4: She made it clear that his people were pushing too
33:58
Speaker 4: hard on things that didn't matter, and you know, he
34:03
Speaker 4: kind of dismissed. He didn't dismiss her, but you know,
34:06
Speaker 4: he didn't engage on the topic, and so she went
34:10
Speaker 4: back to it.
34:13
Speaker 2: Oh, she kept on saying yes.
34:15
Speaker 4: And you know, I'm sitting at my heart's meeting. I
34:19
Speaker 4: just I you know, I thought the world of her,
34:21
Speaker 4: and I thought she could charm him again. But she wasn't.
34:27
Speaker 4: That wasn't her agenda.
34:29
Speaker 2: So you're sitting there and you're you're really really worried.
34:32
Speaker 2: She's gonna she's going to stick the nails again.
34:35
Speaker 4: She didn't have the same agenda I had, and she
34:37
Speaker 4: was gonna let him know, you know, that he was
34:42
Speaker 4: making a mistake. And I guess Bernadine was the one
34:46
Speaker 4: who was going to say no more, this stops here.
34:51
Speaker 2: Before the meeting ended, Joanna Schneider took a picture of
34:54
Speaker 2: the two of them, Dingle and Heally. Schneider showed it
34:58
Speaker 2: to me. Heally has a big smile, Dingle looks like
35:02
Speaker 2: a stuck pig. Heally could have let it pass. Men
35:08
Speaker 2: did fences a little bowing and scraping before the king,
35:13
Speaker 2: but she didn't. Because the only way that hysterias end
35:17
Speaker 2: is when someone has the courage to say enough, Why
35:21
Speaker 2: do I love Bernadine Healy Because she showed us how
35:25
Speaker 2: it's done.
35:30
Speaker 4: The next day she sends me a huge bouquet of
35:32
Speaker 4: flowers and she says, maybe Thelma and Louise lived happily
35:38
Speaker 4: ever after after all, which was darling.
35:44
Speaker 2: What does she mean that you guys with Alma Louise
35:47
Speaker 2: and you drove off the cliff.
35:51
Speaker 4: See? And the reason I tell you that story is
35:55
Speaker 4: she You know, she saw her. She was on a mission,
36:01
Speaker 4: and for the people who worked for her, for the
36:04
Speaker 4: people around her, you could really get caught up in
36:09
Speaker 4: the best way, in the right way. You were caught
36:14
Speaker 4: up in it, and you thought you could change the
36:18
Speaker 4: world with her. I always felt like the world was
36:22
Speaker 4: a safer place with Bernard and Heliamat.
36:33
Speaker 2: Revisionous History is a panoply production. The senior producer is
36:38
Speaker 2: Mia LaBelle, with Jacob Smith and Camille Baptista. Our editor
36:42
Speaker 2: is Julia Barton. Flon Williams is our engineer. Fact checking
36:46
Speaker 2: by Beth Johnson, original music by Luis Gierra and special
36:50
Speaker 2: thanks to our Revisionist History players Jody marcal Ken Marx
36:55
Speaker 2: and Long Island's finest Mike Pesca, and thanks as always
37:00
Speaker 2: to Andy Bauers and Jacob Iceberg. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, let.
37:11
Speaker 8: Me repeat the question. What do you understand your liability
37:17
Speaker 8: would be if your certification was erroneous.
37:23
Speaker 10: My understanding is that if I told the truth at
37:26
Speaker 10: the time that I signed them, I would have no liability.
37:30
Speaker 8: Let me help you out. I think what you're trying
37:32
Speaker 8: to say is if you sign the paper and it
37:35
Speaker 8: contained false statements, and you didn't willfully make the false statement,
37:38
Speaker 8: there would be no liability.
37:40
Speaker 10: I made no false statements, mister Lent.
37:44
Speaker 8: You made no false statements wilfully, I think is what
37:47
Speaker 8: you want to set.
37:48
Speaker 10: Mister Lent. When an institutional official signs a grant application,
37:53
Speaker 10: they sign as a partner with the investigator. The major
37:57
Speaker 10: responsibility of the institutional official is to say, yes, we
38:01
Speaker 10: are agreeing that this grant be submitted, and we will
38:03
Speaker 10: provide the resources that are necessary to see that this
38:06
Speaker 10: grant is done.
38:07
Speaker 8: My point is, Doctor, Indeed, if.
38:10
Speaker 10: You are saying that any institutional official that signs a
38:13
Speaker 10: grant is certifying that they are one hundred percent sure
38:17
Speaker 10: that everything in that grant is perfect, I don't think
38:21
Speaker 10: you will have any institutional official signing any of our
38:25
Speaker 10: twenty thousand NIH grants that are currently funded.
38:31
Speaker 8: In view of the fact that you had certified as
38:34
Speaker 8: to the truthfulness of the statements in the grand application
38:38
Speaker 8: in the first place, I.
38:39
Speaker 10: Did not certify to the truthfulness. I said, to the
38:43
Speaker 10: best of my knowledge, those grant applications are correct. I
38:47
Speaker 10: have no way of certifying to their truthfulness.
38:49
Speaker 8: I don't want to overdo this. I read it once.
38:52
Speaker 8: A willfully false certification is a criminal offense. I was
38:57
Speaker 8: trying to help you there before when I said, what
39:01
Speaker 8: you are saying is that if it is not a
39:04
Speaker 8: willful misstatement, there would be no liability on your pot.
39:10
Speaker 10: I wasn't even aware that there was a misstatement. I'm
39:14
Speaker 10: not sure I understand this case is still open, mister Lent.
39:19
Speaker 10: The jury is still out on this case.