William Summerlin

Who is William Summerlin?

William T. Summerlin is a dermatologist who, as a medical researcher, perpetrated a notorious scientific fraud.

In 1974, Summerlin was working under immunologist Robert A. Good at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, conducting research in transplantation immunology. He claimed to have shown that success of skin transplants between genetically unrelated animals was enhanced by culturing the skin in special medium for several weeks. If so, the work had major implications as a means to suppress immunological rejection of transplanted tissues. However, his own and others' attempts to reproduce his original results failed.

The experimental method involved transplantation of skin from black mice to white mice. Over time, the melanoctyes would naturally tend to migrate out of the transplanted tissue, so as to produce a grayish patch rather than a distinctly black patch.

In the incident that became notorious, Summerlin was called to a meeting with Good, and took with him the single experimental animal that was the best evidence of transplant success. Noting that the patch had "grayed", Summerlin by his own subsequent admission darkened it with a black permanent marker. The mouse was not produced at the meeting with Good. Summerlin's action was discovered when he returned the mouse to animal care technicians, who immediately noticed that the patch could be removed with alcohol. Senior staff and Dr Good were notified within minutes.