March 26, 1991

AS long as science proceeds relatively smoothly, it appears to be driven purely by reason and the answers given by nature in experiments. But when things go wrong, the human actors shed their masks of professional impassivity, and the emotional undercurrents of the scientific enterprise may suddenly emerge like the wizard behind the curtains in Oz. Last week the most celebrated investigation of scientific misconduct in years provided such a glimpse into the fallibility of human judgment. The case of Dr. Thereza Imanishi-Kari, and a paper she published with Dr. David Baltimore in 1986, began as a small dispute within her laboratory, and snowballed into a protracted conflict that pitted Dr. Baltimore and his many supporters in the scientific community against Congress and John D. Dingell's House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. The case has entangled the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tufts University and many individuals, including leading biologists, in rounds of bitter controversy that have lasted five years and are still not completed.

The wind was building toward 30 knots. The waves were following fiercely. The rain, which began as a drifting mist, was now flying horizontally off toward New York City with a plummeting wind chill factor. Even the sun had sense enough to stay in, behind a mile or two of low-scudding clouds. If the first thought that comes to mind from that description is a powerful desire to go home, sit by a fire with a warm cup of soup and crack a new book, then you are not a member of the Long Island Beach Buggy Association.

Last March, a lobbyist persuaded Mayor David N. Dinkins to attend a dinner of the Building Contractors Association, which honored Mr. Dinkins for his "outstanding contribution to the building and construction industry." The Mayor's attendance at the dinner was hardly illegal, or even terribly noteworthy in the larger scheme of city politics.

Both houses of Congress have rejected President Bush's proposal to finance a campaign against infant mortality in 10 localities by diverting money from other health programs that serve pregnant women and poor children. Instead, Congress last week appropriated $25 million for the infant mortality campaign in the current fiscal year. The lawmakers did not specify where the money would come from, but they explicitly prohibited Mr. Bush from taking it from community health centers or from the Maternal and Child Health Services Block Grant, as the Administration had planned.

The chief executive of the Goldstar Company, the big South Korean consumer electronics maker, said today that his company's investment last month in the Zenith Electronics Corporation was part of a much broader and previously undisclosed cooperative agreement. The executive, Lee Hun Jo, said he doubted that Zenith, the last domestic television maker in the United States, could survive without the broad agreements with Goldstar on manufacturing operations, research and development, and marketing.