Nation IN BRIEF : WASHINGTON, D.C. : AIDS Researcher May Face Censure

A preliminary federal inquiry concluded that AIDS researcher Robert Gallo deserves “significant censure” for allowing scientists in his laboratory to falsify research results. It exonerated him of personal misconduct. At issue is a paper Gallo published in 1984 that provided the first persuasive evidence that AIDS was caused by a virus. The paper turned Gallo into a scientific celebrity. But Gallo has acknowledged that the virus he isolated might have derived from a sample lent to him by Dr. Luc Montagnier at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. The report by scientific investigators from the National Institutes of Health blamed Gallo for having earlier “acquiesced” in a colleague’s wrongdoing. An attorney for Gallo called the report “fundamentally inaccurate” and predicted it would be rewritten.