I saw in the Winter issue that Barbara Yuncker died. She was an excellent science reporter. I met her when I was working at the Menninger Foundation in Topeka, Kansas, in 1960. I'd like to share this short anecdote about her.
Earlier that year, Barbara had covered the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association for the New York Post. At that meeting, which I believe was in Chicago, she met Dr. Karl Menninger, the famous psychiatrist, who invited her to Topeka.
A few weeks later, Barbara caught a late flight from New York to Kansas City, and then took the train to Topeka, arriving at 4 o'clock in the morning.
I was aware of Dr. Menninger's invitation but I was not prepared for an early morning call from the Topeka police department asking me to go there to identify a woman who claimed to be a reporter from New York and who said she knew me.
When I got there I learned that Barbara had been found wandering near the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe railway station with a small bottle of whiskey in her purse. She also, according to the officers, appeared to be intoxicated and was placed under arrest. That was a no-no in those days in dry Kansas, but Barbara explained she had a terrible toothache and had bought the whiskey to help ease the pain. Unable to find a cab when she arrived in Topeka, she decided to walk to the Jayhawk Hotel but lost her way and veered off to the skid row part of town where the cops had found her. She was released of course, and that same afternoon came to the Menninger Clinic for her interview. I was with her. Dr. Menninger greeted her, and we sat down. Then Barbara began by asking a good question, but the wrong question as far as the great man was concerned. Here is how I remember that interview:
YUNCKER: Is it true, Dr. Menninger that you oppose the use of tranquilizers to treat mental illness because tranquilizers are putting psychiatry out of business?"
MENNINGER: Is this your own question or did your editors tell you to ask it?
YUNCKER: It's my question.
MENNINGER: Well, if that's the case, you didn't need to come to Topeka for an answer. (Here Menninger reaches for a newspaper clipping on top of his in-basket). I've already answered this question for the Associated Press.
YUNCKER: But I want to know. I don't plan to rewrite something from the Associated Press.
MENNINGER: If I answer your question, it would be off the record. Put your pencil and paper away. I won't talk if you take notes.
YUNCKER: (nodding) That's quite unusual. But let me hear it.
MENNINGER: As I told the Associated Press, the only reason for using tranquilizers is that they make psychiatric patients friendlier. They do not cure. (He notices that Barbara is taking notes furiously and bursts out). I told you not to take notes. I won't talk to you any further. End of interview.
There was dead silence in the room. Barbara looked at Dr. Menninger in bewilderment. I looked at him and her and noticed tears in her eyes. I said, "Dr. Karl (as we affectionately called him) Miss Yuncker has a terrible toothache," and then went on to describe the problem she had with the police.
Karl's mood suddenly became fatherly. "Miss Yuncker," he said. "You should have told me you had a toothache. "We have to take care of this problem immediately. Let me call my dentist right away."
After the dentist agreed to see her, I offered to drive her to the dentist's office, but Dr. Menninger wouldn't have it. "I will drive her myself," he intoned.
Many weeks later, Barbara's article appeared in the Post. It started as follows: "Dr. Karl Menninger is a bully. He bullies his psychiatric colleagues at scientific meetings, and he bullied this perfectly polite reporter who visited him in Topeka at his invitation."
Then, the article went on describing Dr. Menninger's views on the state of American psychiatry and its future in light of the tranquilizer revolution.
I didn't know what Karl Menninger really thought about the article and I was afraid to ask him, but I received a note from Barbara a month later thanking me for my helpfulness while visiting Topeka. She had attached a copy of a letter she had received from Dr. Menninger. It said, "Dear Barbara, I want to thank you for your excellent article. This was the best description of myself that I ever read."
Spyros Andreopoulos
Stanford, CA
Sadly, Donald Kennedy is right about most news coverage of the case involving David Baltimore and Thereza Imanishi-Kari.
The New York Times, for instance, bought--hook, line, and sinker--and then purveyed the scientists-are-corrupt trope concocted by Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) and his House subcommittee staff. The Times and others succumbed to the one-sided story put out by the Public Health Service (PHS) Office of Research Integrity (ORI), and by the NIH's self-appointed fraud busters, Walter Stewart and Ned Feder.
Certainly Phil Hilts' coverage weighed heavily in the Times editorial judgment that Baltimore's loss of the presidency of Rockefeller University was "rough justice" for his sins. In light of the recent PHS Appeals Board decision exonerating Imanishi-Kari and hence also Baltimore, the Times has now retracted this ill-founded judgment.
The witch hunt against scientists was started by investigative writer John Crewdson of The Chicago Tribune who, with Dingell et al., is largely responsible for accusations against Gallo and colleagues as well.
Reporters are trained to assess the material they cover. Science writers are, or should be, trained--or self-trained --to deal critically with events in our particular realm.
Barbara Culliton, in Nature, wrote critically of the Dingell witch hunt. Also, on a smaller scale, my newsletter, PROBE, has since its inception tried to report evidence, not preconception.
Now, one will ask, amidst the many charges and countercharges in these cases, how could a science reporter find solid ground?
The answer in the Baltimore case is fairly simple,. From 1991, if not earlier, Imanishi-Kari's colleagues have published a number of scientific papers that confirm parts of the disputed paper in Cell, albeit not all of them.
As soon as it was announced--and it was announced--that colleagues in the US, Japan, and Europe had confirmed pieces of Imanishi-Kari's work in the Cell paper, science writers had a responsibility (this being a high-profile case):It was to report these findings and indicate their significance, even though they ran counter to the drift of the times, as reported by Crewdson and Hilts.
The failure of science writers -- and also of ScienceWriters-- to say these things when it mattered, and not years later, safely after the fact, is profoundly disappointing.
David R. Zimmerman
Editor & publisher, PROBE