Strong Medicine (16 page)

food held no interest for him. He regarded meals as a waste of time and

ate because his body required it; that was all. Women attuned to

sensitive men found Vincent Lord attractive. Men seemed divided, either

liking or detesting him.

His field of expertise was steroids. This included male and female

hormones-testosterone, estrogen, progesterone-which affect fertility,

sexual aggressiveness and birth control, and during that period of the

fifties when the Pill was just beginning to be used, the subject of

steroids commanded wide scientific and commercial interest.

After earning his Ph.D., and since his work on steroid synthesis was

going well, it seemed logical for Dr. Lord to take a two-year

postdoctoral fellowship, also at U of 1.

The university was cooperative, financing for a "postdoc" was obtained

readily from a government agency, and the two years passed amid continued

scientific success and only minor personal problems. The problems arose

from Lord's habit, close to an obsession, of looking over his shoulder

mentally and asking himself. Did I do the right thing?

He brooded: Had he made a mistake by remaining "in-house" at

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U of P Should he have cut loose and gone to Europe? Would Europe have

supplied a more rounded education? The questionsmost of them

unnecessary-multiplied persistently. They also made him moody and

bad-tempered, a trait that would persist and lose him friends.

And yet-another facet of the paradoxical prism which was Vincent Lord-he

had a high opinion of his worth and work, an opinion that was wholly

justified. Therefore it did not surprise him when, at the end of his

two-year "postdoc," the University of Illinois offered him a post as

assistant professor. He accepted. Again he remained "in-house." Again,

as time went by, he brooded over that latest decision, repeating the

torture of his earlier questions.

An angel looking into Vincent Lord's soul might well have wondered-Why?

During Lord's time as an assistant professor his reputation as a steroid

expert burgeoned, not only at U of I but far beyond. In slightly more

than four years he published fifteen scientific papers, some in

prestigious publications including the Journal of the American Chemical

Society and Journal of Biological Chemistry. It was an excellent record,

considering his low-totem-pole status at the university.

And that was something which infuriated Dr. Lord, increasingly as time

went on.

In the arcane world of scholarship and science, promotions are seldom

speedy and almost always painfully slow. The next upward step for Vincent

Lord would be to associate professor-a tenured appointment, tenure itself

equating a laurel wreath or lifetime financial security, whichever way

you looked at it. Associate professorship was also a signal saying, You

have made it. You are one of the elite of academia. You have something

which cannot be taken away, and are free to work as you choose, with only

limited interferencefrom above. You have arrived.

Vincent Lord wanted that promotion badly. And he wanted it now. Not in

another two years, the remaining period which, as the mills of academia

ground, he would normally have to wait.

Thus, wondering why the idea hadn't occurred to him sooner, he decided

to seek accelerated promotion. With his record, he reasoned, it should

be a snap, a mere formality. Full of confidence, he prepared a

bibliography, telephoned for an appointment with the dean the following

week, and when the appointment was arranged, dispatched the bibliography

to precede him.

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Dean Robert Harris was a small man, wizened and wise, though his wisdom

included doubts of his own ability to make the Socratic decisions

frequently required of him. Basically a scientist, he still kept his hand

in with a small laboratory, and attended scientific meetings several times

each year. Most of his working hours though, were taken up with chemistry

school administration.

On a morning in March 1957 Dean Harris was in his office, turning pages of

Dr. Vincent Lord's bibliography and wondering why it had been sent. With

someone as temperamental and unpredictable as Lord there could be a dozen

reasons. Well, he would find out soon. The subject of the bibliography was

due to arrive in fifteen minutes.

Closing the bulky folder which he had read fully and carefullythe dean was

by nature conscientious-he leaned back in the armchair behind his desk,

musing on facts and his private, personal instincts about Vincent Lord.

The man had genius potential. No doubt of it. If the dean had not known

that already, he would have learned it from his recent reading of Lord's

published work and reviews and accolades concerning it. In his chosen field

Vince Lord could, and probably would, scale the Parnassus heights. With

reasonable luck, which scientists like other mortals needed, some splendid

discovery might well be in his future, bringing renown to himself and U of

1. Everything seemed positive, all signals set at green. And yet . . .

Dr. Vincent Lord at times made Dean Harris feel uneasy.

The reason was not the high-strung temperament exhibited by Lord; that and

brilliance quite often went together and in tandem were acceptable. Any

university-the dean sighed as he thought about it-was a cauldron of animus

and jealousies, often over unimportant issues argued with surprising

pettiness.

No, it was something else, something more-a question raised once before and

recently raised again. It was: Did the seeds of intellectual dishonesty,

and therefore scientific fraud, lie somewhere deep in Vincent Lord?

Nearly four years earlier, in the first year of Dr. Lord's assistant

professorship, he had prepared a scientific paper on a series of ex-

periments which, as Lord described them, produced exceptional results. The

paper was close to being published when a colleague at U of 1, a more

~,enior organic chemist, let it be known that while

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attempting to repeat the experiments and results described by Dr. Lord, he

could not do so; his results were different.

An investigation followed. It showed that Vincent Lord bad made mistakes.

They appeared to be honest mistakes of misinterpretation, and Lord's paper

was rewritten and later published. It did not, however, create the stir

scientifically which the originally stated results-had they been

correct-would have caused.

In itself the incident had no significance. What had happened to Dr. Lord

occasionally happened to the best of scientists. All made mistakes. But if

a scientist later discovered an error of his own, it was considered normal

and ethical to announce the error and correct any published work.

What was different in Lord's case was an intuition, a suspicion among his

peers based on Lord's reaction when confronted, that he had known about the

errors, probably discovered after his paper was prepared, but had kept

quiet, hoping no one else would notice.

For a while there were rumblings on campus about moral sense and ethics.

Then, following a series of unchallenged and praised discoveries by Vincent

Lord, the rumblings died down, the incident apparently forgotten.

Dean Harris had almost forgotten too. Until a conversation two weeks

earlier at a scientific conference in San Francisco.

"Listen, Bobby," a professor from Stanford University and longtime crony

bad told Harris over drinks one evening, "if I were you I'd keep an eye on

your guy Lord. Some of us have found his two latest papers nonrepeatable.

His syntheses are okay, but we don't get those spectacular yields he

claims."

When pressed for more details, the informant added, "I'm not saying Lord

isn't honest, and we all know he's good. But there's an impression around

that he's a young man in a hurry, maybe too much of a hurry. You and I both

know what that can mean, Bobby --once in a while cutting corners,

interpreting data the way you wish it to come out. It adds up to scientific

arrogance and danger. So what I'm saying is: For the good of U of 1, and

your own good, watch out!"

A worried, thoughtful Dean Harris nodded his thanks for the advice.

Back at Champaign-Urbana he had summoned the chairman of Dr. Lord's

department and repeated the San Francisco conversation. The dean then

asked: What about those two last published papers of Vince Lord's?

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Next day the department chairman was back in the dean's office with an

answer. Yes, Dr. Lord acknowledged there was some dispute about his

latest published results; he intended to run the experiments again and,

if appropriate, would publish a correction.

On the face of it-fair enough. Yet, overhanging the conversation was the

unspoken question: Would Lord have acted if someone else had not brought

attention to the subject?

Now, two weeks later, Dean Harris was again pondering that question when

his secretary announced, "Dr. Lord is here for his appointment."

"So that's it," Vincent Lord concluded ten minutes later. He was seated,

facing the dean across his desk. "You've seen my record in the

bibliography, Dean Harris. I believe it's more active and impressive than

that of any other assistant professor in this school. In fact, no one

else comes close. I've also told you what I'm planning for the future.

Putting all of it together, I believe accelerated promotion is justified

and I should have it now."

The dean placed his hands together, surveyed Dr. Lord across his

fingertips and said with some amusement, "You do not appear to suffer

from an underestimation of your own worth."

"Why should IT' The answer was quick and sharp, devoid of humor. Lord's

dark green eyes were fixed intensely on the dean. "I know my record as

well as anyone. I also know other people around here who are doing a damn

sight less than I am."

"If you don't mind," Dean Harris said with a touch of sharpness himself,

"we will leave other people out of it. Others are not the issue. The

issue is you."

Lord's thin face flushed. "I don't see why there's an issue at all. The

whole thing seems perfectly clear. I thought I had just explained it."

"Yes, you did explain. Quite eloquently." Dean Harris decided he would

not be provoked into being less than patient. After all, Lord was right

about his record. Why should he be falsely modest and pretend? Even the

aggressiveness could be excused. Many scientists-as one himself, the dean

understood-simply did not have time to school themselves in diplomatic

niceties.

So should he agree to Lord's request for fast promotion? No. Dean Harris

knew already that he wouldn't.

"You must realize, Dr. Lord," he pointed out, "that I alone do

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not make decisions about promotions. As dean I must depend heavily on

advice from a faculty committee."

"That's a-" Lord blurted out the words and stopped.

A pity, the dean thought. If he'd said "a load of crap" or something

similar I'd have had an excuse for ordering him from my office. But this