Further the Report does not address the overriding issue of the responsibility of the Chief of a Laboratory to monitor the performance of all personnel in the Laboratory and to pay particular attention to the accuracy of major publications which bear his name as an author. The paper at issue was central to the claim of priority in growing the virus. The senior author had an imperfect command of English and a known inadequacy in record keeping. The combination of these facts should have resulted in the most meticulous scrutiny by the Chief of the Laboratory for the benefit of all members of the Laboratory in addition to his own personal responsibility as an author. In spite of the many faults of the 1984 paper, OSI made no recommendations with regard to the paper itself.
Retraction seems inappropriate since some of the conclusions are in fact correct.
However, the authors could be asked if, for the record, they would publish a corrected version. The absence of records at the journal office may or may not complicate such a process. With or without such an agreement, OSI should inform Science of the errors they have uncovered. It should be made clear, although it is not now, that the responses of Drs. Gallo and Popovic to the Report, which are included as appendices, are, in fact, responses to the first draft prepared in the spring of 1991 and not to the present form of the Report.