Science fraud: from patchwork mouse to patchwork data

Summerlin pulled two white mice from the container. While they wriggled and squeaked in protest, he inspected the sites of the black skin grafts. Impulsively, Summerlin took his felttipped pen out of the breast pocket of his white coat and applied it briefly to the grafted patches on the two white animals. The ink made them look darker. Then he replaced the mice in the bin and strode out . . . From The Patchwork Mouse, an account of William T. Summerlin's 1974 false claim of skin transplantation without immunosuppression (1).