Experiment Eleven

by Peter Pringle

  “Nonsense,” Schatz noted.

  W: I said, “Where are the notebooks?” He said, “Here are the notebooks.” I didn’t pay any attention and of course I wouldn’t go over every page to see whether it is there ... Later, when I checked up in the notebook, I find that the crucial page—you asked me before about the second culture 18-16—the crucial page ... between August 25th and September 10th there was a crucial experiment and that page has been very neatly taken out, and worse than that, Schatz with his own handwriting very carefully corrected all the corresponding pages ... Well, then there is a question here for Sherlock Holmes. I began to go carefully through again and what do you think I discover? A very interesting psychological problem. The very date when the report is made about the chicken throat culture, I find a note on the very page where the first experiment is recorded, I find a note written by Mr. Schatz a year and a half later on February 2, 1945: “Miss Jones brought over the chicken throat and swabbed the plate while I was picking actinomycetes or after I have selected them for transfer. Therefore 18-16 and D-1 are separate isolations.” Now tell me—

  Watson interrupted, “Never mind the comments. Just give us the facts.”

  E: What was the name of the assistant who reported [the missing page] to you?

  W: That I wouldn’t be able to tell you, because at that time Schatz was no longer working in our main laboratory.

  E: You don’t recall who that was?

  W: No.

  E: Were you sufficiently familiar with that particular notebook to know that a page that had been taken out contained something on it when it was taken out?

  W: Well, of course. I used those notebooks in writing up the papers. Those notebooks, as I said, Schatz was the force that wrote those lines, but I knew not only every word, but every idea behind it.

  Eisenberg asked what the missing page might have contained.

  W: That page may have contained information of critical importance to the isolation of culture 18-16 as related to culture D-1, because that is the page where it would logically have been described ...

  E: But you are not saying that it did contain such information?

  W: No, of course I am not.

  E: Was anyone present when you talked with the plaintiff about the return of the notebooks or the breaking in incident that you talk about beside you and the plaintiff?

  W: I don’t think so. As I said, he came to my office and cried like a baby. He cried and he said, “My God, Dr. Waksman, you have given me far more credit than I deserve. I have got to run away from my family.” I said, “Well, that is for you and your family to fight out, but please don’t drag me into it.”

  Schatz wrote, “Not True. Incredible!”

  E: That is all.

  The hearing adjourned at 2:50 P.M. It would be a vital part of Schatz’s case.

  UNDER OATH, WAKSMAN had reluctantly conceded that Schatz’s work had been “important,” then retracted that judgment, and then restored it. He had revealed, for the first time, the personal fortune of $350,000 that he had amassed from the royalties of streptomycin. He had reinforced the doubt about who had given Schatz the culture from the chicken’s throat, the so-called D-1 strain, and he had then introduced two entirely new doubts: about whether the second strain, 18-16, might, in fact, have been the same as the first, merely a contamination from D-1, and about the missing page in Schatz’s notebook. In the process he had accused Schatz’s Uncle Joe of unlawful entry into his laboratory and of stealing a lab notebook, apparently with the intention of doctoring Schatz’s experiments.

  Schatz’s notebook showed that a page had, indeed, been cut out. But there was no evidence of any break in the experiment that he had been conducting at the time—Experiment 11—in which the two separate strains of A. griseus, D-1 from Doris Jones and 18-16 from heavily manured soil, had produced streptomycin. The missing page was at the end of Experiment 11, but by then both D-1 and 18-16 had already been recorded separately as showing clear zones.

  The page of Albert Schatz’s laboratory notebook showing the start of Experiment Eleven. (Special Collections and University Archives, Rutgers University Libraries)

  Watson would later point out to Waksman, if he didn’t know it at the time, that the missing-page allegation was “insignificant.”

  And the story of the break-in by Uncle Joe and the theft of a key notebook could not have been true because Watson’s brother, Dudley Watson, another Rutgers Foundation lawyer, would later reveal the notebook in question had been with the Merck lawyers on the date specified by Waksman. They had asked for it to complete the streptomycin patent application.

  EISENBERG WOULD HAVE a chance to pursue Waksman’s new allegations later, when he examined Doris Jones and the pathologist Dr. Fred Beaudette. For the moment, he was anxious to take advantage of what they had found out about the money.

  In the tradition of the plaintiff’s bar, juicy tidbits extracted in depositions are fair game. Eisenberg immediately leaked the story about Waksman’s royalties. By this time, Waksman and his wife were in Europe, out of the public eye, but the story gave Schatz new confidence that he would win the case. His somber mood changed. He wrote to Jones,

  People, however, don’t seem to realize that I would never have instituted litigation if I did not feel confident of proving my charges in court. The simple fact of the matter, Doris, is that Waksman is through!!

  He’s in Europe now, probably doing a bit of politiking [sic] in an effort to collect a Nobel Prize. Very likely he is looking upon this as a last straw, with it and the attached prestige, he no doubt feels he has a chance. But it will not help him. His greed and lust for fame will convict him.

  You have no idea, Doris, as to the evidence on which our case is based. For example, I will tell you in the strictest confidence Selman A. Waksman has to date pocketed $350,000 of the total royalties derived from the streptomycin patent!!!

  Can you imagine what [people] will think when this information is made public!!! You see Waksman didn’t give all the money away as he publicly led the world to believe. Privately, he feathered his bed, and feathered it well ...

  I wanted you to know that I haven’t gone off half-cocked on a willow-the-wisp [sic] chase. It is quite true that this litigation will result in the ruination of a professional reputation, but it is Waksman not I who will be ruined.

  Schatz thanked Jones for offering to testify on his behalf but thought that it would probably not be necessary because his attorneys felt he had “an excellent chance of victory.” In the event that Jones was needed, he told her, “we would want you only to tell the simple truth as you honestly recall it. That is all we want everyone to do.

  “Unfortunately, though,” he continued, “Selman A. Waksman is not cooperating in this respect. But his deposition is so full of contradiction and false statements (which we can refute with publications and even his own book) that he may well destroy himself on the witness stand. Waksman may very well prove to be our most valuable witness.”

  Jones replied that she had been “going around like the cat that swallowed the canary—just itching to tell my fellow ‘scientists’ the great news, but I was true to your confidence and kept the information locked up and gossip tite [sic]. It certainly is a confirmation of the opinions I personally held toward our friend—even though it is rather shocking to find he is not only a liar but a money conscious fool insofar as he couldn’t even be decent about the dollars he grabbed unto himself. He had to make out to the world that he was a mild and beneficent man of great ideals and humble desires. Pooey!”

  The only newspaper to fully understand the Rutgers PR legerdemain was the Passaic Herald-News. In an editorial, which may or may not have been influenced by Uncle Joe (there is no evidence either way), it pointed out to its readers some basic facts. The headline was RUTGERS IS TOO SMART FOR ITS OWN GOOD.

  It does not reflect credit on Rutgers University to have allowed the people of New Jersey to get the impression that all royalties from the sa
le of streptomycin had been turned over to the university by Dr. Selman Waksman.

  That, it now develops, was a false impression. Out of $2,600,000 in profits received by the Rutgers Research and Endowment Foundation, Dr. Waksman has been paid $350,000.

  The payment of this sum to the distinguished scientist is, beyond doubt, defensible. He is probably entitled to every penny of it. But that isn’t the point. The university allowed the public to assume he wasn’t getting a nickel from the proceeds.

  The admission that Dr. Waksman has shared in the profits was made at a closed pre-trial hearing in the suit brought against Dr. Waksman and the foundation by Dr. Albert Schatz, formerly of Passaic and now of Brooklyn. It was Dr. Schatz who, working under the guidance of Dr. Waksman, found the mold which produced streptomycin.

  The admission throws a completely different light on Dr. Schatz’s suit. He at first appeared to be a young man jealous of the honor that had come to Dr. Waksman, and properly so, as a result of the years of research that led to streptomycin’s discovery. But so long as anyone is to profit personally from the discovery, he is justified in asking for a cut of the proceeds.

  Rutgers must get over the idea it can hoodwink the public. The university’s policymakers could read with profit what Abe Lincoln had to say about that.

  AT RUTGERS, WAKSMAN’S deputy, Robert Starkey, kept his boss informed of the progress of the case while he was in Europe. He sent Waksman newspaper clippings, letting him know that his earnings from the patents were now public. The news, Starkey said, “was not presented in a favorable light—as you would expect—for they made no attempt to justify your receiving the funds or to indicate that you had made any other disposition of them other than for personal uses.”

  He was frank about the harm done. There had been “widespread consternation and the effect was not favorable.” He said the general feeling was that “the public had been deceived into thinking that all of the royalty funds had been given to the university.” The opinion had also been expressed that since this had been concealed, there might be “other information that was of general public interest but was not being mentioned.”

  “I am sure that your friends have no feeling that you are not justified in having any amount of money from the patents that you might wish,” Starkey continued, “but they feel hurt that they have been misled with regard to disposition of the funds. A statement regarding the arrangement at the time of the announcement of the Institute of Microbiology would probably have been well received.”

  People had seen the reasonableness of the arrangement, “but there are probably a great number of people in important positions that do not understand what happened and are apt to consider the matter as reflecting upon the integrity of the persons involved. We have been in a period of unfavorable publicity which may introduce some difficulties in securing public support for the Institute of Microbiology.”

  ON JUNE 7, 1950, while Waksman was still in Europe, Eisenberg deposed Dr. Fred Beaudette, head of Poultry Pathology. Beaudette had accepted Doris Jones as a graduate student in July 1943, the same month that Schatz had started work on his Ph.D. in the basement. Her task was to look for antibiotics that acted on viruses. She was often in Schatz’s lab, where he taught her the basic techniques—how to grow bacteria on a petri dish and isolate the promising ones. Beaudette showed her how to look for viruses in the gullets of chickens.

  Eisenberg began by asking Beaudette if he had ever personally turned over to Waksman any of Jones’s plates. He had not.

  E: Did you ever suggest to Miss Jones that she do so?

  B: I believe I did.

  E: Do you remember when? The month?

  B: No, sir.

  E: Was it 1943?

  B: I presume so.

  E: Do you remember what plates you suggested that she turn over to him?

  B: No, I can’t say that I do, except that when she had a plate on which there was a growth and there was some evidence that it might have activity and ... I suppose it was suggested that it might be turned over. The suggestion was not necessary. That would have been done automatically.

  E: Were you present when it [the plate] was turned over to Dr. Waksman?

  B: No.

  E: You never actually saw him receive physically any plate from Miss Jones.

  B: No, I did not.

  On September 26, in Newark, New Jersey, Eisenberg deposed Doris Jones. She said she had spent most of her time in Dr. Beaudette’s lab and had not reported “very frequently” to Dr. Waksman. Some of the plates she used in her work she discarded, and some she gave to Schatz because she knew what he was working on. She saw him once or twice a week, and he asked her for any plates she no longer needed, and she gave him “maybe fifty.” These were plates she would usually have thrown into the lab’s trash.

  E: Are you aware of the fact that one of the two active cultures of A. griseus was isolated from one of the several plates you gave him?

  J: Yes.

  Jones added that Schatz had told her that he had obtained an active culture from one of her plates and that the other one had come from a field source. Russell Watson objected that this was hearsay and could not be used in the trial, but Eisenberg pressed on. He asked her if she knew who had first isolated the griseus strain that produced streptomycin.

  J: Al Schatz.

  E: Did you participate in the isolation?

  J: No, other than the fact that I gave Al a plate, several plates.

  Having established that Jones had given the plate directly to Schatz, Eisenberg also wanted to ask about the conversation she had had with Waksman in the spring of 1946 about the credit due to Schatz for the discovery.

  Jones said that the conversation had taken place in Waksman’s office and that Waksman had told her “confidentially” that the reason why he didn’t let Al have more credit for the discovery was that he was so aggressive, and if he were allowed this credit, it would go to his head. “That was why he hadn’t pushed Al’s name.’”

  Eisenberg now understood that Jones would be a key witness if the case ever came to trial. Watson had to find out whether she would corroborate, or at least not refute, Waksman’s concocted story about the sick chicken.

  Watson did not know that Jones had already made a statement to Uncle Joe’s friend Max Bromberg about the affair. She had clearly stated that she had given the petri dish containing actinomycetes to Schatz. She had carefully passed it to him through the basement-lab window, and he had done the isolation with this dish as he had with so many before.

  Now, Watson and Samuel Epstein went to Berkeley to interview Jones. They arrived at her house one evening in late April. Jones later told Schatz about it in a letter, reconstructing, as best she could, the conversation.

  “Mr. Watson and Sam,” she wrote, “proceeded to explain to me the facts of the case, read the complaint and the answer or what they told me were the important parts, and then Mr. Watson launched into a series of questions trying, as he said, to ‘get at the true facts’ because the only people who know the truth were the students who were working there. They wanted to know whether Waksman ‘closely supervised’ his students.”

  That depended on the student Jones had replied. “Those who had a head to think with and whom Dr. Waksman recognized as being capable were not very closely supervised; the student with ability did independent work. When I began there [with Dr. Beaudette], for instance, I hardly saw Dr. Waksman. Not to say that I had ability, or that I thought I had.”

  The conversation continued, she recalled, with Watson asking whether it was a long-term project and her replying, “I would say all students were working on a long-term project. Everyone knew, however, that the antibiotics were the center of interest.”

  WATSON: So you were hired to work on a specific problem?

  JONES: Yes, but the details were not laid out in any strict order. [Jones noted to Schatz, “He was trying to get me to say I was a technician doing only things I was told to do.”]

&n
bsp; W: Did you report your results to Waksman?

  J: At intervals, not from day to day, especially at first, since as

  I told you he wasn’t there for a while.

  W: How long was he away?

  J: I don’t remember exactly.

  W: A week? 4 or 5 months? Can you judge?

  J: I suppose a month, I think August. [She noted to Schatz, “He must have known the answer already anyhow.”]

  W: Whose idea was it to streak chickens’ throats?

  J: I believe—though I’m not positive—it came from Dr. Beaudette.

  W: So, Dr. Beaudette directed you to streak them?

  J: I can’t remember. Possibly it came as an outgrowth of a conversation between both of us concerning the problem.

  W: Whose chickens were they?

  J: I certainly don’t remember. They were perfectly normal chickens.

  EPSTEIN: Were there actinomycetes on the plate [petri dish] you gave Al?

  J: Yes, there must have been several. There was a mixture of organisms.

  W: Who told you to give Al the plates?

  J: I believe Al asked me for discarded plates.

  W: Did Al ever discuss streptomycin with you?

  J: Several times. I can’t remember details offhand. I’d have to think longer.

  W: Did he ever tell you Waksman threatened him?

  J: He may have, I can’t remember offhand. Too many years have elapsed and I’d have to sit down and reconstruct too many details to tell you now. [She noted to Schatz, “I didn’t want to give any information.”]

  “Al, I’m sorry I let them come ...” she wrote to Schatz. “I tried to be as vague as possible in certain places and yet stick to the facts. I just hope I didn’t say anything to hurt your case. I saw through this intent from the very minute Watson opened his mouth.”

  She need not have worried. The Rutgers Board of Trustees was already coming to the conclusion, not lightly taken, that further public exposure of Dr. Waksman’s Department of Soil Microbiology was not in the interests of the university.

  18 • The Settlement