William T. Summerlin (born 1938) is a dermatologist and medical researcher who engaged in scientific fraud involving his claims of successful skin transplantation without immunosuppression.
[1] At a 1969 conference of dermatologists, Summerlin announced that eight patients at Stanford University successfully received skin grafts grown from cells in test tubes over six weeks old.
Potentially with Summerlin's discovery, doctors would have "skin stored in sheets" grown from donor cells to be used quickly to repair burns.
[1] Accusations from colleagues surfaced that Summerlin had not been successful with his transplants, but instead was faking the results by using a black pen to color the skin on the mouse.
[8] A five-person committee led by C. Chester Stock commissioned a report which was released at the cancer center stating that Summerlin had admitted "to the committee that he had darkened the skin of two white mice with a felt-tip pen to make it appear that the mice had accepted skin grafts from genetically different animals, and that on four occasions he had misrepresented the results of experimental transplants of human corneas into rabbit eyes.
Good's response was, "that the affair had made him 'a ‐somewhat wiser and sadder person' who, in the future, would be more skeptical about the purported findings of the many scientists working under him".
National Cancer Institute Doctor William Terry says that blaming funding is no excuse for scientific hoaxes, there has always been competition and egos involved.