HIV and ID Observations

If you’ll forgive me a bit of baseball-related rambling, there’s an incredible story going on this year with the resuscitation of Alex Rodriguez, both as a player and, even more remarkably, as a person in the public eye.

Or, to quote the play-by-play announcer Michael Kay, who on Friday got it perfectly when he commented on A-Rod’s 3000th hit (it was a home run):

In the space of about a year, he’s gone from persona non grata to the Man of the Hour.

To quickly recap A-Rod’s “crimes,” these included the use of steroids to boost performance, lying about it when caught, and then attacking his employers in court in a pointless effort to get his full-year suspension dropped. All that behavior led to the “persona non grata” part of the A-Rod story.

And while there are still some baseball fans who hate the guy (especially around this neck of the woods, see this play for a prime example why), there’s no doubt he’s been cheered plenty this year — cheered perhaps more than any time since the sensational start to his career as a brilliant young shortstop for the Seattle Mariners.

First, he’s having an excellent season, and second (and in some ways even more remarkably), he seems to have undergone a personality transplant. His previously awkward manner now comes across convincingly like sincere humility. Whatever genius is acting as his media coach — or seeing him for psychotherapy — should win a Nobel Prize in … something.

In short, A-Rod has remade his baseball career and, at least partially, his reputation.

Which got me wondering — would we be so forgiving for such behavior in academic medicine? Scientific misconduct, in particular fabrication of research data, has several parallels.

In both settings, the guilty parties start with genuine talent, widely recognized and praised. Soon after start the short cuts to success. And in both, after an initial period of denial, rationalization (“everyone is doing it”), and self-justification (“I am so gifted/brilliant that this is what I would have accomplished/found anyway”), the evidence of guilt becomes overwhelming. This is followed by swift public censure and various degrees of punishment.

The parallels end, of course, with the postscript. A-Rod is getting another chance by many because, well, it’s just a game. And we love comeback stories in sports.

In scientific misconduct — especially the egregious cases — the stakes are too high.

Forgiveness is just not part of the story.

And apologies to one of my readers from Germany, who told me he never gets it when I write about baseball.