Forging Grad School References

Half a year after it came to light, the mystery of why a straight-A biochemistry student would forge his letters of recommendation to graduate schools remains unsolved, and the controversial experiments on which he worked have eased into inactivity.

The student was Steven S. Rosenfeld '75, who forged letters of recommendation in the names of two professors to support his applications to five institutions, including Phi Beta Kappa, the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology, and the Churchill Fellowship.

The experiments dealt with "transfer factor," a controversial substance regarded as potentially significant in cancer research. Rosenfeld along with David Dressler, assistant professor of Biochemistry and head of the research team, and Huntington Potter '72, a graduate assistant, had published articles in two prestigious scientific journals on experiments they felt indicated the existence of the elusive substance.

The forgeries were discovered in November; Rosenfeld was forced to withdraw from the College.

Combined with a lengthy dry spell during which the team was unable to reproduce its earlier results, the forgeries cast such doubt that Dressler and Potter issued a "statement of uncertainty and possible retraction" to the two journals.

Despite a cautiously worded statement from Rosenfeld that "there is absolutely no relation between these actions [the forgeries] and the inability to reproduce our reported laboratory findings," the experiments have been put aside. "We haven't done a prep [of the experimental material] in quite a while," Potter said recently.