Intuition

Like something ripped bleeding from headline news, Intuition (2006, Dial Press) by Allegra Goodman is a timely story about scientific fraud. Even though the pivotal point of the story is one event, it is Goodman's careful and empathetic exploration of the relationships between the researchers and their families that is the most compelling aspect of this story.

When the story begins, it is a snowy afternoon at the fictional Philpott Institute, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The talented and ambitious postdoctoral researcher, Cliff Bannaker, has failed to produce publishable results during his previous two years of research. While his colleagues anxiously anticipate that the lab's soon-to-expire NIH grant won't be renewed, Bannaker is scolded by his supervisors for continuing to waste the lab's precious and limited resources on his fruitless line of research after they had told him several times to abandon it.

Fearing that he will be fired, it seems almost too good to be true when soon afterwards, Bannaker discovers that his genetically-engineered virus, R-7, appears to be shrinking cancerous tumors in his experimental mice. Goodman describes this pivotal moment so beautifully, almost poetically;

There were no tumors visible inside, underneath the skin. Cliff's heart began to beat faster. Over and over, he traced the faint red lines of the mouse's blood vessels, the map of the animal's body. ... Over and over he looked, and each time he made the discovery again: his virus worked on cancer cells. He had never seen anything more beautiful or more important than that mouse before him on the table. He had never felt so solemn or so full of joy. .. The threadlike blood vessels did extend in Cliff's imagination. They seemed to spread and extend into infinite patterns and possibilities, aligning and realigning themselves against cancer. Against death. .. Here was the way forward. Here was the human body writ small. (p. 69)

Of course, the implications for Bannaker's future and for the future of the lab itself are exciting, but everyone reacts differently. The brilliant but shy scientist, Marion Mendelssohn, is cautiously optimistic, while the co-director of her lab, the arrogant Sandy Glass, is exuberant. Bannaker responds by working even harder, while his ex-girlfriend, Robin Decker, also a postdoc in the same lab, is nearly consumed with jealousy. But why are these breast tumors shrinking? No one knows, and independent labs cannot replicate Bannaker's experiments.

In the meantime, Bannaker's paper rescues the lab's funding situation when it is published in the celebrated research journal, Nature.

Finally, after many frustrating months of trying to replicate Bannaker's work in pancreatic cancer cells, Decker convinces herself that something is amiss with his data. Serendipitously, she discovers three pages of Bannaker's suspicious and carelessly written notes in a drawer, so she approaches the lab's supervisors with this information. They dismiss her concerns, so later, Decker initiates a hearing in front of several independent researchers where she formally presents her case against Bannaker. Did Bannaker ignore data that didn't conform to his hypothesis? Or is Decker so consumed with jealousy that she wants to destroy her former lover?

Ultimately, the inquiry fails and Decker prepares to leave the institute, but then NIH's Office for Research Integrity in Science (ORIS) and a congressman investigating scientific fraud become involved. At this point, everything rapidly flies out of control. Decker is horrified to realize that ''her single intuition [is] now transformed into a conspiracy theory implicating not only Cliff but nearly everyone who worked around him."

Even though the story telling becomes somewhat uneven in this last third of the book, I found that Goodman's observations of her characters -- their dialogue, actions, feelings and motives -- provided consistency.

Overall, this is a gripping and fascinating story of self-doubt, idealism, betrayal, passion and the search for truth. As a scientist, I found this book to be a very pleasant surprise, both for its authenticy and humanity, but also for its insight into the high-stakes world of cancer research. If this book is an example of what to expect from good "LabLit", then I am certain that the public will demand more of it. I highly recommend Intuition to everyone who is interested in better understanding scientists, the process of research, and the subtle (and not so subtle) intersection between science and politics.

Allegra Goodman's first book, Total Immersion, was published the same day that she was awarded her undergraduate degree from Harvard University and she earned her PhD in English from Stanford University. Goodman was named by the New Yorker as one of the twenty best writers under the age of forty, she was a National Book Award Finalist (Kaaterskill Falls, 1998), recipient of the Whiting Award and the Salon magazine award for fiction. Intuition is her her third novel and it is going to kick ass on the best seller list. Goodman lives with her family in Cambridge, Massachusetts.