Kaposi's Sarcoma, Vascular Permeability, and Scientific Integrity

To the Editor. —As a longtime reader of JAMA, I was somewhat surprised by the report by Dr Witte and colleagues.¹ Specifically, I was surprised that JAMA's editors and reviewers would have an interest in publishing a report whose only credible claim is that artifacts can be found or induced in biological systems if one tries hard enough to find or induce them. Hardly a noteworthy observation.

Regarding other issues raised in the report by Witte et al questioning the validity of the article published by Nakamura et al,²I fail to see any logical or scientific merit to justify the authors' concerns. The authors' claim that they "were unable to confirm some of the pivotal findings," which led them to state that "the original conclusions... are highly dubious," is simply not justified by anything presented in their report. I have been involved for a number of