William Summerlin

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William Summerlin worked at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centerin New York. He claimed that he could transplant tissue from unrelated animals by keeping the tissue in culture for four to six weeks. He used white mice with patches of black fur which he had colored with a black permanent marker.

In 1974, Summerlin was discovered when he made a presentation to immunologist Robert Good; lab assistants noticed that the patches had been drawn on the mice and could be removed using alcohol. Eventually, the forgery was attributed to a mental health problem. Author Joseph Hixson wrote a book about the scandal called "The Patchwork Mouse".