All seven members of an evaluation committee advising Sweden’s Karolinska Institute have written a joint letter in support of Karl Tryggvason, a professor of medical chemistry whom the institute accused of ethical misconduct and dismissed as dean of research (BMJ 2010;340:c1389, 9 Mar, doi:10.1136/bmj.c1389).

In a related matter the Nobel Assembly, which consists of 50 professors at the institute and awards the Nobel prize in physiology or medicine, announced that Professor Tryggvason will retain his seat within the assembly.

The four paragraph letter of support was signed by the evaluation committee’s chairman, Joseph Goldstein, a Nobel laureate and chairman of the Department of Molecular Genetics at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, and …