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Jury Hits MIT Accuser With $6 Million Defamation Verdict for Wrecking Biologist David Sabatini

Empty biology laboratory at night, illustrating the defamation verdict in the David Sabatini and Kristin Knouse case.

Summary

  • The verdict: A Boston jury found MIT biology professor Kristin Knouse defamed Whitehead Institute scientist David Sabatini and interfered with his career, awarding him $6 million.
  • The rejection: Jurors threw out Knouse’s counterclaims that Sabatini sexually harassed and retaliated against her.
  • The fallout: Her 2021 allegations helped end Sabatini’s career at MIT, Whitehead and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute years before a jury tested them.

What Happened

On Oct. 16, a Suffolk County Superior Court jury of seven women and six men found that Knouse defamed Sabatini and interfered with his ability to make a living, and ordered her to pay $6 million plus interest, the Boston Globe reported. Sabatini’s lawyers said the award breaks down to $500,000 for defamation, $3.2 million for interference with contractual relations and $2.3 million for interference with prospective relationships. Prejudgment interest adds about $3.6 million, MIT student newspaper The Tech reported.

In 2021, a Whitehead investigation concluded Sabatini, who had run a lab there for 24 years, had a sexual relationship with Knouse, a younger colleague over whom he held a career-influencing role, and that his lab had a sexualized atmosphere. The Howard Hughes Medical Institute fired him, he gave up his Whitehead lab, and he later resigned from MIT after senior officials recommended revoking his tenure. Knouse said the relationship was coerced. Sabatini said it was consensual and that she turned on him after he became interested in another woman.

Before trial, Judge Christopher Barry-Smith ruled that Knouse’s statements about her own feelings were protected opinion, but let jurors weigh statements calling Sabatini a “rapist” and a “dangerous predator” who “grooms” women in his lab. Sabatini’s lawyer, Lisa Arrowood, told Fox News the jury found the “claims of harassment and rape were false and defamatory.”

Why It Matters

Institutions that control a scientist’s career owe accuser and accused alike a process that tests the evidence before it ends anyone’s livelihood. Here, a leading research institute, a major funder and a top university acted within months, and the first full adversarial test came five years later, when a jury sided with the man they pushed out. If career-ending decisions keep outrunning the evidence, accusers and accused alike will have less reason to trust the result.

The Bigger Picture

Sabatini’s claims against Whitehead and its director were dismissed before trial, and on Nov. 4 his lawyers filed to appeal that ruling. Fifty scientists wrote MIT that day urging it to reconsider his tenure. As of Nov. 8, no post-trial ruling or payment has been reported.

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