A Suffolk County jury awarded David Sabatini $6 million in his defamation case against Kristin Knouse.

The $6 million plus interest is the civil award the jury returned, and Zucker has said Knouse will appeal. The Globe's phrase is interference with his ability to make a living. Science's phrase is interference with his ability to work. Science reported that the verdict leaves the Whitehead Institute's 2021 findings in place.

The Boston Globe reported that a Suffolk County jury on Friday, Oct. 16, 2026, awarded $6 million in damages, plus interest, to David Sabatini in his civil case against Kristin Knouse. The Globe reported the jury had seven women and six men, and that it found she had defamed him and interfered with his ability to make a living. Science, in a story dated Oct. 20, 2026, reported the same Friday award of $6 million plus interest, and reported the jury found she defamed him and interfered with his ability to work. Ability to make a living is the Globe's Oct. 16 wording. Ability to work is Science's. The Globe's Oct. 18 story reported the award was unanimous and that the jury dismissed her claims of retaliation and harassment. Science reported the jury rejected her counterclaims of sexual harassment and retaliation.

The accounts of the relationship, and the Whitehead Institute's 2021 findings, are a separate record from the Oct. 16 verdict. The Globe reported Sabatini said he and Knouse began a consensual sexual relationship in 2018, when she was a Whitehead fellow, and that it ended when he began pursuing another woman. The Globe reported Knouse told investigators the relationship was coercive and that he had fostered a hostile and sexualized workplace. Science reported she said she was coerced, that he maintained the relationship was consensual, and that he contended she leveled the accusations after the breakup. Science reported he met her while he was associate director at Whitehead and she was an M.D.-Ph.D. student at Harvard and MIT, where he was one of her instructors and served on her thesis committee. Science reported the sexual relationship began just before she joined Whitehead as a fellow, when he was director of the Whitehead Fellows Program. A relationship that began while she was already a fellow, which is the Globe's account of what he said, and a relationship that began just before she joined as a fellow, which is Science's chronology, are two starting points. The Globe reported a 2021 internal investigation found the relationship violated a strict workplace relationship policy at Whitehead. Science reported Whitehead concluded he had breached the institute's consensual-relationships policy and its antiharassment policy, and that the investigation also concluded he cultivated a sexualized lab environment and tried to influence the probe. The workplace-policy finding is in both accounts. The antiharassment finding, the lab-environment finding, and the influence finding are Science's.

The lawyers spoke after the verdict, and her lawyer said there will be an appeal. The Globe reported Sabatini's lawyer, Lisa Arrowood, said, "We are so happy that we got David Sabatini's good name back." Science reported Sabatini called the decision "a clear vindication." The Globe reported Knouse's lawyer, Ellen Zucker, said her client intends to appeal, that she regrets the verdict, and that she does not regret bringing the case. Science reported Zucker called the verdict "deeply disappointing," said several other women testified about "concerning interactions" with Sabatini, and said requiring more than $6 million from an early-career scientist was "proof positive that the jury was not well-equipped to make appropriate decisions in this case and that they did not do so." Science reported the civil verdict has no direct impact on the conclusions of Whitehead's probe. An appeal is the step Zucker said her client will take. The Oct. 16 award is the jury's figure until a court changes it.

What MIT and Whitehead said after the verdict is in the Globe's Oct. 18 story. The Globe reported MIT spokeswoman Kimberly Allen said the Whitehead Institute is an independent nonprofit with its own facility, and that the university was not a party in Sabatini's original lawsuit, which was filed against Knouse, Whitehead, and its director, Ruth Lehmann. The Globe reported the Whitehead board said it has "full confidence" in Lehmann's leadership and in the workplace policies that included the investigation, and that the court previously dismissed Sabatini's claims against the institute. The Globe reported MIT stood by a letter from then-president L. Rafael Reif, who wrote that Sabatini "behaved in ways incompatible with the responsibilities of faculty membership," and who announced Sabatini's decision to step down in 2022 after a review committee recommended his tenure be revoked. Science reported that, as his official employer, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute fired him, and that he resigned his MIT professorship after three senior officials recommended his tenure be revoked. A review committee, in the Globe's account of Reif's letter, and three senior officials, in Science's account, are two descriptions of who recommended that the tenure be revoked.

Where he works now is in both stories. The Globe reported that in 2023 Bill Ackman and an anonymous donor pledged $25 million over five years, and that Sabatini took a position at a laboratory in the Czech Republic. Science reported the pledge was made in February 2023 and that later that year he joined the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the Czech Academy of Sciences, which has since opened a Boston-area branch where he keeps a second lab. The Globe reported Knouse is an assistant professor of biology at MIT and a faculty member of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, and that it is unclear how she would pay the $6 million plus interest. Science reported that in September 2025 the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services debarred him from National Institutes of Health grants for one year, and that the debarment ended early in April, according to an HHS email Sabatini provided to Science. That email is Science's source for the early end of the debarment. The $6 million plus interest is the civil award the jury returned on Oct. 16. Zucker has said Knouse will appeal. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.