But the record of Pentagon assertions in favor of missile defense has been unreliable, to say the least. A project that is bringing tens of billions of dollars into military-industrial coffers carries an irresistible bias in its own behalf, and history shows that neither the Defense Department nor its contractors are reliable evaluators of the science and technology on which President Bush's vaunted ''shield'' must stand.

Leave aside for the moment the disturbing question of whether US initiatives toward missile defense will ignite a mortal new arms race with China and others. The remaining question of feasibility is grave enough. Can the nation afford $100 billion for a system that won't work? Can the government put the lives of citizens at risk behind a shield that will not protect?

Such questions are too important to leave to the obviously biased evaluators of the Pentagon and the defense industry. That is why the scientific claims of the Missile Defense Agency and its contractors must be examined by disinterested experts in the scientific community. On such independence rests the health of the US economy, the safety of the nation, and the integrity of science itself when so much else has been
corrupted. These are the stakes of a dispute that has been brewing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for more than a year.

Theodore A. Postol is a professor of science, technology, and national security policy at MIT. He earned a reputation as a debunker of the Patriot missile's Gulf War performance and then as a skeptic of missile defense. He challenged whether the system under design could ever reliably distinguish between incoming warheads and decoys.

At particular issue was a 1997 test conducted and deemed successful by the defense contractor TRW. After that ''success'' was questioned by federal investigators, MIT's Lincoln Laboratory was hired to evaluate it. In 1999 Lincoln Lab affirmed TRW's results. Soon thereafter Postol objected, challenging not only the Pentagon and its contractor - but his own university. The Government Accounting Office investigated and concluded that Postol was right in pointing out flaws in the TRW test, but Postol's charge had gone beyond flaws to fraud. ''Lincoln Lab,'' he said to me over coffee recently, ''covered up a program-stopping flaw in the missile defense system. A great university involved in a coverup?''

In April 2001 Postol went to MIT authorities about the matter, and then early this year he went public, raising the grave question of whether Lincoln Lab colluded in TRW's deception. Postol argued that the ''success'' of the experiment depended on a match between observed phenomena and predicted phenomena. Had TRW fraudulently substituted one for the other? Had Lincoln Lab knowingly covered up that substitution? Had Lincoln Lab misled federal investigators? Had top MIT officials ignored and distorted these charges? Postol demanded an investigation. Last February, MIT launched an in-house inquiry into Postol's charges. (The Boston Globe called for an independent investigation at that time, asking MIT ''to reconsider this self-protecting institutional reflex.'')

The internal MIT inquiry into its own conduct was concluded last month, and it called for the outside investigation Postol had been demanding all along. That recommendation has now gone to MIT's top officials, and what it will lead to remains to be seen.

Postol, for his part, has already reached a conclusion and is hoping for a congressional intervention. In letters he sent in late October to Representative Howard Berman, Democrat of California, and Senator Charles Grassley, Republican of Iowa, cosponsors of the False Claims Act, Postol wrote, ''In effect, Lincoln verified and certified as accurate bookkeeping arithmetic when Lincoln knew that the bookkeeping practices were fraudulent.''

This might sound like a reprise of the Enron scandal when both a company and its watchdog accountants were caught lying - a corruption not only of a basic system but also of the system's oversight mechanism. But Enron, finally, involved only money. The corruption that Postol alleges goes to the quick of scientific integrity, to the dead center of the academy's relationship to government and, even more crucial, to the method by which future US defense strategies will be devised.

The independent investigation demanded by the courageous Postol is long overdue. His demands might seem like disloyalty to a besieged university protective of its reputation. They might seem like mere ''prevarication'' to a Pentagon wanting ''to get on'' with missile defense. But to America there is nothing esoteric about the truth, especially when falsehood, igniting an arms race, can pave the road to war.

James Carroll's column appears regularly in the Globe.

The Boston Globe reported Friday that a letter written by Charlene M. Placido, an assistant dean for research, said professor Ed Crawley had decided to recommend the investigation. Crawley, chairman of MIT's aeronautics and astronautics department, was appointed last year to look into the allegations of fraud.

The Globe reported that Crawley could not be reached for comment and that MIT would not release his report.

"The reason for confidentially is simple: The reputations of individuals are at stake," MIT spokesman Ken Campbell said in a prepared statement.

In March, the General Accounting Office, Congress' investigative arm, said the Pentagon, contractors TRW and Boeing and an MIT review team all exaggerated the success of the nation's first missile defense test in 1997. Investigators said the test was flawed because a sensor could not distinguish between a warhead and decoys.

MIT's Lincoln Laboratories issued a report validating the test results in 1999.

The Pentagon said the findings were outdated, and a high-ranking an Air Force officer said the test involved hardware that hasn't been part of the missile defense program in more than four years.

The 1997 test, which did not involve an attempt to intercept a warhead, tested a system made by Boeing and TRW that was rejected. The Pentagon accepted a competing system by Raytheon that relies on a different sensor that uses a different design and different means of discriminating warheads from decoys.

The FBI reviewed the case after a fired TRW employee alleged in a lawsuit that TRW falsely reported or hid information to make the Pentagon believe the system worked.

MIT physicist Theodore Postol, who alerted university officials to the possible fraud in April 2001 and has urged a full inquiry, said he believes researchers could not have overlooked data that showed the missile system did not work.

"This isn't simply a case of bad or fraudulent science, it was quite likely obstruction of justice - and every major official at this university has been aware of this," Postol said.

MIT officials would not comment on Postol's allegations. But in the school's prepared statement, Campbell said "Professor Postol knows what the MIT policies say about confidentiality, and if he chooses to disregard them, he will have violated those policies."

It appeared that Crawley has reversed his previous findings in his investigation. In an earlier draft report sent to administrators this summer, the Globe reported, he said "not only do I find no evidence of research misconduct, but I also find no credible evidence of technical error."

Ming-Jer Tsai, one of five researchers who conducted the study at Lincoln Laboratories, called it "strange" that Crawley initially found no problems with their work and then called for an investigation.

"I was surprised to realize there was a reversal of the professor's position," he said. "I don't want to speculate what changed his mind."