That may have been Dumbledore’s more forgiving assessment of the situation, considering Rita Skeeter’s account mentions something to do with twisted experiments.
This piece of information is provided to us by Rita Skeeter, who penned a scathing book about Albus Dumbledore.
I’d say the odds are high there’s truth somewhere between Dumbledore’s account, and Skeeter’s.
Pretty much everything Rita Skeeter writes should be taken with a grain of salt.