INTRODUCTION
This is not a normal account of scientific misconduct. That would be scrupulous, detailed,
mathematical. This is speculative and distracted. It runs long, perhaps it rambles a little. It has
asides, convections, bitterness, levity, inspirations. It has corners.
It is also, hopefully, still consequential - because it is outlining a very serious problem. As such, it is profoundly annoying that we must use fiction as a genre to do so.
One of the problems that honest people have is understanding the full depths of the truly
cynical, depraved, and dishonest. Many scientists care deeply about scientific accuracy, trust,
verification, about the core tenets of the scientific enterprise. For them, it is hard to understand
someone who does not care at all, and sometimes almost impossible to understand someone
who would cynically engineer its total subversion and partial destruction for money.
And not even very much money. If we were discussing a 30 million dollar clinical trial, one
which predicted the entire course of a company division or resulted in a dominant position in
a drug market, that would be understandable. The incentives are overwhelming. The upside is
too high.
But to be utterly venal, completely dishonest, and for beer money? To many, it is unthinkable.
But this does not make these people go away.
