Prescott fidgeted with the antique glass paperweight on his desk as he scanned the text that had just come in from Holly. Pam’s travel schedule. The woman hasn’t stopped running around for two months now. Like she’s some kind of rock star. Lectures, international conferences. Invitations that should have gone to me. Knowing this would happen didn’t make it any easier.

At least Holly’s lists provided a handy guide to where it would be useful for him to sow the seeds of doubt. Especially when combined with the information he’d fed Mary O’Connor. She’d asked him to suggest people to serve as reviewers for Pam’s tenure case. He’d been happy to oblige with the names of half a dozen of his friends who were leaders in the field. And who he’d be able to contact to make sure they heard rumors that Pam’s work wasn’t reproducible.

He got up and made an espresso at the machine next to his desk. Then he closed his office door, sat back down, and called his friend Henry Strickland at Princeton. Time to seed the rumor mill. He explained that he was organizing next year’s International Alzheimer’s Conference in Berlin and invited Strickland to be on the program committee.

“Of course,” Strickland replied. “I’d love to do that. Happy to accept.”

“Excellent, having you involved will be a big help. Do you have any immediate thoughts on who would be good for the major speaking slots? I apologize for pressuring you, but I’m working on a grant to get funding for the conference and I need to put down some preliminary ideas for the program.”

Strickland laughed. “Right, nothing like short notice. Well, the obvious person for the keynote is Pam Weller. In fact, she’s giving a seminar here next week so I could ask her about it. She’s doing a ton of traveling, so it might be good to get it on her schedule.”

Prescott let a trace of concern show in his voice. “She is the obvious person, you’re right. But you know, I’ve started to hear rumors that there are problems with her paper.”

Strickland sounded surprised. “Really! What problems?”

“Well, I’ve heard a few people say they haven’t been able to confirm her experiments. Have you tried aneurinide in your lab yet?”

“Sure, hasn’t everybody. We didn’t see anything when we tried it in her cell culture system. But we don’t have that working very well so I don’t think a failure in those experiments means much. Of course we’re also trying it in mice, but it’ll still be a little while before those results are in.”

“Yes, that sounds like our experience too,” Prescott said. “I don’t know, maybe there are just technical problems at this point, but it seems like several labs have been unable to reproduce her results. Enough to make you wonder.”

“That’s awful,” Strickland said. “Well, it should all be clear when there’s been enough time for people to see the results in mice. The cell culture system is tricky and there could just be problems getting it to work properly.”

“Sure, it could all be fine,” Prescott agreed.

“Still, it’s concerning. I’ll see what she has to say when she’s here next week. Let me know what else you hear, okay? I’m supposed to write a letter for her tenure case, but I think I’ll hold off for a bit and see if this gets cleared up first.”

Prescott ended the call and finished his espresso as he looked out the window. A crisp fall day, his favorite time of the year. His next call was to California, but he’d have to wait an hour or so before his friend at Stanford would be in the office. Time for a nice walk along the Charles before lunch.