Mary O’Connor was spending the morning working at home, savoring the peace and quiet of her house in Lexington, an affluent suburb about fifteen miles west of Boston. With her husband already off to his law firm downtown and their daughter in school, she had the house to herself and could work without distraction. By late morning she’d miss the worst of the commuter traffic, something she gladly traded for the view of conservation land from her second-floor study, the trees still showing fall colors of red and gold.

But the morning’s peace was shattered when she looked at her email and saw a message from Henry Strickland. Another letter about Pam’s tenure case. She opened it with a sense of foreboding. This whole thing wasn’t turning out right.

Chairing Pam’s tenure committee should be a snap. After all, what can go wrong with a case where the candidate’s found the first drug against Alzheimer’s disease? She and the two other committee members carefully chose ten senior scientists to ask for evaluations of Pam’s work. Knowing that the choice of evaluators was key to the outcome, they did their homework to identify reviewers who would be favorable. One of her colleagues was a good friend of Karl Meyers, so he asked Meyers for suggestions. More than happy to oblige, Meyers gave him the names of four distinguished colleagues he knew were supportive of Pam. O’Connor got some suggestions from Eric Prescott, and the other member of the committee reached out to senior neuroscientists at the most prestigious of the institutions Pam had visited to give lectures on her work. Between them, they identified a good list of reviewers who they were sure would write enthusiastic letters in favor of tenure.

But it wasn’t happening that way. Her head started to throb as she scanned the letter from Strickland. He concluded his evaluation by saying that Pam would not get tenure at Princeton, his home institution. Like the other reviewers, Strickland spoke of the importance of her work and acknowledged that the discovery of aneurinide potentially put Pam at the top of the field. But he went on to say that a positive recommendation depended on the validity of her work and there were serious questions as to its reproducibility. Granting tenure was premature until it was known whether her results could be confirmed.

Three of the other letters reached a similar conclusion, and having four referees say that tenure was premature was a big problem. Even if the committee made a positive recommendation and DeSilva wanted to proceed, tenure ultimately had to be approved by Harvard University. These letters would be part of the package that went to the Dean of Harvard Medical School and eventually to the President of the University. And with these letters as part of the case, O’Connor doubted tenure would be granted.

She was stuck. Now that the outside letters were in, her duty as chair was to call a meeting of the committee to make their recommendation on the case. But to do so would be lethal. Just discarding the four problematic letters wouldn’t work either. The other committee members knew that requests had gone out to these four and would want to know what happened to their responses.

She picked up the phone to call DeSilva’s office. He’d told her to let him know if there was any kind of problem, and now seemed like the time.

• • •

DeSilva cancelled an early afternoon appointment to see O’Connor as soon as possible. He made no effort to hide his concern as she sat across from his desk.

“So what’s going on? How can there be a problem with Pam’s case?”

“Four of the letters came back saying that granting her tenure is premature. And I don’t see how we can go forward with a positive recommendation under these circumstances.”

DeSilva fought to control his temper. How could O’Connor have let this happen? “I don’t understand how we can be in this kind of mess. Didn’t you check on what the evaluators would say before you wrote to them?”

The color drained from her face and she took a minute to respond. “Yes, of course, and they all were very positive when we first asked them. But that was a couple of months ago and apparently there are now rumors circulating that her work is not reproducible. So these four wound up saying that tenure should wait until it was clear her experiments could be verified.”

“And you didn’t see this coming?”

O’Connor shook her head. “No, I’m sorry. Everything looked fine at first.”

“Okay, okay.” DeSilva took a deep breath. “You’re right, we can’t just go ahead. We need to figure out how to deal with these rumors. What’s Pam have to say?”

“She’s upset but she thinks it’ll take care of itself. The cell culture system is tricky, and she thinks people who aren’t routinely using it are having trouble getting it to work. She’s sure it’ll all get resolved once people have time to do the experiments in mice, but that may take a bit longer.”

DeSilva looked out at the rain that had started pouring down. Like any scientific conflict, the questions about Pam’s paper would be answered in time. Scientists in her field were obviously concerned about verifying her results and he could simply put the tenure case on hold until the status of her work was clear.

But I’ll look like a fool if I just sit back and she turns out to be wrong. Especially after all the support we’ve given her. Seminar invitations, the press release, four hundred thousand dollars for mice. The board of directors’ll love that one. No, better to be more aggressive. Take the lead in solving the problem.

“We can’t wait for that,” he said. “This kind of suspicion in the community reflects badly on the entire institution, not just on Pam. It’s not an issue I can leave for others to resolve. How long do the cell culture experiments take to do?”

“Only a couple of weeks, if they work.”

“Alright, then this is what we’re going to do. We’ll repeat those experiments ourselves, under my direct authority. Once it’s done, I’ll be able to say definitively that we’ve verified her work. Or not.”

“But how are you going to do the experiments?”

DeSilva gave a mocking laugh. “You don’t think I’m planning to go into the lab and do them myself? No, of course not. Actually, I’d like you to direct the experiments for me.”

“But I don’t know how to do them. I’ve never done the cell culture work and it would take months for me to get it set up in my lab.” She looked flustered.

DeSilva held up his hand. “Don’t worry, I understand. I don’t expect you to do them yourself any more than I would. But you can supervise a rigorously controlled repetition. Do you remember the double-blind experiment Pam did for the paper?”

“Of course.”

“So you can do a similar thing, except Pam will play no part in it. Get your own sample of aneurinide from the chemical library. Give it a code name, and then give it and some dummy samples to the people in Pam’s lab to test. They have the system going, so there won’t be any technical problems and we’ll get an answer quickly.”

“Yes, that would work,” she agreed. “But I’m concerned about my role in this. As chair of her tenure committee, shouldn’t I be going ahead and having a meeting to evaluate the letters? Isn’t it a conflict of interest for me to be trying to confirm her experiments at the same time?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be sure there are no concerns about your involvement. And I appreciate that this is a lot of extra work for you. I’ll supply your lab with additional funding to make it worthwhile. I’ve also been thinking that we need a new Associate Director for Research, and you’d be perfect for that position.”

O’Connor’s eyes widened and she smiled. “Thank you, I’m honored.”

“Then let’s proceed. How fast can you get these experiments done?”

“As long as I can use Pam’s people, two weeks should do it. I’ll give separate sets of coded samples to each of her two postdocs, so we’ll get it done in duplicate.”

“That sounds good,” DeSilva agreed. “I’ll let Pam know we’re going to do this and she can give the postdocs directions to work with you. I’ll try to see her this afternoon. In the meantime, get the aneurinide from the chemical library and set up the dummy samples so we can start immediately. I want this done as fast as possible. However it turns out, we have to take responsibility for dealing with this situation.”

• • •

Pam paced outside DeSilva’s office, nervously fiddling with her hair. Thirty minutes ago, she’d been unexpectedly summoned to a mysterious meeting with the director. Spontaneity wasn’t his style. Something was up.

Yesterday I felt so comfortable around him. Now, when he motioned her to a seat across from his desk, she broke into a sweat.

No tea and cookies today.

He wasted no time on preliminaries. “I’ve asked you here with some urgency to talk about a problem Mary O’Connor brought to my attention earlier this afternoon. I understand there are rumors circulating to the effect that your experiments with aneurinide can’t be reproduced. Are you aware of this?”

Her stomach knotted. DeSilva had nearly complete power over her, and the usual warmth in his voice was missing. Has he lost confidence in my work?

“I’ve heard some such rumors, but I’m confident in our results and I’m sure this will all straighten itself out. Working with the brain cell cultures is tricky and that’s the only kind of experiment people have had time to do so far. So I think the difficulties are just technical. However, the mouse experiments are straightforward and once there’s time for those results to come in, I’m sure there’ll be no question about our findings.”

He shrugged noncommittally. “I see. Well, I’m glad you trust your results. But how long will it take for other labs to confirm the mouse experiments?”

“I guess it could be another month or so, depending on how quickly the relevant labs got aneurinide.”

DeSilva frowned and waved his hand impatiently. “That’s not good enough. We can’t have questions floating in the air about such important work. It’s not acceptable for either you or the Langmere. As you know, I’m going ahead with your tenure case and this has to be resolved immediately. We can’t think about granting tenure to a faculty member with a dark cloud hanging over her head.”

She felt herself flush. Was this the end of her hopes for tenure and promotion?

“But, I don’t know what to say. How can I resolve this before others have time to do the experiments?”

He smiled, but his eyes were cold. “Don’t worry, I’ve thought of a way to fix this for you. Remember that I’m on your side. You’re lucky to have me for a friend.”

She tried to respond gratefully. “I know that. Thank you.”

He nodded and continued. “So this is what I’d like to do. We’ll repeat your experiments here, directly under my auspices, with no involvement from you. We’ll use your cell culture system as it’s all set up and we’ll have an answer in two weeks. Mary O’Connor has agreed to supervise the experiment. She’ll obtain aneurinide from the chemical library and give coded samples to each of your postdocs to test. If it works, and I certainly hope it will, I’ll report the results as a letter to Nature under my own name. That’ll silence any doubters and put an end to these destructive rumors. Does that sound agreeable to you?”

Pam had mixed feelings. There was no reason to think this wouldn’t be an easy confirmation of her results. But it seemed absurd for DeSilva to step in like this. If rumors of his involvement started to circulate, the community would assume the worst. Fraud was an offense of which the accused was automatically found guilty in the scientific rumor mill. Her reputation would be forever tainted, whatever the outcome.

“It seems like an awful lot of work for you and Mary. Do you really think this is necessary?”

He scowled at her. “I’m afraid so. I wouldn’t suggest something like this if I didn’t think it was absolutely critical. It will take a great deal of time and resources. Of course, we’ll only do it with your permission. If you don’t want us to proceed, we’ll leave it to other labs to eventually verify your results. But you should realize that your tenure case can’t have a positive outcome under the current conditions.”

She felt sick to her stomach. There was no choice.

“Yes, I understand. And of course, I’m very grateful to you and Mary for being willing to do all this for me. How can I help?”

“Good, I’m glad you appreciate the situation. Then with your agreement we’ll go ahead. I think we should now meet with your postdocs and tell them they’ll need to work with Mary O’Connor on this. I believe it would be best if we told them together so they don’t feel threatened. Can you have them join us so we can get started?”

This is going to be awful. The idea of the director telling George and Holly that their work wasn’t trusted and had to be specially repeated under the supervision of another faculty member would be devastating to them, as it was to her. She was frustrated and angry at the way DeSilva had taken charge and was manipulating the situation. But there was no way out and she had to appear cooperative.

“Yes,” she replied. “They’re both in the lab. I’ll go get them.”