Mary O’Connor sat back from hunching over the microscope, but the tension in her neck didn’t go away. How could anyone do something like this? George and Holly’s experiments were technically perfect, but aneurinide had no activity in either of their hands. Nothing even remotely like what Pam had published.

It had to be fraud.

She put the cultures back in the incubator, called the Director’s office, and told his administrative assistant she was on her way up. Whatever else he was doing would have to wait.

• • •

O’Connor sat with DeSilva at his conference table, watching his face drop as she summarized her results. He shook his head sadly when she finished. “Thank you, Mary. But this is not good news. Are you sure there’s no mistake?”

“I’m positive. I looked at all the cultures myself.”

DeSilva stared out the window. Then he asked, “Did you check the batch of aneurinide with the chemical library people? Is it the same as they used in the original experiments?”

“Yes. I thought of that too. It’s exactly the same.”

He sighed. “Well, you’ve done your job. I think we should talk to Pam together. Somehow this isn’t working and we need to hear what sort of explanation she can come up with.”

O’Connor hesitated, not sure how to say what had to come next. “I’m afraid there’s more. I received a call from Eric Prescott a few days ago. He’s always been a big supporter of Pam, but he called to tell me that nobody, absolutely nobody, has been able to repeat this work. Including experiments of his own that are underway in mice. He says people in the field are saying it must be fraud.”

DeSilva’s jaw fell and he turned away. Then he said slowly, “I see. And you, do you think it may be fraudulent?”

“I can’t imagine why Pam would do such a thing. But I can’t think of any other explanation.”

The color drained from his face, but he spoke calmly. “So between what you heard from Prescott and your own failure to repeat her experiments, you think we have a credible possibility of fraud. This changes the way we need to proceed. I’m afraid these allegations leave me with no choice but to start a misconduct investigation.”

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“It’s not your fault, you’ve done your job. Do you think we should be looking at Pam herself or one of the postdocs?”

“I think it had to have been both Pam and her postdoc, Holly Singer, working together. Neither one of them alone could have gotten around the double-blind experiment they published.”

DeSilva nodded, his face grim. “I agree. And it’s now my responsibility to take this to the next step. I’ll initiate an investigation targeting both Pam and Singer. And of course we’ll stop proceedings on Pam’s tenure case. We must take care of this without any hesitation in dealing with the guilty parties. The whole affair is tragic, but our priority now must be to show the world that we can clean up our own mess. The important thing is to minimize damage to the Langmere’s reputation.”