Pam was determined to be cool and professional for her meeting with the misconduct committee. She’d spent a considerable amount of time contacting other scientists to build her defense, hoping to find people who’d successfully repeated her results. But it had been a disappointing effort. Most people refused to take her phone calls or respond to her emails. Of those who did talk to her, none had been successful in their attempts to repeat her work. Nor did anyone have any sympathy for her situation. She was an outcast, shunned by her colleagues.

Thank God for Jake. He seemed to have a sixth sense for knowing when she needed encouragement and support. Although that seemed to be pretty much all the time these days, so maybe it wasn’t so hard.

Pam entered the meeting room on the twentieth floor of the Langmere Institute and Caroline Rifkin directed her to a seat at one end of a dark wood conference table. Portraits of former Institute directors hung on the paneled walls, apparently there to observe the proceedings. Mary O’Connor and the three members of the committee sat in leather chairs around the table, with a carafe of water and glasses in the middle, next to a voice recorder.

Rifkin introduced James Fuller as the chair of the committee. Pam didn’t know him well but recognized him as a senior member of the Langmere, one of the world’s experts on Parkinson’s disease. Fuller then introduced the other two committee members, whom Pam had never met. An older pudgy man, Craig Samuelson, who just looked at her stone-faced. And a red-haired woman, Laura Harrison, about Pam’s own age. Harrison gave her an encouraging nod and Pam thought she might have an ally on the committee. Or at least someone who would give her a fair hearing.

Fuller initiated the questioning. “Let me start by telling you that Drs. O’Connor and Rifkin have already briefed us on the case. The issue of course is that the results reported in your paper on aneurinide apparently cannot be reproduced by multiple other scientists and there is a strong suspicion that the paper is fraudulent. The responsibility of this committee is to determine whether there’s a reasonable likelihood that research misconduct, in this case fraud, has been committed by you or your laboratory personnel. Let me ask first if you have any views on the reproducibility of your results. Do you know of any laboratories that have been successful in confirming your findings?”

Pam forced herself to answer calmly. “No, I’m afraid that I don’t. I’ve contacted a number of colleagues and, much to my dismay, none of them have been able to see any activity of aneurinide. So I have to agree that the results we published have not been reproduced.”

Samuelson snapped at her. “When were you aware of this problem? And why haven’t you taken steps before now to clarify the situation and retract the paper? I hope you realize that you have a responsibility to the scientific community here.”

“I’m sorry, but the problem has really just become apparent in the last few weeks, not long before this committee was constituted.” Pam kept her composure with difficulty. “There were earlier rumors but it wasn’t clear that they were based on the work of laboratories that had the cell culture system working properly. The more significant failures in mouse models have been recent. At this point I thought that I should wait until this committee had done its work and a full clarification could be put forward.”

“Well,” Fuller said, “at least we’re in agreement that the published results aren’t reproducible. So the issue before this committee is to determine how this could have happened. Is there any explanation you can offer?”

“The only possibilities I can come up with are that there was either a mix-up in the chemical library or the aneurinide they’re sending out to other investigators is no longer active. We tested three different samples of aneurinide when we were doing the screening, so I’m confident there was no mistake in our identification of the compound we got from the library. I’ve also checked to be sure that the aneurinide being distributed by the chemical library is the same batch we used. But perhaps it’s decayed and no longer has full activity.”

Caroline Rifkin spoke up. “I’ve already taken it upon myself to investigate that possibility. As you say, the batch of aneurinide currently being dispensed by the chemical library is exactly the same as you used. Moreover, I’ve been able to verify that it’s still fully active. As you know, it was originally identified as a cancer drug. So I had it tested in those experiments, and the material now being dispensed by the library has full biological potency.”

“I see.” Pam was set back by this news. “Well, I’m afraid that I have to think about fraud then, too. I just find it hard to believe that my postdoc could have done this.”

“To be clear for the record, when you say ‘your postdoc,’ are you referring to Holly Singer or to George Montague?” Fuller asked.

“If anyone, it would have to be Holly. George developed the screening system, but Holly was the one who did the experiments with aneurinide.”

Now Laura Harrison stepped in. “I know how hard it must be for you to consider that possibility. But one of the things that impressed me when I read your paper is how thoughtful you were to do a double-blind experiment to protect yourself against just this eventuality. How could your postdoc have gotten around that?”

Pam poured a glass of water before answering. “I don’t understand that either. I can imagine how Holly could have tampered with other experiments, but she didn’t know which sample was aneurinide in the double-blind.”

“Unless you told her.” Samuelson glared at her as he put the direct accusation on the table. “Did you and your postdoc do this together?”

So that’s what they’re thinking. Not just Holly, me too.

“What! Absolutely not, why would I do something like that? That’s absurd.”

Samuelson turned red and looked like he was about to yell at her, but Fuller held up his hand. “We’re just after the truth here. But the double-blind experiment does become the crux of the matter. How do you think your postdoc could have cheated on that?”

“I don’t know.” Pam took a sip of water as she tried to recover her composure. “She somehow would have to have gotten hold of my code for the samples.”

“Okay, let’s try going through this in detail. Can you tell us exactly what happened when that experiment was set up?” Harrison asked.

Pam nodded. “Sure, I can reconstruct it. Holly brought me six numbered tubes, one of which contained aneurinide. Obviously, I didn’t know which. I transferred the contents to new tubes that I relabeled with letters. Then I gave those to George to run the experiment. And we all looked at the cultures together in the end to see the results and decode the samples.”

“So exactly where did Holly give you the samples?” Harrison pressed for details. “Did she have her code written down somewhere?”

“She brought the tubes to my office. She had her code written on a piece of paper that she consulted when we finished the experiment. But I never saw it before then, if that’s your next question.”

Harrison didn’t respond to that. Instead she asked, “Okay, so you had these six tubes that you then recoded. Where did you do that?”

“I went into the lab and did it that evening.”

“And do you remember who else was there?”

“Nobody. That’s why I waited until evening when the lab was empty.”

“Okay, that makes sense. And how about your own code? Could Holly somehow have gotten hold of it?”

Pam sighed. “I don’t see how. I purposely took it home and kept it in my desk there, so that no one in the lab could have access to it.”

“So is there any way you can imagine that Holly could have gotten the code?” Harrison asked. “There has to be some explanation.”

“I don’t see how she could have,” Pam said. “This whole thing just doesn’t make sense.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Samuelson said, his voice rising. “Unless you were responsible, together with your postdoc.”

“I didn’t do a damn thing!”

Fuller broke in again. “I think this is enough for now, and our time is almost up. Dr. Weller, we’ll undoubtedly call you back to meet with us again as we continue looking into this.”

Pam felt the room spinning as she got up. Like the committee, she didn’t see a way that Holly could have cheated on the double-blind experiment. And how could that leave them with any option except considering both Holly and herself as suspects?