Had an interesting situation come up the other day. Some of you who have been on the site a while might know that I'm in the medicine buzz, as in creating new medicines. One of the things I do on the side for extra cash is to help some Wall Street types decide if they should put money into developing some molecule that a company is looking to develop (if I have a superpower, it's smelling bullshit).

Another thing I'm known for in some circles is being very cynical about science. I think the "reproducibility crisis" isn't due to a bunch of complicated factors, but to the simple factor that people publish bullshit way more often than not. I think most of the bullshit is biased data moreso than fraudulent data (soft vs hard corruption, say).

But yesterday, as I was reviewing a diligence package on a company I found a figure that looked familiar to me, but not entirely. So I cross reffed the recent papers from the scientist whose lab the work came from, and there it was: the figure in the paper had actual manipulated data... Not something like the results of one molecular test that an underling could have messed up, but a complete misrepresentation of the work that was done.

Needless to say I called my people and said, this guy's a liar and don't ever talk to him again. But there's a bigger issue here, too, which is that the knowledge I have could ruin this guy's career (he's a decently well known guy in the field, though not like a really famous scientist). But if NIH knew what I know he would be black listed from getting a grant for a long time, maybe forever. I'm bound by an NDA not to blab, and I won't, because my career matters more to me than the satisfaction I'd get out of blasting this dude. But man, it's gonna weigh on me for a while.

Science can't proceed by fraud. And yet there's so much suspected fraud in the field, so you want to help when you can. But I'm powerless here. Really interesting situation for me (but probably nobody else!).