“Well, you know,” Hackett began with his usual diffidence, “we can never predict how these will play out . . .”
“You have one of the strongest cases we've seen,” finished Schneiderman. “We've read the paper closely, reviewed your materials, begun to analyze theirs. The discrepancies between the raw data and the published work are staggering. As you might imagine, the interviews have not shed light on this at all.”
“More heat than light,” drawled Hackett.
“You've interviewed Cliff?”
Hackett stared at her in mock surprise, and she was mortified. She hadn't meant to sound so eager, yet her overriding concern slipped out. How would he try to cover now? Could ORIS pin him down even a little?
“We're in the process of interviewing everyone by phone,” said Schneiderman.
“But the documents are the core of the investigation,” said Hackett. “We start from the published work and then trace our way backward. It's a kind of reverse engineering, if you see what I mean. But you'll be pleased to know that just as you suggested, the data gets more and more spotty as we proceed.”
“Well, I'm not pleased to know it,” said Robin.
Hackett grinned.
“You've brought the three pages with you?” Schneiderman asked.
She hesitated, her hand on the handle of her briefcase. It was a slim maroon leather briefcase in perfect condition. Her father and stepmother had bought it for her when she got her doctorate, imagining she'd need it for job interviews or formal presentations. She felt the irony that until now the briefcase had never been used.
“It's very important that we have the originals,” Schneiderman said.
“The materials your former colleagues sent were rather misleading, to say the least,” said Hackett.
“What do you mean?” Robin lifted her briefcase onto her lap.
“They were put together in the most artful way. I think it was Marion Mendelssohn who wrote the notes and constructed the binders.” Hackett gestured to a low bookcase stacked with huge three-ring binders. With a pang Robin recognized Marion's neat print labeling the spines. “They're very well done,” said Hackett. “Particularly the notes intended to fill in lacunae in the data sets.”
Schneiderman leaned in toward Robin. “We've got an extensive pattern of deception here.”
“Marion would never try to deceive anyone,” said Robin. “I want to be clear about that. I've made a very specific complaint about a very specific line of inquiry.”
“Understood,” said Schneiderman firmly. “Unfortunately, these complaints sometimes lead us to larger problems, further questions that result in greater implications for the lab as a whole.”
“Narrow inquiries will broaden over time,” said Hackett. “Despite our best efforts, they will do that. It seems to be the nature of the beast.”
“It's the nature of all research,” said Schneiderman. “And in this case, what we have is a careful collaboration to cover up some initial interpolations and data manipulations, or in layman's terms, lies.”
Robin's hand brushed the clasp of her briefcase. She hugged the smooth leather to her with its precious contents, the original three pages of Cliff's notes.
“May we have them?” Hackett asked.
She shook her head slightly.
“Our methods are forensic,” Schneiderman explained. “Our objective is to find out exactly what happened to this data, but at this point we're working from dim photocopies arranged and edited by the very people we're investigating, and introduced by the director of the institute himself.” He handed Robin a formal letter from Peter Hawking on institute stationery. “I'm sure you'll understand our desire to get our hands on original notes—the raw data, if you will.”
The investigators were dizzying her with layers and connections she had never considered. Marion covering up problems. Feng colluding to manipulate the data. She had come forward with a simple complaint against Cliff—an accusation of dishonesty. Hackett and Schneiderman seemed intent on finding a web of deceit throughout the lab, extending outward through the institute. Was one small set of untruths really so telling? Did the fault lines in Cliff's work really extend so far? She did not want to think that way. But then how else could scientific liars prosper, except with the tacit consent of the community around them—a heedless will to believe, on the part of peers, collaborators, and mentors alike? The scope of this speculation fascinated and repulsed her. She looked hard at the ethics watchdogs before her, no longer truly scientists, but anti-scientific sentries. She had no trouble imagining them demolishing years of work.
“We should have the original materials you found,” Hackett insisted. “We need our ‘primary sources,' if you know what I mean.”
“I know what you mean,” said Robin, “but I'm not sure I'm going to give them to you.”
Schneiderman looked disappointed, and Hackett seemed genuinely surprised to be denied like this.
“I'm just not sure that when we're talking about the possibility of fraud, we're talking about the same thing,” said Robin.
“Generally, if you want answers, you don't limit your questions,” Hackett said testily. “We'll need the originals.”
Robin flushed at this presumption. “I'm not giving them to you.”
“All right,” said Schneiderman.
But Hackett smiled at her and said, “You will.”
The offices of Paul Redfield (D-Ill.), were spacious but plain, the furniture square, sharp cornered, and heavy. The receptionist herself seemed like a period piece, with her contralto smoker's voice and glasses on a chain.
“You're here to see Ian Morgenstern?”
“Yes.”
“One moment and I'll let him know that you've arrived.”
Robin sat down and waited for several minutes, and the receptionist smiled beneficently. “These are all Illinois artists,” she explained as Robin glanced nervously at the art on the walls. “They are from the Depression era, and most of them were created under the auspices of the Federal Art Project. This bridge here is by Emil Armin. This woodcut is by Todros Geller.”
Robin stood and examined the woodcut of two men laboring in the shadows of looming smokestacks. The image looked as though it had been drawn in soot and sweat and tears. But the cheerful assistant who came to get her didn't give the artwork a second glance as he ushered Robin into an interior office.
“Here you are,” he said, delivering Robin to an office with no art or Craftsman-style furniture, just piles and piles of papers and a television and a computer and a dot-matrix printer spewing a daisy chain of pages onto the floor.
“Welcome.” Ian Morgenstern stood up and leaned over his desk to shake her hand.
He seemed even younger than he'd sounded in their conversations on the phone. Morgenstern was strong nosed and slight in build, with sandy blond hair curling up over his forehead in a near pompadour. His eyes were steely blue, his tie hung loose around his neck. His white shirtsleeves were rolled up, but his suit jacket was placed carefully over the back of his chair. She took a seat and watched him. She would be careful.
“I'm sure you know how grateful we are that you were willing to come,” he told Robin. “As you know, science and scientific conduct are two areas upon which Representative Redfield has focused over the past several years—”
“Why?” Robin asked.
“What was that?” Startled by the interruption, he nearly lost his train of thought.
“Why is he interested in science?” Robin tested him.
“Ah. Why science? Why scientific misconduct? Why do they come under the purview of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce? Very simply: tax dollars. The National Institutes of Health received six billion dollars last year. That was not money pouring into our primary schools, or for the homeless, et cetera, but money spent entirely on research. There are people in the scientific community who take that appropriation as their divine right. Representative Redfield begs to differ. In a year when eve
ry national program—from services for the aged to support for the arts—is under scrutiny, if not constant attack, he feels that someone has got to step up to the plate and say: ‘Just where is that six billion dollars going?'” As he grew excited, Morgenstern's speech accelerated and his voice pitched higher. “Here we are, sacrificing scarce resources to fund research that we hope will better our lives. Does this mean we give the NIH carte blanche? For three years now, we have been publishing an annual list of awards designed to spotlight waste in government-funded science. Have you seen it? Here's a copy. It's called the Redfield List of Wasteful and Decadent Research Appropriations, or the Red List, for short. Every month, we choose a grant or project for red-listing, as a way of spotlighting where exactly our federal research funds are going.”
Robin had hoped to probe Redfield's motivation, to qualify his interest, but now she sat back with the Red List in her hands, stunned by this barrage of words. Clearly, Morgenstern was no mere staff member, but Redfield's speechwriter, aide-de-camp, and cavalry all in one. Even later that night as she slept on the train, Robin heard Morgenstern's quick, high-pitched voice, his words pinging in her mind relentlessly, like the hoofbeats of a thousand tiny horses.
He pointed to an entry on the Red List. “Here, you see, we have a study of obesity in urban pigeons. That's one of my favorites. And this one: a grant to teach children to watch television better. Isn't that great? We're going to teach kids to watch TV! And here's one I love: a grant to conduct a comparative ethnography of UFO sightings in immigrant communities. This is a federally funded study of how we feel about phenomena that do not exist! But this isn't why we've asked you here today. In the past year, Representative Redfield has grown increasingly concerned about the specter of fraud in the scientific community—incidents that highlight a culture of deception in many federally funded projects. Your own experience as a whistle-blower at a prestigious institute, your observations, and particularly the evidence you have compiled, lead us to believe you would be a compelling witness.” Ian Morgenstern's face glowed with pleasure as though he were congratulating Robin, indeed offering her a crown of laurels. “We would like to invite you to testify before the Subcommittee on Science and Technology.”
Calm descended on the office. Robin realized with some surprise that it was her turn to speak. “This is interesting,” she said. “But as I've said before, my complaint is very limited, and I think you'll find it very technical. I'm not sure it's really appropriate for this sort of testimony.”
“Oh, I very much disagree,” Morgenstern said.
“As for my observations and my documentation, I want to make it clear that they were planned for a limited audience of scholars and ORIS investigators only. I never intended to display them in such a public forum . . . and I don't think it's necessary to—”
“Ah, but a public forum is necessary, if we are talking about the public good,” parried Morgenstern.
“I am not talking about the public good,” Robin replied deliberately.
Morgenstern frowned. She'd silenced him, and she enjoyed the sensation. He was far too smooth, too quick, much too eager to enlist her in his master's political cause. “I know myself,” she said, “and I am not at all sure I want to testify.”
“But you should,” said Morgenstern encouragingly, as if she were simply shy. “And we can subpoena you, in any case.”
Her heart jumped. The sober distance she thought she'd achieved was gone. She'd thought she'd been so careful coming here. She'd told herself she would test the waters, and suddenly she was flailing and thrashing, and she had no idea where the bottom was. She burned with anger and dismay. Pride alone compelled her to speak. She said, “I can't continue this conversation without representation.”
5
“I ASSUME that I'll go back,” Feng told his lawyer.
“What do you mean, go back?”
“To China.”
“What are you talking about?” Byron Zouzoua demanded. He was an arresting-looking advocate of Cameroonian descent, New Jersey raised, Harvard and Oxford educated, just a few years out of Yale Law School and keen to make his name. His complexion was black as obsidian, his hair close cropped, his voice deep, and his fingers long and delicate. His suits were crisp, beautifully cut, his shirts perfect, to Feng's eye. “You're not going anywhere, man. You're not seceding from this controversy.”
Feng did not argue, but looked at Zouzoua with a mixture of skepticism and misery, and just a touch of amusement at the stern reprimand. His dark humor had not deserted him.
“You will not go back anywhere. This media frenzy is not about you, and it's not about science. Do you think these people have a clue about science?” Zouzoua scoffed at the folders of newspaper clippings on his desk.
The file was now voluminous indeed. Feng had been elevated, lionized, adored as the young Chinese researcher who had stumbled upon a possible cure for cancer. He had been the soft-spoken genius, unaware of his own powers, realizing for the first time that R-7 diminished tumors in experimental mice. Always, in the stories, he was in the dark, toiling silently, far from home. Always, he had sacrificed his homeland and his native food, his family, his childhood (his boyhood journey far away to school was epic)—all for science. He had been a Horatio Alger for the scientific age, working his way from peasant rags to intellectual riches; from poverty and village ignorance in China to a world of possibility in America.
And now the dream was falling apart in all the newspapers. The work with R-7 was suspect. An inquiry at the highest levels was under way, and Feng's very integrity questioned. Great wondering articles appeared in The Boston Globe; a critical analysis was published in the Science section of The New York Times. Feng's picture flashed on television newscasts, reporters had begun to call the lab, and even Feng's apartment. As quickly as he'd embodied hope, he now became the target of suspicion. As intriguing and delightful as his shy, mystified face had been, his was now the face of doubt.
Zouzoua scowled at the old profile of Feng torn from People magazine. “What you are experiencing is the xenophobia of this country. That's the first thing you've got to understand and the first statement we have to make. There is no area of inquiry in the United States untainted by politics, and, unfortunately, there is no political arena untouched by the specter of race.” Zouzoua spread his open hands before him as if to say “Need I say more?” and Feng marveled at his perfect white cuffs, the glint of his cuff links, the pinkness of his palms.
“These fascinate me,” Zouzoua said of the clippings on his desk. “They're all the same. Every article, every venue, from People to the Times; every byline and every date. They all tell the same story—and it's about how we see difference. If we can expose that, if we can really open people's eyes to the prejudices and racial politics underpinning this investigation, that would mean something.”
“Would it mean something for me, too?” asked Feng. While he appreciated Zouzoua's broad vision of the situation, he could not really believe that such visions or bold statements would be of any help. Since when did reporters retract their articles because they had come to understand their own subtle racism? He'd thought he had inured himself in the lab to forces beyond his control, but all the mysteries and difficulties there appeared small and manageable compared to the storm raging outside, the blizzard of articles driven by—what? ORIS? Public interest? Xenophobia? Or were the new articles spawned by the ones that came before?
No one teased Feng about the attention now. There were no more postings on the bulletin board. One day, in fact, the old clipping from People disappeared.
Lab meetings were fraught. Marion knitted furiously, bent over the fisherman's sweater she was making for Jacob. As she grew more anxious, her pattern seemed to grow more elaborate. She knitted cables and honeycombs, double zigzags, basket weaves, diamond and trellis patterns, and the stitches were perfect, tight and even. She held her yarn taut against her index finger, even as she studied documents on the table. No matter what
was happening, she kept the tension of her wool consistent.
Cliff was ashamed to think that once he'd been even a little jealous of Feng for getting so much press. He had been afraid before that Feng would get the credit for R-7; he'd never imagined Feng would take the blame as well. What a lot of time he'd spent fretting that Feng would get all the glory. How foolish he had been. These days, envying Feng could not have been further from Cliff's mind. He had no envy left, and he had no time.
Feng's story had been cruelly publicized in the popular press, but everyone in the scientific community knew that Cliff was the driving force behind R-7. Feng had tapered off his contributions even as Cliff stepped up his efforts. Researchers in the field were keenly aware of this. They calibrated the reputations of their colleagues and competitors with precision, and had awarded Cliff the lion's share of credit for R-7. In their eyes, the full weight of the ORIS investigation fell on him as well.
Nothing had prepared Cliff for this constant battering. He felt that every time he paused in answering Hackett and Schneiderman's questions on the phone, they took his silence as an admission of guilt. He was sure every detail he could not recall would be held against him. Cliff's earnest, bespectacled attorney, Tim Borland, talked about a vigorous defense; he used the words outrage, disbelief, and travesty. Sandy Glass scoffed at ORIS, and mocked what he called their fishing expedition. Brave words, but they were only words. The investigation persisted, shadowing days and weeks, and Cliff's inner certainty could hardly shelter him from the accusations and suppositions raining down upon his head.