Data Manipulation: Dr. Factifuge Meets the Three Stooges

DATA MANIPULATION: DR. FACTIFUGE MEETS THE THREE STOOGES P. F. DILLON* A hush fell over the audience as Dr. Moe approached the podium. His two former collaborators, Dr. Howard and Dr. Fine, shot each other evil looks as they awaited their turn. In their salad days together, they had discovered the intelligence hormone, einsteinin, and one of its activators , inspiratin. They had agreed to the names only after a long, eyegouging , head-butting summit. In their lab, arguments were commonplace , but this was more bitter than usual. They had worked together for years, but their performances had always been disparaged by more sophisticated scientists. They did have a small following among younger and less chic colleagues. The discovery of einsteinin and inspiratin had been completely by accident. Success bred its own special kind of discord, and they went their own ways. Now each was to address the First International Symposium on Hormonal Intelligence on the age dependence of einsteinin in dogs. Could inspiratin increase einsteinin in older dogs? The question had been controversial since the discovery of einsteinin. Through the espionage of their graduate student minions, they found all had used the same breed and age of dogs and the same amount of inspiratin. The experiments were identical. What would their results be? Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine, and Dr. Moe each had his own bias. Dr. Moe received unlimited amounts of inspiratin from a pharmaceutical company interested in marketing it. He thought inspiratin was the key to understanding einsteinin and to maximize profit sharing. Dr. Fine had just contracted with another company to collaborate on their einsteinin activator, perspiratin. He hoped that perspiratin was central to underThe author thanks Robert Root-Bernstein and Joseph Clark for their subjective comments . * Departments of Physiology and Radiology, 111 Giltner Hall, Michigan State University , East Lansing, Michigan 48824.© 1990 by The University of Chicago. AU rights reserved. 003 1-5982/90/3302-0659$01 .00 Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 33, 2 ¦ Winter 1990 \ 23 1 standing hormonal intelligence. Discrediting Dr. Moe and inspiratin would certainly help eliminate the competition. Dr. Howard had just received 1 year of funding from both the Inspiratin Institute and the Perspiratin Foundation and hoped to parlay those into long-term commitments . He didn't want to jeopardize the funding from either. An ambiguous result was the best he could hope for. Dr. Moe presented his data. When the peak response of einsteinin was measured, inspiratin was found to be 50 percent more effective in older dogs than in younger dogs. The statistics were very tight, and the conclusion was inescapable: inspiratin increased einsteinin, and thus intelligence , in an age-dependent manner—the older the dog, the greater the effect. Dr. Fine was so enraged, he began to pull out his hair. When his turn came, he reported that they had done the same experiment, but with profoundly different results. When change in percent response was measured, inspiratin gave only 50 percent of the response in older dogs that it had in younger dogs. Dr. Moe, he said, was absolutely wrong. Dr. Howard was smug as he approached the podium, tripping up the steps. A pox on both your houses, he thought, or words to that effect. He, too, had done the same experiment. When the change in response was measured, he said, inspiratin had produced the same effect in younger dogs as it did in older dogs. Drs. Moe and Fine were both wrong, and any research by those two should be ignored and possibly questioned. The symposium rapidly degenerated into undignified shouting and slander. Only one consensus was reached: a controversy like this was sure to generate several years of well-funded research. But the symposium organizers were worried. Controversy was good, but the shouts of fraud could eventually lead to a visit from the "60 Minutes" crew. The data from the three labs had to be independently corroborated. They called Dr. Smith from the Federal Institute for Science and Health. Dr. Smith was one of the faceless bureaucrats that kept the federal research effort going. He, too, realized the danger of fraud, or even the perception of fraud, to the academic community. Dr. Moe, Dr. Fine...