Like most folks who have not only hung around in academics but venerated scholarship, I am a little circumspect about applied scientists.  I wonder if they do not get bored, repeating the same procedures.  I will admit the closest I have gotten to forensic science is television shows about crime scene investigations.  And I mean the rare times that I watch.

There’s an evolving story out there about an analyst in a state drug lab in Massachusetts who knowingly mishandled evidence in tens of thousands of cases.  And this thing is only going to get deeper. I remember in the fall, when the story hit.  It made no sense to me and I cannot imagine it would to anyone else.  A young woman falsifies evidence that would put people in jail and let people out of jail and nobody knows why or how.  All she says on the record is that she “messed up.”

This case intrigues me mainly because I know that falsifications of results, at least in research science, are at an all time high.  This has been correlated with the horrible pressures in research careers with obtaining funding, maybe even with some sense of competition for success.  In reviewing that data, I did not find a single female perpetrator. Read more on Why Would a Forensic Scientist Run Amok?…