I had an interesting day of revelations today. I'm attending a huge professional conference this week and, for once, PH(former)B is not here. I have had the opportunity to chat with several former colleagues, though, and that's always fun. One of my big revelations came during a chat with a colleague at my former job. Apparently PHB was challenged on a particular issue at a seminar (was reporting data at 5% false discovery rate instead of the standard 1% false discovery rate). My friend actually challenged PHB on this issue. Flash forward a few months, to another meeting: PHB gave the exact same talk as he had given at meeting #1. There was only one minor change: the slide that had said 5% FDR at the first meeting said 1% FDR at the second meeting. All of the other numbers were the same - in other words, he was reporting the exact same results (the 5% FDR results) but had changed the slide to make it appear that he was using the more correct (and more stringent) cutoffs.
Yep - my friend caught PHB outright in committing fraud. Kinda puts a whole new slant on the "interesting dilemma" thread, doesn't it? I now know for certain that PHB also has no issue whatsoever in lying about data when it's expedient to do so. This makes it more likely that he was complicit with my old friend The Minion on the infamous manuscript. The jury is still out on whether Pushy PI was involved as well.
Now for the second revelation: another former colleague and I went to a seminar that was an update on the big cancer project that PHB is involved in. He, like me, was a senior level person who left for greener pastures after being hosed by PHB. He, too, was involved in helping put together the grant. In listening to the seminar, we noticed something very interesting: none of the sample analysis or final data analysis was performed in PHB's lab. The sample prep, however, was. My former colleagues at the technician level prepped samples that were then sent out to other labs in the consortium to be analyzed. That's when it hit me: PHB was brought into the grant for his access to some fairly precious samples, NOT for any expertise that he has - especially since he no longer has any senior-level people who are actually qualified to do any work relating to the cancer grant. In Microsoft terms, PHB was bought for spare parts.
Most people say that is it is the intellect which makes a great scientist. They are wrong: it is character.
-- Albert Einstein