Jamie Brodie 01 - Cited to Death

different - but no, they'd used the same numbers. They'd just juggled the stats, using a higher value of p , to make them match the results they wanted.
    The only section that was different was the discussion. Oliver and the others must have had to rewrite that section. Everything else, they had lifted from Hughes and Llewellyn.
    Oliver’s breakthrough article was completely plagiarized.
    Holy. Fucking. Shit.
    "Holy fucking shit ."
    "Excuse me?" I looked up. Pete was standing in the doorway. Was it 4:00 already? It was.
    "Sorry. Sorry. I just figured it out. The entire second article is plagiarized."
    " What ?"
    "They stole it. Oliver and the others stole the Welsh article word for word. I wonder if the procedure even works. The numbers are the same. They just doctored them, like you said, to make them fit the results they wanted."
    "So what does that mean?"
    "One thing it means is that these guys have built this very lucrative lab on the basis of stolen research. If the procedure works, then the least they're guilty of is blatant plagiarism. If it doesn't work, then...I guess we're talking about fraud. Although I have no idea what laws they might have broken."
    "What are you going to do?"
    "I don't know. I can’t think what to do about this right now. I guess there's some medical board that would handle things like this."
    "Well, you can think while we eat. In the mood for pizza? I was thinking 800 Degrees."
    800 Degrees was just off campus, so I could make it back to my class by 5:30. Since it was early, we got seated right away. We ordered a large pepperoni and mushroom to share. The waiter went off with our order and Pete jumped back into the discussion.
    "So, this plagiarism must be what Dan stumbled across."
    "Yeah. I wonder what tipped him off? Must have been something Goldstein said at some point."
    "Do you think Goldstein was in on the plagiarism?"
    "His name's on the article. Although if he didn't know about the first article, he may not have realized. But I don't know if that's a good enough excuse."
    "There's probably a way to report something to the California medical board online. You may even be able to do it anonymously."
    "Anonymous would be good."
    "Yeah." Pete considered. "You might want to call HALT."
    “HALT?”
    “The LA County Health Authority Law Enforcement Task Force. They investigate anything having to do with any fraudulent medical practice in the county.”
    “I need to find out if all of them were in on it though. I don’t want to accuse anyone falsely.”
    “You could just report them all and let the medical board sort it out.”
    “Yeah, but if I can find out which of them were responsible…”
    “Do you have any thoughts along those lines?”
“Well, my initial thought would be Oliver. He’s the first author, and I do know that he worked in Cambridge at the same time that the authors of the Welsh article had their lab in Oxford. And he’s the one that came to see me at the library. Which was very odd. I can see Dan’s boyfriend being involved, too. He must have said something to Dan to raise Dan’s curiosity in the first place, right? The woman – Dr. Wray – I don’t know. She co-founded the lab with Oliver, but she may not have known about the research.”
    Pete frowned. “I don’t see how any of them could not know. But the ones that were acting squirrely when we were there this morning were Oliver and Goldstein. Wray, on the other hand, seemed very pleasantly surprised to see you. Not the reaction I’d expect from a criminal.”
    “Right. Oliver’s my first choice for chief perpetrator.”
    “Agreed.” Pete speared a black olive from my plate. “What are you gonna do next?”
    “I don’t know. I need to let this sit in my head for a while.”
    “Okay. Do you want me to pick you up after class?”
    “Nah. I’ll ride the bus. I’m gonna let them out early tonight.”
    After dinner, I went to my classroom, then turned on my laptop and found the website for the Medical Board of California and their Consumer Complaint form. There was a section to report fraud or other "unprofessional conduct." I bookmarked it but didn't fill it in. It wasn't anonymous, and I kept thinking that there might be an innocent explanation for what I’d found. Not that I could conjure one up.
    Even though it was early, I was getting tired. The students arrived, and I gave them their final in-class assignments. Each of them had a different complicated history reference question