Cited to Death (13 page)

It was nearly noon, and I was hungrier than usual – a side effect of the steroids. I stopped at the student center to get a sandwich, then walked up to Wilson Plaza to eat. I finished up and headed for my office, getting there about 12:30. I had 30 minutes before my reference shift. I said hello to everyone, sent Dr. Loomis my sick leave forms for Monday, yesterday and this morning, sorted through the mail, and locked my laptop in my filing cabinet. I still didn’t have a desktop computer, but that was okay.

At 1:30, Clinton arrived. Liz said, “Hi, Clinton.”

“The word of the day is
bathetic
.” He bowed and walked away.

“That one sounds familiar.” Liz looked it up. “I thought so. Displaying insincere emotion.”

Heh
. Kind of like Dr. Oliver this morning, pretending to be so pleased to see us. All he’d really wanted was Pete’s money.

After reference, there was nothing on my calendar. I decided to try to finish up the unscrambling of the Welsh article.

I started putting the sentences together. It was slow going. It took me nearly a half hour to get through the review of literature. As I’d noted with the methodology, a lot of the terminology and phrases seemed similar to the ones in Oliver’s article. It still didn't strike me as unusual.

Until I got to the results section.

I’d paid close attention to the results section of Oliver’s article. Even though I didn't understand some of the terminology, I thought I had the basic idea of what had been done and how it had turned out.

And the results section of the Welsh article sounded a
lot
like the one from Oliver’s article.

But how was that possible? One procedure hadn't worked, one had. How could the results section be similar?

I had to make sure. I pulled my copy of Oliver’s article out of my computer bag, and opened it to the results section.

Not only were they similar, they matched word for word. The only difference was that the negative terms had been removed. All the "did nots" had been changed to "dids." All the "did not reacts" had been changed to "reacted with."

I was astounded. It occurred to me that I’d never thought to check the references page for a citation of the Welsh article. I flipped to the back of Oliver’s article. There was no citation for Hughes and Llewellyn.

I turned to the front of Oliver’s article and paged up the screen to the top of the Welsh article, and started comparing. The abstract, like the results section,was identical to Oliver’s article, with the negatives removed. The introductions, reviews of literature, and methodologies were identical, period. The statistics were 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 to answer, which they would write up and turn in by the end of class. I told them that I’d decided that they didn’t have to present their findings tonight. As soon as each one was finished, they could leave and turn in their reports online by tomorrow morning. They were delighted to hear that and jumped right in to work. The last one was done and out the door by 8:15. I packed up and headed for the bus stop.

It was dusk, but not completely dark. I was thinking while I walked and not paying attention to anything around me. That was my mistake. I was in the shadows, about halfway between the library and the bus stop, when someone bumped into me from behind. I turned, a little off balance, and got sucker punched. I staggered, and someone else grabbed me from behind. There were two of them. The first guy punched me again in the side of the head, then in the gut. I folded, and the second guy grabbed my computer bag and tossed it out of the way. The first guy then proceeded to hit me five or six times, mostly in the face, once more in the gut. I tasted blood and went down. I heard running steps, then silence.

It all took about ten seconds. Neither one of them had said a word.

I rolled to my side and sat up. Blood was streaming down my face, my jaw felt out of place, and my eyes were rapidly swelling. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and called 911.

It didn't take long for the UCLA police and EMTs to get to me. As soon as I told the cop what had happened, he took off in the direction I thought my assailants had run. The EMTs picked me up off the ground and set me on the back of the ambulance. They made me answer some questions - name, rank, and serial number, who was the president, what day was it, that kind of thing. Then they started mopping up the blood. I had a fat lip, cuts on both cheekbones and above my left eye, a bloody nose, and a pair of rapidly developing black eyes. They thought I should get an X-ray of my jaw, but I didn’t want to go to the hospital. The EMTs put a couple of butterfly bandages on my face and gave me two ice packs. I needed three, but I only had two hands. By the time they'd accomplished all that, the cop was back.

"Are you an employee of the university, sir?”

I nodded. “Lib’ry.” Oh, it hurt to talk.

“Okay. What happened here?"

I steeled myself to try to form words. "Mugged." It came out more like "mm-ugggd."

"Mugged? By who?"

I shrugged and held up two fingers.

"Two? Men?"

"Mmm hmm."

"Did you get a look at them?"

"Unh unh. Ski masks." It came out "ssski musk."

"Ski masks. What else were they wearing?"

"Black. Gloves."
Gluffs
.

"Could you see any identifying characteristics? Race, height, weight?"

"Bod’ whi’. Saw arms." I indicated the space right above my wrists.

"Okay. What size guys were they?"

"Big. One daller, one shorder but...beefy."
Bff-i
.

"Which direction did they go?"

I pointed to the east. “Off campus."

The cop grimaced and got on his radio. One of the EMTs got in front of me and ran me through some neurological tests - follow his finger with my eyes, touch his finger then my nose, reflexes. The other was trying to mop up some of the blood. “Sir, when was your last tetanus shot?”

I shrugged. He started preparing one.

The cop returned. "Did they take anything?"

"Unh unh."

"They just beat you up."

"Mmm hmm."

The cop paused, regarding me for a second. "Any idea who's got it in for you?"

"Unh unh." That wasn't entirely correct, but I wasn't going to go through the whole story again. It would be easier to tell Kevin’s partner Tim about it.