This question came to me some years ago while I was working at my old job. My job at that company was to test finished product for microbiological defects. The company manufactured sweeteners that were, for the most part, microbiologically clean. It was rare that we would find a count of mold (that’s one mold spore) in a 1.0 kilogram sample. The lab existed simply to cover the company’s ass in the event someone got sick and one of our customers (they used the sweetners to make products like soda or salad dressing) tried to scapegoat us.

Anyway, the plant operated 24 hours a day 7 days a week and so did our lab. I had to work every third weekend and some holidays. The first year I worked there being the low man on the totem pole I was assigned to work on Christmas. On Christmas Eve I became aware that I was getting sick - some kind of stomach flu. In the morning I sucked it up and went in to work. After all, I wasn’t about to call my co-worker (who hated me, btw. That’s another story.) on Christmas morning and tell her that she had to go in and work for me.

In the lab I was feeling like crap. I just wanted to go home and sleep. The lab building was deserted and the only people in the plant were the bare minimum personnel needed to keep the process running. I had all of my samples spread out in front of me and I thought

“I could just throw these all away, write ‘pass’ on all of the data sheets, and go home. Everything always passes anyway so what’s the difference if I don’t actually do the test? Its physically impossible for bacteria to grow in this stuff anyway. It’s pure sugar with no moisture. It’s like a human trying to eat a whole loaf of bread in a minute without drinking water.

But I banished those thoughts and ran the full schedule of tests. Feeling as nauseated and barfy as I was I can understand why my morality failed and I was tempted to betray my employer and abandon all professionalism. I wasn’t raised to be that kind of person, even if the tests were pretty meaningless in the grand scheme of things. All of my samples passed and I went home after about 4 hours’ work (a normal amount for a holiday.)

But I got to thinking: there are thousands of these labs all over the country. Many of them are staffed with non-degreed personnel who know how to do the tests but do not understand the science behind it. If an honest person like myself can contemplate falsifying results then there MUST be many more people who have contemplated it and actually gone through with it. My suspicion was confirmed years later when talking to a friend of my Dad’s who once worked in a lab that tested plastics. He told me about a lady who worked in his lab whose job it was to run some kind of machine that tested tensile strength. For 15 years she ran that machine and submitted results for the record. When the company was bought out by Dow they sent scientists to audit lab procedures. When the scientists asked the lady to demonstrate the procedure for testing the plastics on the machine she became flustered and had to leave the room. Later she admitted that she had no idea how to operate the machine that she had allegedly been operating for the past 15 years. How many defective batches of product had been shipped because of this woman? Nobody really knows.

I trust myself and I know my work is sound but, believe me, I’ve met scientists that I do not trust. I know these “poisonous” scientists are out there but I have no way of knowing how many there are at the upper levels doing critical research. Fortunately, it holds true in this profession that the cream rises to the top. The scammers and fakers tend to languish in thankless jobs performing research of limited importance.