Intuition by Allegra Goodman
Happily, I really liked Allegra Goodman’s “Intuition” (2006), which deals with fraud in a biotech lab. Ms. Goodman did some of her research in a lab at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, and she demonstrates how questionable results can make it onto the record, despite the good intentions of the scientist involved. It took me back to my years in Massachusetts when I was married to a candidate for a Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering.
The others in his Environmental Engineering program included entomologists studying gypsy moths. He did not get the doctorate. After I left him, he got kicked out of the program for falsifying his data. I was not the one who turned him in. It was the pretty lab technician he was bonking, the one who already had a child out of wedlock when she met him. Sure, I knew he was falsifying data when he was about two years into the program. I saw him sitting at the table in our bedroom in Graduate Student Housing filling in lab data sheets. Sure, I knew he was cheating when I found women’s underwear smaller than my size on that same the bedroom floor.
I had been a biologist for my first two years of college and I knew the rules. I asked him what he was doing and he growled at me. I shrank back and disappeared.
When one does not have an independent source of support, when one is financially dependent on the person who is lying, one can make some destructive decisions. That is an underlying theme of “Intuition”.
Allegra Goodman draws clearly defined personalities that really drive the action. Dr. Glass, the marketing half of the research lab, is a successful, wealthy, practicing M.D. who “embraced mythology. He was an oncologist. He understood the uses of enchantment.”
The prime mover of the lab is Dr. Marion Mendelssohn, a brilliant researcher committed to finding the truth but who is hobbbled by her introversion. When they are hauled before a congressional committee to defend work in their lab, Dr. Glass spurs Marion to defend herself. “Stop acting guilty when you’re not. Stop dreading everything when you have nothing to fear.”
The strong characterization would make this novel a candidate for a movie, but the ending is a lot like true life. And not a Hollywood ending. In real life, the good guys don’t always win, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the bad guys win.
Sometimes being right costs you everything.
How important is it to be right? As my friend Beth once asked, “Would you rather be right or be happy?” I saw the dismay creep into her face as I struggled with what she thought was an easy question.
I identified with the researcher who was committed to the truth, to being right. And I laugh at my glee, realizing that my cheating husband was kicked out of his Ph.D. program because the slatternly lab tech turned on him.
