Chapter 3The Decimal Point That Ruined Her

By spring, Beth’s "assistance" to Whitaker was undeniable.

Mondays, she organized his desk.

Wednesdays, she picked up his dry cleaning.

Fridays, she handled his administrative filings.

Weekends... she started going to his condo to "help with his organization."

The lab saw it. No one said anything. Except Hannah, who caught me in the breakroom once.

"Is Beth... going a little overboard?"

I shook my head. "None of my business."

"But she’s—"

"Hannah, just focus on your own thesis."

Hannah looked at me for a few seconds, sighed, and walked away.

In late March, I submitted my grant application for the next phase of testing. Two weeks went by. Nothing. Four weeks. Silence.

I went to Whitaker’s office.

"Dr. Whitaker, my grant application has been sitting in 'pending' for a month."

"I’m still reviewing the direction of your project," he said, not looking up. "There’s no rush."

"But the reagents are going to—"

"I said there’s no rush."

As I walked out, I saw Beth’s grant approval posted on the department bulletin board.

Submission date: March 28th.

Approval date: March 31st.

Three days. My application had been rotting in his drawer for a month, but hers took seventy-two hours.

I stood in front of that board for a long time. A junior student walked past, murmuring, "Still looking at that, Julie? Beth’s research direction is just really solid, I guess."

I didn't answer.

In April, my funding finally came through. It was a third less than what I’d asked for. I didn’t argue. I took two thousand dollars of my own savings to bridge the gap. The experiment couldn't stop.

By May, the core data began to finalize. All three control groups were yielding results that were even better than I’d hoped.

I immediately synced them to my three clouds. I sent myself two emails—one with the attachment, one with just the raw findings and the date.

Then, I opened my physical lab notebook. I copied the data in my neatest handwriting.

Then I paused.

I flipped to the back of the notebook. I wrote out a second set of data.

This set was nearly identical to the real one, with one tiny, fatal flaw: in the third control group, I changed the p-value from 0.003 to 0.03.

A single decimal point.

To an untrained eye, or even a tired one, it looked fine. But anyone who actually understood the research would know that a p-value of 0.03 meant the results weren't statistically significant. The entire conclusion would fall apart.

I marked those pages with a sticky note: FOR VERIFICATION.

Then, I closed the book and left it on my desk.

Usually, it went everywhere with me. Today, I left it right there, in plain sight.

Before heading to the cafeteria, I adjusted my desk lamp. I tucked a single strand of my hair under the base of the lamp.

When I returned forty-five minutes later, the lamp had been moved two centimeters.

The hair was gone.

The notebook was exactly where I’d left it, but the sticky note had been moved by one page.

I sat down, said nothing, and started typing my draft.

Late that night, I stopped by the security office on my way out. The guard was scrolling through his phone.

"Hey, I think I dropped my ID card in the building earlier. Could you help me check the footage to see if anyone picked it up?"

"Which floor?"

"Third."

"Let’s take a look."

He pulled up the playback.

6:32 PM: I leave the lab for dinner.

6:41 PM: Beth enters the lab.

She walks straight to my desk. She looks around, then opens my notebook. She flips to the back—to the "bait" data.

She pulls out her phone. Snap. Snap. Snap.

She closes the book, replaces it perfectly, and leaves.

The whole thing took less than three hundred seconds.

The guard looked up. "See your ID?"

"Oh, no. Must have dropped it outside. Thanks anyway."

"No problem."

I walked into the stairwell and stood in the dark. The motion-sensor lights stayed off because I wasn't moving.

I leaned against the wall and smiled.

Okay, Beth. You took the bait.