> Why would anyone try to trick two women into making allegations that a guy is a creep? They fully well know that these allegations will blow up their careers

> Why would anyone try to trick two women into making allegations that a guy is a creep? They fully well know that these allegations will blow up their careers and are very likely to be unsuccessful in influencing Aubrey de Grey's career long term. The person or people that would be tricking other people in this scenario into coming forward wouldn't necessarily have a career blown up, just the people they tricked. I think the implication he's going for is "I had two, and just two somewhat sketchy interactions in the past, and neither were all that bad, and then those people were convinced there there were a lot more that happened they didn't know about, and so felt compelled to step forward with their experiences to help others, even though those additional experiences never happened." On the one hand, I can see a possibility where that's possible, and this wasn't even premeditated to this extend, and it was just someone on the board badmouthing him and implying stuff, and it traveled between people and got out of hand, but on the other had, that seems pretty unlikely. You'd think someone willing to publicly speak about their experiences like this that might expect backlash would be more careful than to do so without making very sure to investigate a bit more, so the "it's really just you two and wasn't great, but not all that bad" defense isn't really a strong one, at least not if any other evidence comes forth. If none comes forth, that will be interesting (but at the same time we'll all have moved on and will likely associate Aubrey de Grey with this even if he's later somewhat vindicated in some way).