Key quote IMO: > He did send Science a document containing what he says are McKinney’s data. It features what appear to be scanned printouts of manually typed

Key quote IMO: > He did send Science a document containing what he says are McKinney’s data. It features what appear to be scanned printouts of manually typed tables containing the isotopic data from the fish fossils. These tables are not the same as raw data produced by the mass spectrometer named in the paper’s methods section, but DePalma noted the data’s credibility had been verified by two outside researchers... This sounds consistent with honest mistakes on all sides. DePalma and/or Curtis most likely made mistakes transcribing and processing the data; if they were collaborating, DePalma would have implicitly trusted Curtis to be giving him good data, even if he genuinely didn't know where the isotope analysis happened. I don't buy the claim that there "must" have been a digital record of the isotope analysis: we'd all like to live in that world, but I get the impression that a lot of labs work on, shall we say, a less formal basis. And it's really easy to lose track of where an idea came from; both parties could honestly believe it was theirs. The main thing that's still suspicious is where it seems DePalma must have known During was working on something very similar to him/his team, and didn't tell her. That's a bit of a dick move, to say the least, even if it was just negligence. He should have been looking out for something like that. We should also hold open the possibility that Curtis was making stuff up, and DePalma and During are caught in his mess. Not especially likely, but as long as we're throwing around fraud accusations, let's be thorough.