How should a manager figure out the identity of a shady geneticist?

Hi guys, got a writer's block and it's not the first time I come here, so basically the title says it all, and I'm gonna go into details with this one.

Extremely recently, people who got infected by one of the three pathogens (No specific idea, but my idea is a malaria-like parasite, a bacteria and likely a Phage virus.) got superpowers, yet those who get more than one dies when infected. They all had incubation time, but they all infect and die (self destruct) 6 days after a supposed amount of time, and that infection had only happened once, however globally and within the same time period.

Thankfully, people managed to isolate the pathogens and prevented them from killing themselves in labs. Nobody has an idea where exactly these pathogens come from, why they are able to give people superpowers, and especially why would a living thing try to kill themselves.

There're lots of sub-plots happening, but one I'm gonna talk about is the finding out of the original perpetrators. Take note this happens in a very near future (2018) so any changes in technology should (yes should) not be crucial. Most, or maybe 60-ish percent of characters do not have superpowers (as it should be), and we'll leave it at that.

However, something that bugs my mind is that while the geneticists aren't really bad guys (the death due to two pathogens infecting one host was an uncalculatable mistake rather than intentional), they act like the golden fleece rather than serial killers, running away whenever able. How should the 'main' characters find and corner them? I'll spill some beans that the M Cs are basically manager-assistant manager couple working for an Eroge industry, who had little time left after work, yet the assistant manager is one curious fuck that can't be left alone until she can get a rather acceptable answer. Her husband just piggybacks and carries her shit if he has nothing more important to do, which is a rare occasion because well, he's a manager.

I have an idea that they found these shady fucks due to a forged research paper, but they use an alter ego so it's even harder to find them out. Do you guys have any ideas? Thank you.

I don't think that idea would work, since almost all published scientific papers are carefully scrutinized by the journal's that publish them. A requirement is that the authors work at a reputable research institution, so I don't know how an author could conceal their identity (I'm even more confused why they would want to).

URL, of course, it's almost impossible for an amateur detective to beat the police, unless they somehow have information the police don't have.

That's why I asked for more ideas. I know it's not such a plausible idea.

What about peer-to-peer tracing? I mean since scientists work together, there's always a pretty good chance for someone to trace back every scientist since one scientist will always have to associate themselves with other scientists, technically as long as those scientists do not work in a closed group (which of course is nigh impossible unless they are paid by a country's intelligence agency, which they aren't), we can trace them back. The real challenge here is finding out the real perpetrators.

There's also possibility that they are going to get told a lot by everyone they ask, truth or lies. One of a childhood friend of the MC is also a microbiologist, although he already has a sub-plot of his own. Maybe they should start with asking him? (And spoiler alert, no he isn't responsible.)

I'm replying to bump up this post, maybe someone else may be interested, or maybe know a better answer

Not all scientific journals are non-profit or ethical. Some in fact will publish whatever, for a price.

The question is confusing to me, because it isn't clear to me why these perpetrators would want to publish evidence of heir crime, yet remain anonymous. Could you provide some more details?

The story is that while the perpetrators have published the same stuff before 'that day' (no government has an official name for this event,), they don't want to be punished for it, since y'know giving superpowers to a random sample of the whole humanity is such a great fucking idea. They planned to well, just work as weird superpower scientists undercover. To top it off, most of the people responsible also died of the same disease that they created, because of the whole multiple pathogens thing. The only perpetrator that is left would love to help people by releasing the 'source code', or what kinds of occult shit his peers used to create magical pathogens, but his paranoia got the better of him and he played hard to catch. Probably it was for the better since any dictator would also love to seize the ideas behind it and do something worse, or so he thinks.

It's basically a mix of 'for the greater good' and 'I don't want to take credit for any success nor be responsible for any damage done'. Since he's alone now, it's even harder for him to go out of the closet. The prospect of him being punished all by himself is worse than being hauled as a hero of his time, more so as it's basically a gamble.

Edit 1: Remembered you need to go down to every detail of procedure in order for your experiment to be a legit and reproducible experiment. How do I get around this?

edited 13th Sep '16 5:22:35 PM by legonut031

You cant. The whole point of scientific journals is to allow reputable scientists share information with each other and advance the scientific consensus. No journal is going to publish an article that lacks key details like contact information or methodology. Why did these guys want to publish their work anyway?

Let's start by taking a look at (one of) the themes, which is optimism vs pessimism. This one geneticist never wanted to have any trouble, but most of his other peers that worked on the same superpower giving pathogens wanted to distribute (without patent) several pathogens, which each can give a different sets of superpowers (and every one of them breaks a different law of the universe), and thus use them to grow food sources, create (technically) infinite energy, and shit like that. How they got it however, is another story.

So some of the guys got wary at what some bad guys might do with this much power, the last guy being one of them. But either way they decided to test three of them on a random sample of people, knowing it can be activated prematurely by releasing a trigger virus. But as they are also infected by more than one of them, all but one of those who worked died. Also, they spread extremely quickly, so by the time they released the virus, almost 40 percent of humanity had been infected by at least one of them.

This last geneticist's nightmare had gone true, and as a lot of journals had been published with his name on it, he would have to either wait for doom to come with torches and pitchforks, or play safe, fake his death, and publish the rest of his friend's work anonymously.

Tldr: They published journals because most guys believed it could do good, and it did do good in some way, not for them however.

PS: If it was that way, then no way it could've been a shady group of scientists. It would've been only one shady guy. If it was that way then the Ass. manager should see their paper, go 'Oohh this is interesting' and try to contact them only to find the horrible news that they all died.

Charming.

Let me be blunt about this. You're using a lot of words, and yet it is very hard to understand what you're saying or the way your fictional world works. Yes you're posting a lot of subplots for your story, but it's hard to tell the tone of your story and the amount of realism. Therefore it's impossible to tell what would work for you.

Journals have been known to publish nonsense scientific papers:

http://news.mit.edu/2015/how-three-mit-students-fooled-scientific-journals-0414

So, it really isn't far fetched that a manager would notice later on that one project has false information.

edited 13th Sep '16 10:50:39 PM by Nightlikeday

I hear this a lot :( They also say the same thing when I'm arguing, lots of babble but lack of detail or persuasion.

The intended tone of the story is serious and challenges you to pick a side, rather than just telling you to root for the main character's side. These stories I'm writing symbolizes the end of a lazy fictional world and the birth of a wary and active one, a world which is both good and evil, both idealistic and realistic, both euphoric and depressed. There's nothing such as good enough, nothing is too good to be true. What you fight for isn't important, only how hard will you smash is important. However, goodness and righteousness will be the only one that gets rewarded.

Realism? I would assume it'd still be pretty realistic (aside from the whole superpowers thing), people without super wisdom will not be infallible and those without super elasticity would still get their bones broken if struck hard enough.

I know the feels

OK, I think I get the picture now. One of the original team of scientists wants to try and make amends by sharing what he/she knows with the world, but doesn't want anyone to know who they are. Am I right?

What I would suggest as a way to set up your plot in a maximally plausible way would be to have these guys originally working for some corporate-funded think tank. That way, they have the resources to advance their research, but the results are owned by the corporation, so normally it would never have been published. Safety protocols somehow fail, and the triple virus gets out into the general population. Several billion dead later, the last remaining member of the research team publishes what they know on an anonymous web site. I think that covers all the ground you need it to, and doesnt break suspension of disbelief in any major way.

How's that?

edited 14th Sep '16 3:30:31 PM by DeMarquis

Sounds awesome. Or at least better than what I had in mind. But then how did the last scientist get found out? I'd say the most obvious choice is IP tracking from that website.

It's great you have found a potential solution.

That being said, I would be more worried about the lack of clarity in your writing. The key is to make it simple stupid. To be able to look at the whole. For all the complexity of The Lord of the Rings, it can be described in a few words: A journey in a high fantasy setting to destroy a ring.

You have this amazing image of your work in your head. But we don't have that benefit.

We're in a writing forum and as writers we don't mind reading your long explanations. Average readers do. You only have a few lines to hook them.

The thing to do now is to start writing it.

Sure, thank you. I'll be back ASAP, but school work keeps me from doing it full time.