The Crying Window: Memoir of a Woman Scientist Looking for Truth is the lifelong pursuit of Helene Z. Hill, PhD, a retired, distinguished radiation biologist, to uncover dishonesty, fraud, and deceit in scientific experimentation. A late-in-life memoir, remarkable for its meticulous attention to detail, its focus on the chronology and unraveling of events, and its descriptions of the scientists involved, it is an excellent and eminently readable book.

In Part I, a Bildungsroman, Dr. Hill reexamines her youth through the lens of her social background. Born into Philadelphia’s Main Line, she grew up in the exclusive, insular world of strict norms and proscriptions, in short, the WASP world. She attended private and boarding schools, summered in East Hampton, and became a debutante, yet always yearned for the forbidden, a life beyond the closed window. Smith College provided the opportunity and became an intellectual and social turning point. There she met Jewish people and even dated one (a shock to her mother)!

Despite a disastrous first semester, Dr. Hill developed a keen interest in organic chemistry and sensed that she might pursue a career in science. She studied abroad in Paris, experienced romance, and returned to Smith to pursue a premedical curriculum. Her first real job, working with mice in a laboratory at Memorial Hospital in New York, exposed Dr. Hill to the excitement of big-city life, where she met her first husband. They had two children, but the marriage ended in divorce, and she settled into the unhappy role of the lonely housewife, determined more than ever to pursue her own career. A second marriage, to Dr. George Hill, an esteemed surgeon, brought happiness, stability, and the births of two more children. Dr. Helene Hill was accepted into the PhD program in biology at Brandeis University, where she began specializing in photobiology and radiation biology.

Extraordinarily rich in detail and meticulously presented, Part II of The Crying Window, titled “My Life as a Scientist,” introduces the reader to a rogue’s gallery of individuals whom Dr. Hill perceives as misogynists, unfriendly and even hostile administrators, deans, professors of medicine, dishonest postdocs, and established scientists, all of whom are called out by name. Dr. Hill faces one career hurdle after another, often attributing them to gender bias.

Marriage to Dr. George Hill led to many moves across the United States and to various academic positions for both Drs. Hill. Dr. Helene Hill held multiple titles, including Assistant Professor of Cancer Biology (without tenure) at Washington University in St. Louis. She taught (with a heavier load) at the Marshall Medical School in West Virginia, where she encountered a dean who apparently siphoned money from the Department of Surgery to shore up other departments. A sabbatical at Brookhaven, where she studied DNA repair, proved to be one of the happiest times in her life. A move to the New Jersey Medical School opened new opportunities: both Drs. Hill received tenure. Dr. Helene Hill served as Head of the Section of Cancer Research in the Department of Radiology but found herself “alone in a very hostile environment.”

What follows is a forensic page-turner about scientific fraud, perpetrators, accomplices, fabricated experimental results, and irreproducible data, or what Dr. Hill simply terms “bad science.” She focuses primarily on an accomplished, well-published physicist recruited to NJMS and the research associate he hired, whom she describes as “seeking his fortune in the gold fields of science in the U.S.” Dr. Hill’s collaboration with these two scientists led her to conclude that the research associate had fabricated the results. She reported her suspicions to the principal investigator, but, in her view, he needed the experiment to succeed in order to renew an NIH grant, so he ultimately looked the other way. In all, 15 experiments completed by the research associate could not be replicated. Dr. Hill hesitated to investigate further. Although she regretted her initial reluctance, she ultimately overcame it, became a detective, and later became a genuine whistleblower. Appearing before the Campus Committee on Research Integrity (CCRI) at NJMS, she presented her statement, recounting the events that led to her suspicions of fraud and her evidence-based reasons, as well as her great regret in having allowed herself to be named as a co-author on a paper with the research associate as the senior author. The CCRI concluded that Dr. Hill was a troublemaker, and colleagues accused her of “ruining people’s lives.” Retaliation ensued. The principal investigator/physicist received a grant of over $1,000,000. In 2003, Dr. Hill launched a Qui tam, a civil suit alleging that he received federal funding from the NIH knowing that fraudulent data was involved. As expected, the suit was long and complicated and even involved the FBI. From 2008-2009, depositions were obtained from nine of the leading actors. Ultimately, despite excellent arguments by Dr. Hill’s attorney, for which he had admirably mastered the science behind the accusations, the depositions “went nowhere….” A trial ensued.

In the 2010 Summary Judgment, there was much back-and-forth between the plaintiff and defense attorneys. The defense attorney argued that Dr. Hill’s claims lacked both underlying justification and legal merit. Although the judge disagreed, he nevertheless waived Dr. Hill’s responsibility to pay the University’s attorney fees. Not quite a Pyrrhic victory….

Ignoring a family member’s warning, “Don’t let the truck back over you twice,” Dr. Hill continued her relentless pursuit of justice, hoping for a finding of scientific misconduct and the retraction of eight papers she coauthored with the research associate. In all, the truck backed over her six times. A 2010 appeal followed, in which the dramatis personae were the judges, the attorneys, and Dr. Hill. Some of the courtroom dialogue is repeated verbatim in this book. In 2011, Dr. Hill lost her appeal. Moreover, she was prevented from publishing any data after the launch of the Qui tam in 2003 until the case was closed in 2011, and she was ultimately issued a cease-and-desist letter by the Dean of the Rutgers New Jersey Medical School. After protracted attempts to publish, in 2016, Dr. Hill finally had a paper accepted by ScienceOpen, an online journal. Cited and recognized but not vindicated for her role as a whistleblower, she was featured in a 2013 Nature article on research ethics. She published an opinion piece in The Scientist in 2014, was interviewed on Ralph Nader’s radio program in 2015, and self-published a book entitled Hidden Data: The Blind Eye of Science in 2016.

Ultimately, Dr. Hill’s life as a professor and researcher “collapsed.” Yet at a quite advanced age, with great clarity, she has recognized the positive aspects of her personal and professional life: interviewing and teaching medical students; designing her own experiments and bringing them to fruition; and earning the guaranteed salary that comes with tenure. While she would have liked to have been Marie Curie, she remains the undaunted, outstanding scientist who, in The Crying Window, allows the reader to experience the exciting as well as the flawed world of scientific experimentation.