Chapter 22: James Parker, PhD

It was two years after Deirdre and Maureen's fallout. James Parker, Ph.D., Professor of Genetics at Humboldt State University, was groaning while going over the papers his junior class students had returned. The topic was an exciting one, or so he had thought. "Pick a Nobel Price Winner and describe her/his impact on modern Biology!" Half the class had – predictably – picked Kary Mullis and the Polymerase Chain Reaction. Of those, not even twenty percent had a true understanding of Mullis' work. The other half of the essays, if you wanted to call them assays, dealt with various other scientists, obviously in the order Google or Wikipedia had spit them out.

Parker sighed. Not one student so far had even touched on what he hoped for. He put away another collection of vacuous drivel and picked the next. The first thing he saw was the neat layout. A girl, of course, one Deirdre Darling. He could not remember her for his life. One of the wall flowers, probably, a Junior. He looked at the title. "David Baltimore and the Birth of Eukaryotic Molecular Biology." Parker whistled. 1975 Nobel Price for his description and characterization of the "Reverse Transcriptase" from Mouse Leukemia Virus, an enzyme that had revolutionized the way scientists could access the sometimes huge genes of higher organisms. This might be interesting.

Twenty-five minutes later, Parker began to re-read the paper from the start, this time for pure enjoyment. The girl could WRITE! Not only that, but her research was almost without fault. Parker would wager that he could submit this treatise to a low-ranking periodical and get it accepted as a review. The kicker was that she had even added two pages describing the involvement of the great scientist in an alleged scientific fraud case in the 1980s and his handling of the matter which caused a significant change in the rules for proper scientific conduct.

Deirdre Darling. She would bear watching. He had been invited to write an article for the Annual Reviews in Microbiology, and he already dreaded the drudgery of research. Perhaps he could interest young Ms. Darling to help out. Hell, the way she could write, she could probably write through all the draft stages and he would only prepare the final manuscript.

It was with much more enthusiasm that James Parker returned to the task at hand and finished off the stack of papers. When he was done, he faced another problem. If he took the best work, Darling's paper, as one hundred percent and the worst as a twenty percent effort, the majority of the papers would be between twenty and forty percent. Non-passing grades. He could not let more than half of the students flunk the class. Deirdre Darling was wrecking the curve so badly that she would be the object of hatred among her peers. Having been a certified nerd himself and a subject of vicious bullying in his school years and even in college, he could sympathize with the girl. The solution was to rate her at one hundred fifty and the worst paper at twenty five percent. That meant, only three students would flunk out, and Ms. Darling would still be the only "A" student. If only he knew what she looked like!

She looked like a reject from a homeless shelter. Brunette, curly hair that stuck out in every direction, bushy dark mono-eyebrow, but with a face that could be more than pretty. Her clothes were clean, no doubt, but they were worn and out of fashion by years. Parker had checked with the student office already. Deirdre Darling had won a full academic scholarship with a 3.87 GPA and a SAT over 1,450 on the 1,600 scale. Parker knew that the scholarship covered tuition and room. Skinny as the girl was, money must be short even with the basics covered.

He handed out the essays without much ado and to a generally joyous response. He watched Deirdre Darling as she opened the paper to where he had written his comment. "A stellar effort! You are to be commended on a paper that should make a PhD student proud. Please see me after class. Parker."

At first he saw the flush of achievement on her cheeks, but then, undeniably, apprehension. Did she fear to be accused of plagiarism? He had run defining parts of her text through Google Scholar just to make sure, but nothing had turned up.

When the class ended she tentatively approached his desk.

"You wanted to talk to me, Professor Parker?"

"Yes, please, be seated. I have a proposition for you."

"Yes?"

No eagerness, only — what? — fear?

"Nothing bad, I assure you. It's just that you made my evening, yesterday. Of the thirty-three assays I had to endure, yours was a diamond in a pile of gravel. Excellent writing, my dear, and outstanding research. The little thing at the end, about the fraud affair, was just the cherry on top. Now for my proposition: I have been invited to write a piece for the Annual Reviews in Microbiology. You know what an Impact Factor is?"

The answer came promptly. "The sum of citations garnered by the articles in a given journal over a three-year period, divided by the number of articles published in the same period. It's a rough estimate of the average impact of a paper in a certain journal and it's used for the ranking of journals and the papers that are published in them."

Parker beamed. "Succinctly put. Now, the Annual Reviews carry a very healthy twelve point six impact factor. It's something I would like to add to my CV. Unfortunately, my teaching load is considerable this summer semester. What I'm trying to say is: I need assistance. Would you be interested in helping out with some research, perhaps even write a few draft chapters? The practice would certainly help you and it would count as extra credits."

Wow! He had obviously found the right words. The girl was glowing with excitement all of a sudden.

"Yes, I would like that very much, Professor!" she blurted. "What is the subject?"

"Mechanisms of gene control in eukaryotic microorganisms," Parker answered. "That will cover the Euglenozoa, including the Kinetoplastida, the Apicomplexa, the Amoeba, and the Giardiae. There's a lot of published work, but now with most of the genome projects finished, we can insert some phylogeny studies."

"May I perform those? I sort of like doing that," the girl asked enthusiastically.

Okay, she was weird. That stuff bored Parker to tears.

"Oh, of course. You can learn a lot from that," he replied magnanimously.

It was two months later and Gwendolyn Parker was worried. Once again she'd had to endure a long winded sermon at dinner about the sheer brilliance of James' newest discovery, some frumpy scarecrow by the name of Deirdre. If you listened to James she had singlehandedly written a seventy page review manuscript, fully researched, annotated, and with a complete list of references. She was a marvel if James was to be believed.

Gwen Parker was worried because eight years ago she had been an ugly duckling herself, with a towering intellect that bedazzled the young assistant professor, James Parker. For four years, until the enforced move to California, she had been his sidekick first, then his secret lover, and finally, when the affair became public, his wife. The marriage had prevented a greater scandal but James was denied tenure at the Ivy League school where he had been assistant professor and instead he had to accept the Associate Professorship in Eureka.

Was James looking for his next Gwen? It was possible. After all, Gwen was now a faculty member in her own right, independent of her husband and erstwhile mentor and James seemed to grate a little under her growing professional success. A young, pliable genius would give him the illusion of greatness again.

Thus, when James disappeared for his chess club evening, Gwen sat down at his desk and looked at the manuscript. When James returned four hours later she was still sitting there, plowing through the text for the third time. This was the work of a college junior? She knew her husband too well to suspect he'd had a hand in the writing. The sentences were structured too cleanly, the language was too sober, and the vocabulary too rich for this text to have come out of James' keyboard. She shuffled the pile and her gaze fell on the title page. Author(s): James Elroy Parker. She flipped pages until she found the Acknowledgement. "I thank my wife, Gwendolyn F. Parker, for her insightful comments and for a critical reading of the manuscript. I would also acknowledge D. Darling for help with the preparation of the manuscript."