Around 1990, a bright, young Harvard academic became interested in the possibility that a relatively unknown peptide might slow gastric emptying and reduce hunger — a potential boon to the treatment of diabetes. Although he was employed as a full-time faculty researcher and clinician at a major teaching hospital and his lab was funded by the National Institutes of Health, he chose to pursue this particular line of research privately with support from a large pharmaceutical company, which required him to keep the work secret and not publish his findings or present them at scientific meetings.

Despite the exciting promise that emerged from these studies, the company that funded the work did not allow the researcher and his colleagues to disseminate their findings, and the drugmaker faile

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