In the exacting world of chemical analysis, soft-spoken chemist Annie Dookhan — or “Little Annie” as she was sometimes called — was a dream employee.
Consider her performance at the vaccine manufacturer where she worked for nearly two years before taking a job at the state drug lab. Most days, Dookhan arrived at work in the dawn’s dim light. When her boss left in the evening, her small frame was still hunched over the bench performing tests. She leapt at overtime hours and routinely got results in a fraction of the time it took others. What’s more, she was smart. Dookhan said she was working on a master’s degree, and just one year later announced that she had completed the work for a doctorate from Harvard University. A banner reading, “Congratulations, Annie,” went up on a cabinet.
Comments
Pathological liar. Cheat. Poor oversight by supervisors. Prosections and convictions compromised. And maybe innocent people in jail.
Nice work, Massachusetts.
However bad, this pales to the New England Compounding scandal. That is truly criminal, actually homicidal.
Per the article, "As investigators continue to assess the full scope of the damage she has done, the question that hovers over it all is why."
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Anyone who sees the question hovering is simply looking for the wrong answer. The answer is poor management, not whatever was the motivation of Annie Dookhan.
A cheater from a cheating family that defrauded the City of Boston taxpayers...
While relativley minor compared to the major issues she caused, the act of using "mattress addresses" by non-city residents so they can partake of numeorus Boston funded social services and access to top rated exam schools is fairly common. She and her parents were not bothered by using a small lie then, so her use of bigger lies now that impacted so many people's lives was only a natural extension of her bad behavior.
The apple does not fall far from the tree. Why is it scandalous, however, for a minority immigrant family to perpetrate a residency scam to get ahead, but scamming affirmative action preference to advance one's legal career, denied but never adequately refuted or even explained, is not only OK with the Globe but wins you the paper's enthusiastic endorsement?
Of course, look for a job as a chemist with the state and you still would encounter racism ( affirmative action sounds so much better, huh? ) ...
https://jobs.hrd.state.ma.us/recruit/public/31100001/job/job_view.do?postingId=J33713&code=search.public&federalStimulus=no&words=chemist
Diversity Officer: N/A
An Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. Females, minorities, veterans, and persons with disabilities are strongly encouraged to apply.
* wink *
In my view, this speaks to how easily corporate structures (whether gov't or not) can underplay certain suspicians in quest for desired results -- that only made Dookan think she looked good, but also helped the larger department meet their goals.
This delimna is as old as the ages. We are so quick to condemn government - and yet most of us who have spent time in non gov't orgs have known an "Annie" or two in our careers. I am actually surprised given her numbers that she was not already promoted to a management role! Also, I do take a bit of an issue with the person who said this is not as bad as the pharm issue; again, we diminish the importance of things that are hard to measure. Will we ever know the downline impact of Annies lies? I agree that likely the pharm scandal likely wins with the loss of life, but in both situations the havoc caused will be played out for years to come.
My hope is that the corporate cultures that allowed Annie to fall through the cracks will be deeply investigaged and the lessons learned will be integrated into the mix of examples as to why its so important that we run our human organizations understanding that we are all imperfect -- and given that, we need to better balance our drive for results with sound processes and cross-checks to avoid this going forward.
As you say, there are those in the private sector who cut corners to achieve results important to that organization. The difference here is the stakes involved. When the outcome of a test is the difference between someone going to prison or not, Dookhan's dramatic testing numbers, compared to peers, should have been looked at with a suspicious eye.
It would be interesting to know what burden was being placed on the lab. To your point, I can see, as a manager, that if you had an employee who was doing the work of three "normal" employees, and you're understaffed, you might be inclined to turn a blind eye.
If the state chose to not adequately fund something as important as a crime lab, where, again, the stakes are so high, then attention should also be paid to those making these decisions and their thought process. Dookhan was a rogue chemist but I think there's a bigger story here with respect to financial decisions made by the state.
How many innocents jailed, and how many guilty set free, because of her dishonesty? This pathology started in her own family, who countenanced a lie about residency (and God knows what else) in order that their daughter could get ahead. You cannot hav public virtue without private virtue.
So true.
annie deserves to do serious time in jail where she can contemplate how superior she really is
A fraud right form the start, aided by her parents. So many acts of outright breach of the public trust in this story to comment on.
Valid point but there's a lot of Annie Dookhans out there. What's important is making sure they don't get into positions where they can impact someone elses life they way that she did. The fact that she remained in the position she was in for so long, achieving results that seemingly didn't make sense, speaks either to an incredible lack of oversight or a lab that was overburdoned, or both.
When are her supervisors and managers going to be investigated? This didn't happen in a vacuum. It seems that a lot of her co-workers had their suspicians about her. But as long as she was generating the results that her superiors wanted, people looked the other way. And how about investigating those prosecutors with whom she had been working with? It seems to me that there must have been more than a little prosecutorial misconduct going on here too. Should I hold my breath while for them to be charged?
Prosecutorial misconduct is legendary. Prosecutors, not all, seek the prestige of convictions rather than justice. Do you want to see my pile of news clippings on this, which I have collected over the years?
@stephanosky: I believe you!
Just more "leakage" from the Patrick Administration. That's all, just leakage.
Yes, anecdotes.
It's clear that yet again someone with obvious signs of mental issues doesn't get help. She was completing around 10,000 tests to her colleagues 2000 and management never questioned the quality that needed to accompany the quantity. That was the check and balance. I blame management almost as much as her because its obvious she's disturbed as well as guilty as hell.
I also feel bad for her child. It amazes me the parents that commit illegal acts forgetting they have a child at home that needs them. So selfish. So very selfish.
Indeed Dookhan is guilty. She is also quite disturbed. It'll be interesting to watch this case unfold. Will the Trial/Sentencing be sympathetic to a rather twisted young woman, or crucify her on the Cross of Political Nescessity, (read that A$$ Covering).
"
pursued renown along a path of lies"
Finally the Globe is doing some reporting on Elizabeth Warren ?
OHfaGod'ssake..
Sally Jacobs is the Karl Rove of the left, the ends justifies the means ...
Author of a "total hatchet job" (NECN/Cambridge Jim Braude's words ) on Brown
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2012/10/23/scott-brown-modeling-years/XC72G6LasScChK7cDbOkOL/story.html
I don't believe a word she says.
"A good scapegoat is nearly as welcome as a solution to the problem."
Indeed.
The most interesting news in this lengthly, tens if thousands of words, article about this person, which covers so much in such depth, is whether this persons who attended a premium Boston high school, then the public UMB, then worked for years in a state job, the writers NEVER SAY WHETHER SHE IS AN AMERICAN CITIZEN OR NOT!
Since they dont touch this subject, my expectatiuon is that she is not, and that the writers omit this fact because they dont want her depredations to further tarnish the image of our "un-documented" population. Maybe the facts could speak for themselves, but the Globe editors just can't help themselves, their personal prejudices wash everything they touch. That's why this is not a great newspaper and never will be. Maybe Thrump could clean house ("You're fired!) and turn it around? What say you?
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Opps,...checked Google and find she is a naturalized citizen. My bad, the Globe deserved a pass on this issue...of course plenty of other examples exist...
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With her background, how could she possibly have risen to a position of responsibility that was crucial to the administration of justice in this state? Actually, that's a rhetorical question. She could do it for the same reason so many others have done it. Poor oversight. Lax administration. No competition. State government is essentially a jobs program for connected Democrats. They can hire anybody they want. No, or very few, questions asked.
I agree with you, exept you point about connected Dems. If Scooter becomes Governor, it will be the same s***, different pile.
PATHOLOGICAL
PATHOLOGIQUE!!
Her parents should repay the city for the excellent education their daughter obtained fraudulently, thereby preventing another deserving city resident from receiving it.
Most remarkable about the Globe devoting 2 pages to the persona of Amy Dookhan, is that it neglects the positive contibution she made to the economic sector that relies on incarceration, and the role of the Attorney General's reliance on narcotic onsumption and its prosecution, to help the U. S. maitain the highest incarceration rate of any of the OECD countries. Ecologically speaking, none of this makes any sense. But it does help to explain why the the one-party government of the Commonwealth would rather spend money on prisons, than spend money on careful scrutiny of forensic laboratory work. It is not simply the value of productivity in a lab that caused this waste of money and lives, but the valueing of a high conviction rate that leads to what is euphemistcally dubbed "prosecutorial misconduct." (As long as no perjury charges are involved, prosecutors stay out of jail.)
Elie Yarden, Green-Rainbow Party, Cambridge
Well said, Elie! Ed Ellis, Green-Rainbow Party, Mission Hill, Boston.
I agree with the comments that the investigation of this lab's cataclysmic malfeasance should extend well beyond the mentally ill Annie.
You can be sure that some prosecutors were happy to receive her phony test results to secure their case.
It wouldn't be politically correct but nice to know how many times (even once) she was hired because of an affirmative action quota and the desire of management for "diversity".
I have no comment on the article, but I do have one about the Globe headline. ..I find it amusing for the Boston Globe, which in its political coverage is the biggest Liar in New England, to be talking about another Liar...Or perhaps, as the saying goes..it take one to know one.
Oh PLEASE.