Following the unethical order would ruin my career. It's possible that I could get prison time in theory. I followed the order at first but right after I complained to the chief and said doing it could be considered lab fraud, but the chief didn't respond. My boss had me set an instrument in a way where we couldn't accurately measure nitrite levels. They always warn us that we could go to prison for lab fraud. Just making quality control data pass by tinkering with chromatograms is said to send people to prison. They have a saying 'let it fail, don't go to jail.' If you send knowingly bad results by e-mail it's wire fraud. If you send them by mail it's mail fraud.

A couple of days after I set the instrument I got really sick and missed a week. When I came back I saw the instrument was still set wrong so I got together with my coworker who also runs the instrument and discussed what to do. Another chemist overheard us and suggested the QA Officer. He definitely agreed that the setting on the instrument was unethical. My officemate and I decided to approach the chief and she finally agreed that we should set the instrument back to the setting I had previously had it at. Everything was fine for a few days. Then I had that meeting with my boss. She apparently has no ethical compass...

I've documented as much as I can. I did not set the instrument wrong until I got the order in an e-mail from my boss. One of the other chemists has complained about her too and he thinks HR is probably conducting an investigation behind the scenes. I hops so. Because if something isn't done soon I'm going to lose it. A few times I have been so fed up that I wanted to quit on the spot. But if I hang on for 5 more years I get a full retirement pension.