We are likely starting from different points. I see a media that almost universally amplifies the hype of scientific press releases, and I'm overjoyed to see an article that (I feel) critically examines the details. Perhaps my bias against "science by press release" is so strong that I don't even register the attempts to exonerate Harkonen.

  And if lots of other scientists are similarly
  cherrypicking their data and making misleading statements
  about it, then I'd say we have a serious problem on our
  hands.

I feel this is where we are at, with Harkonen's approach almost at the middle of the road. This isn't to imply his behaviour is acceptable, just that we have a very serious problem. Have you read John Ioannidis' essay "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False"? http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal...

  At the very least, we see no evidence that Harkonen was
  doing this to save lives -- a point the author strongly
  and repeatedly implies throughout the article.

I guess I didn't see that message as strongly as you. I felt it was granted that he had a strong vested interest:

  The prosecutors also emphasized that Harkonen had a
  financial motive for spinning the study in the most
  positive way. This wasn’t hard to find. The third
  paragraph of the press release said: “We believe these
  results will support use of Actimmune and lead to peak
  sales in the range of $400-$500 million per year,
  enabling us to achieve profitability in 2004 as planned.”

But you are right that this wasn't emphasized. I think for me the hard point is trying to understand the boundary between ethics and law. I worry that asking a lay jury to decide guilt based on the contextual interpretation of p-values isn't going to end well.

I also wonder to what extent Harkonen was optimistically self-delusional versus blatantly fraudulent. I presume that as well as desiring financial success, he truly hoped he had found a useful cure for a dread disease. Along that lines, I recently read a great article by a 1930's Nobel Prize winner entitled "Pathological Science" on how even good scientists can occasionally fool themselves into seeing results that just aren't there: http://yclept.ucdavis.edu/course/280/Langmuir.pdf

If the blurriness is too much, there is a good summary here: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/21stC/issue-3.4/turro.html

Thanks for the discussion.