On a November morning in 2018, a handpicked group of the world’s most promising young plant scientists descended on the headquarters of the Boyce Thompson Institute, a prestigious independent research outfit in Ithaca, N.Y.

The 13 scientists knew why they’d been invited. They’d applied for one of several open faculty positions that BTI had advertised. In theory, this was just a job interview. But the agendas they’d been sent made it clear that things were about to get weird.

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