Back in the day, my company was putting tens of millions into this, including a large cadre of chemists and engineers. I was one of them. It was kind of exciting at first, it was being hailed as THE critical project within R&D. A VP supervising the overall effort was said to be an "un and comer", and indeed she later got promoted right after the project collapsed.
I had an "idea" and our group pursued it. Money was no object. I was spending hundreds of thousands a month on testing of new materials. My bosses said not to worry about budget. The larger group was working on a new back sheet for diapers and we were working on a new absorbent material for diapers. I began to notice their efforts were, well, not very promising in my view technically. Our own work was "interesting" but we kept encountering technical problems, and we'd shift to a new tactic and found other problems.
I started reading, a lot of information was available, and it became VERY apparently that "composting" was a nonstarter. Recycling was a sham. The information was out there, it was obvious, backed up by facts, and I put together a short report summarizing all of this.
Holy Hell.
Here I am, a low level technical guy who deigned to note the Emperor not only had no cloths, his hair was on fire.
I cam back from lunch one day to find my boss' boss in my office (fortunately he was on my side). He told me not to write anything like that ever again, and to find whatever I could on line and eliminate it. This was ca. 1992. It was explosive, I had basically destroyed the efforts of hundreds of people, and the logic and facts could not be refuted.
Obviously I protested a bit, and he raised his hand and said to me "You're not listening. This is not an option. You will do this. You need to trust me on this."
Fortunately, I did, I kept my own copies of course.
The lame efforts went on another 18 months or so. The diaper back sheet program folded first, and all of their folks started coming to our meetings. That was funny. We went from 15 people to 30, as they tried to try and "help".
We went on another few months like that, and it was clear my idea for a biodegradable plastic material had too many fundamental issues that could not be solved. The ideas being advanced by other companies were not working either.
Tens of millions of dollars. For a PR sham. The lady VP was promoted. I was transferred over my objections to a particularly lame project. Everyone else scurried about like roaches when the light is turned on looking for a spot to land.
I became rather demotivated and negative. I had learned to pull out the key issues up front, and keep them to myself, while pretending to DO SOMETHING.
