  I employ an optimization-based inference methodology together with an Ising
model, in an intentionally ineffectual manner, to get away with murdering an
obstreperous scientific collaborator. The antics of this collaborator,
hereafter "Conan O'Brien," were impeding the publication of an important
manuscript. With my tenure date looming, I found myself desperate. Luckily, I
study inference, a computational means to find a solution to a physical
problem, based on available measurements (say, a dead body) and a dynamical
model assumed to give rise to those measurements (a murderer). If the
measurements are insufficient and/or the model is incomplete, one obtains
multiple "degenerate" solutions to the problem. Degenerate solutions are all
equally valid given the information available, and thus render meaningless the
notion of one "correct" solution. Typically in scientific research, degeneracy
is undesirable. Here I describe the opposite situation: a quest to create
degenerate solutions in which to cloak myself. Or even better: to render
measurements incompatible with a solution in which I am the murderer. Moreover,
I show how one may sabotage an inference procedure to commit an untraceable
crime. I sit here now, typing victoriously, a free woman. Because you won't
believe me anyway. And even if you do, you'll never prove a thing.
