Who said "changing rules" means "removing rules"?

There is a rather well known (moral) tale from the world of R&D about truly understanding your experiments. One pharmaceutical research group discovered that by giving their test animals a certain drug they lived significantly longer than the reference group. You can imagine the expectations of wealth and fame here.

And it was all dashed when it was found out the drug made the test animals sick so they could not eat too much while the reference group were overeating and "anjoying" a western styled reduction in life expectancy.

I have not heard if they applied for a patent.