I'm with you on that one, but for entirely different reasons. On a purely emotional-reactive level, I flat out did not like Cliff, but quietly enjoyed and really grocked Jacob, even when I flinched and went 'ooh, don't do that.' And I think you can trace that back to their degrees of self-deception and honesty. Cliff has a really impressive ability to convince himself of what he wants to be true. Not just his results, but the icky way he pursued Robin (his coworker! ick!) until she gave in, no matter how often she told him she wasn't interested. And to me, it's not just that it makes him a bad scientist. It makes him the sort of person I frankly wouldn't want to ever be around, because I value self-questioning way too highly.

It's one of the most successful aspects of the book to me, imho, just how thoroughly a job it did at making sure there wasn't an answer -- he got results, he didn't. Robin was reacting to clues everyone else missed, Robin was reacting out of resentment. Such that when various people started swinging around to this or that conclusion at the last, it was really an afterthought. That was very smart to me, for reasons I can't quite put into words at the moment.