Pretty crushing.
There is an interesting piece on NPR[1] about the Caliphate thing. Note that it was a runner up for a Pulitzer and won the Peabody award, and it's primary source was lying.
So to contextualize some of the drama, understand that journalists aspire to an award like that. Just as a scientist might aspire to a Nobel Prize. And when such an award is won by a peer it is celebrated, unless it was won through "cheating." Whether it is a journalist who didn't check their source thoroughly or a scientist who falsified data to make the numbers work. The siren call of the award is a powerful force in blinding a person to the possible disqualifying inputs. Very powerful.
I was fortunate to see such an event unfold early in my career with someone I respected who could not, or would not see the warning signs that their "big accomplishment" was not actually an accomplishment. They, like Andy, relied on a third party that didn't see the warning signs as the arbiter of correctness. When it turned out that their big accomplishment wasn't, they could easily blame this third party and present themselves as being blameless. And yet, when it became clear that they should have seen the warning signs as part of their expertise, then the charitable interpretation was that they were just not that great an engineer after all. There were, of course, those who felt the engineer "knew all along" about the problems and were trying to "sneak one by" everyone else. The engineer in question resigned and changed jobs and pretty much faded away.
My take away from that experience was a better understanding of personal integrity. It is hard to take your own ideas and rip them apart, but it is essential that you do so. Because if they can be ripped apart, no matter how attractive they seem, they aren't as great as you think they are. I try to cultivate friendships with people who will do this for me as well. As one of my mentors told me, "Everyone thinks their baby is beautiful, few can appreciate honest feedback." And engineers and managers (especially senior managers) are trained by experience to not to call out the flaws in other peoples ideas to their faces. If you are surrounded by people who won't point out the flaws in your plan, you are at risk of both your plan failing, and having that follow you around for the rest of your days.
I think Andy's resignation post was well written. I'm sorry that he had to go through what he has gone through, and I agree with him that this was the correct next step for him.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2020/12/18/944594193/new-york-times-retr...