Being a curious person I then started to read more about it and found a published study that was done at a different university on the exact same subject. There was no difference between experimental set-up, the parameters and the results achieved to that date matched.
When confronted with this she responded that she already knew that, her PhD advisor had selected the study and had presented it to the grant givers as a novel approach. He clearly already knew what the outcome would be, and the fact that it would be positive and that the grant gatekeepers would not find out about the other study until it was either too late (which would mean they'd keep quiet because they had not done their jobs properly) or at all (because nobody really cared). She didn't want to rock the boat just wanted her PhD over and done with, confronting the advisor would have been the end of her career for sure, whereas duplicating a bunch of work that you already know the outcome of is ok.
This study was quite extensive and burned through a whole pile of resources.
At the time I was quite shocked by all this, that in academia there would be such cynical misconduct. According to the lady this was perfectly normal and par for the course in her field.
It's one thing for a group to openly try to duplicate the results of another, it is a different thing to use the vastness of the scientific body as a means to re-do success stories found elsewhere to increase your local standing.
There is a Samwer Brothers parallel in there somewhere.