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Researchers always think of ambitious applications for their work. Somehow the presentation didn't show how it's easier for the legitimate manufacturer to do than for the counterfeiter. If it's nothing more than an expensive process they might not be able to afford, then why not short circuit it and attach money directly to the drugs to prove they're real?

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> If it's nothing more than an expensive process they might not be able to afford, then why not short circuit it and attach money directly to the drugs to prove they're real?

The idea is indeed odd but this solution doesn't work. The point of expensive/complex anti-counterfeit measures isn't that they're expensive per-item, it's that they have a high fixed cost so they make setting up a counterfeit operation very expensive. They should be cheap or free in per-item variable cost, so that someone doing the real thing can amortize the large fixed cost over their large volume.

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