meddling

“It had been well, if these dishonest meddlings with existing books had stopped here.”

“I learned more about it than most people because triffids were my job, and the firm I worked for was intimately, if not very gracefully, concerned in their public appearance. Nevertheless, their true origin still remains obscure. My own belief, for what that is worth, is that they were the outcome of a series of ingenious biological meddlings - and very likely accidental, at that.”