“We would expect that for every case of major fraud that comes to light, a hundred or so go undetected.  For each major fraud, perhaps a thousand minor fakeries are perpetrated.  The reader can supply his own multiplication factor; ours would indicate that every major case of fraud that becomes public is the representative of some 100.000 others, major and minor combine, that lie concealed in the marshy wastes of the scientific literature.”  (Broad & Wade, ‘Betrayers of Truth’, 1982, p. 87)

Introduction

Newspaper reporters Broad and Wade decided to investigate scientific fraud in 1982.  Their exercise was to outline in the past few decades some of the more famous and disturbing instances of scientific mendacity.  They openly admitted that their investigation was the tip of a massive iceberg, the glittering scum on a pond with endless depths. 

 

“….ours would indicate that every major case of fraud that becomes public is the representative of some 100.000 others” (p. 87)

Chew on that tidbit. For every fake mRNA ‘safe and effective’ study, 100.000 other instantiations of fraud, small and great, exist. Scientific misconduct has only gotten much, much worse since 1982.  Does anyone believe that the massive increase in scientific ‘research’ budgets, ‘scientists’, ‘journals’, and ‘papers’ since 1982 has not led to an explosion of what this book unveils?  Does anyone believe that scientific fraud has receded since the 1980s?  If any such person exists it is best to view them as a leper and avoid contact.

Deceit and history

Scientific fraud is as old as humanity. In the modern world, the pace and acceleration of fraud is its most noticeable characteristic. Broad and Wade’s work can be seen in a historical context. Notable figures who have engaged in outright fraud including plagiarism, falsification of data, or providing no data to support their claims include inter alia:

Ptolemy:  the greatest astronomer of antiquity (2^nd century) lifted many of his theories and observational data from Hipparchus of Rhodes (2^nd century B.C.).

Galileo:  Performed few if any of the experiments associated with his name.  A post on the Galileo myth explodes the propaganda around this self-promoting philosopher who provided no proof for Copernicanism. 

Newton:  Employed a constant, which does not exist, to make his equations balance and fabricated large tracts of his data to support his theories.  Quite likely he borrowed concepts of calculus from Leibniz. His deceit is rarely discussed.

Jenner:  A 19^th century unlicensed country quack, who concocted a potion including lacerated cow teat detritus, mercury, chloric and arsenic, which he injected into his gardener to ward off ‘smallpox’.  When his gardener did not succumb to smallpox (adults don’t contract smallpox in general), he marketed his solution as the saviour against the scourge.  He and his Royal Society friends went on to make £ 3 million.

John Dalton:  19^th century discoverer of the laws of the chemical combinations which proved the existence of atoms; his elegant and perfect experiments and data cannot be replicated.

Darwin:  Plagiarised much of his material on ‘evolution’ and did not supply one single experimental proof of meta-mutations of species, instead relying on philosophy, descriptions and prose. 

Mendel:  The Austrian monk and founder of genetics invented much of his statistics on peas, which cannot be replicated, and which are far too perfect to be true.

Einstein:  Borrowed whole tracts of his theories from others including Lorentz, Minkowski, Fisher and others with referencing their work.  Like Newton he employed a fake constant to get his ‘steady state’ universe equations to balance (now termed ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy’). Did not perform any physical experiments to support relativity.  Instituted arcane maths which do not work when applied to mechanical experiments.

Various-Piltdown man:  An early 20^th century fraud which for 40 years was taught as proof of ‘evolution’ and the missing link.  The skeleton scam was fabricated and dumped into a pit in Sussex not far from Darwin’s residence.  It was a farmer’s skeletal remains glued to the skull and jaw of a chimp.  It would have taken a real ‘scientist’ about 20 minutes to identify the fraud. 

Milliken:  20^th century American Nobel winner in physics, for his work on electric charges of an electron, fabricated much of his data and misrepresented his work to beat ‘rivals’.

Freud:  Manufactured fraudulent data and conclusions on a large scale to build his theories, practice, and revenues.  Freudian psychology is an example of an entire industry saturated with fraud and pseudo-intellectualism.

Alfred Kinsey:  A charlatan passed off by the media as a ‘scientist’, Kinsey in the 1970s invented ‘research’, studies and data proving that the ‘gay lifestyle’ was more mainstream than believed and that most men are bi-sexual by nature and that chromosomes are not gender gatekeepers. 

Michael Mann:  The hockey stick curve of ‘climate’ temperatures which attempts to erase the medieval warming and little ice ages, and which flattens the 1940-70s reduction in temperatures is one of the great frauds in modern science.  Independent analysis of the segments of code which were released reveal that any set of variables and parameters will generate a hockey stick (eg U$-GBP exchange rates). 

The above are just a few examples.  As the quote at the top of the page states, much of what passes for ‘science’ is simply fiction, butchered by criminal deceit.  Medical and bio-medical research including pharmaceutical research, is of course an extreme example of ‘scientific’ criminality.  But the usurpation of honesty in the pursuit of money and power exists in every domain. 

(Tobacco ‘research’ emanating from academics and private institutions guaranteed that cigarettes were safe and effective.)

Why and how?

Broad and Wade analyse why scientific fraud occurs by detailing some 2 dozen extraordinary cases, some of them quite famous (eg the widespread research fraud at Yale).  Contrary to the public image of the scientist as a moral saint, wrapped in a white jacket with a pencil behind the ear, earnest, honest, transparent, self-correcting, applying their genius to enlighten the world, or to save it, Broad and Wide paint a far more realistic picture. 

‘Science’ at its core is not the golden image sold to the public but riven and saturated with deceit, worst practices, disorganisation, competition, vulgar procedures and simmering violence.  All distorted by money and the pressures to publish. The processes of criminality are legion and varied.  There are many ways to commit ‘fraud’ and a crime.  The means, the motive, the ability to do so abound within ‘science’. 

Refreshingly Broad and Wade dispense with the usual nostrum that ‘most scientists are honest’.  There is no proof of this.  Scientists are just as craven, corrupt, self-serving, hypocritical, criminal, and egotistical as anyone else in society.  They identify some reasons why rampant fraud rampages through the ‘Halls of Science’:

1.     Fame and recognition

2.     Publication and money

3.     Replication/Peer review – does not work

4.     Scientific methods – which don’t exist

5.     Philosophy

6.     Public ignorance