Praise for the Original Edition of Corrupted Science

Praise for the original edition of Corrupted Science “You [may] remember how much fun Grant’s Discarded Science was and scoop this up in search of chewy anec- dotal goodness. The tone this time is considerably dark- er, though, as Grant ascribes to malice what cannot be adequately explained by stupidity. His comparison of the current administration’s assault on scientific truth and inquiry goes even further than Christopher Mooney’s The Republican War on Science.” —USA Today “I just finished the book last night, and my highly un- scientific verdict—amazing! . The writing is clear and witty, and the content seems (to the best of my knowledge) spot on. The few places that I found myself in mi- nor disagreement with Grant’s comments, he followed them up and proved me depressingly wrong. “Corrupted Science is an excellent and highly readable book about fraud and ideological fallacy in science, and serves both as an introduction and a reference for those interested in learning more about the tenuous thread by which hangs rationality.” —Skulls in the Stars Praise for John Grant’s other works on science “Grant is never condescending or grandstanding. He’s simply passionate about the subject. We need more voices like Grant’s and more books like Denying Science. Read it.” —Glenn Dallas, Science & Nature “Discarded Science has been continually snatched out of my hands by eager work colleagues, friends and family, sparking hours of conversation and laughter. “[S]cientists and non-scientists alike will find some- thing to discover, and there is no need to be an expert on every topic. This is a wonderfully interesting, thought- provoking and at times very funny book that I highly recommend.” —Sense About Science “A lively parade of cranks, mystics, rebels, obsessives, and geniuses humble or otherwise whose discoveries and insights shaped today’s science and technology . [Grant] realizes them with vivacity, lucidly describing their significant achievements and also drawing connec- tions . [R]efreshingly opinionated and not without a few pleasant surprises.” —Kirkus Reviews (on Eureka!) Corrupted Science Fraud, Ideology, and Politics in Science (Revised & Expanded) John Grant See Sharp Press ◆ Tucson, Arizona Copyright © 2018 by John Grant. All rights reserved. For information contact: See Sharp Press P.O. Box 1731 Tucson, AZ 85702 www.seesharppress.com Grant, John. Corrupted Science : Fraud, ideology, and politics in science (revised & expanded) / John Grant ; Tucson, Ariz. : See Sharp Press, 2018. Includes bibliographical references and index. 448 p. ; 23 cm. ISBN 978-1-947071-00-1 509 Contents Introduction . i Regarding this New Edition . v Part 1: The Falsification of Science 1. Fraudulent Scientists . 1 Babbage’s reflections; Cheating; Taking credit; Of dubious heredity; Piltdown Man; Archaeoraptor; the IQ frauds; Little Albert; Subliminal advertising; Cures for cancer; The Vinland Map; A new era of fraud; Cold fusion; Andrew Wakefield and the autism-vaccination fiasco; The cloning of a human being; The gay canvassers; The plastics and the perch 2. Seeing What They Wanted to See . 67 The replicability crisis; Predators and fake journals; Stings; Woo-woo science; Letters from distinguished persons; N-rays; Astronomy dominoes; Gravitational waves from the early universe; Polywater; Mitogenetic rays and Kirlian photography; Menstrual rays; A microbial muddle; Recovered memories; Prayer power; Corrupt science in the courtroom 3. Military Madness . 112 Edward Teller and the Strategic Defense Initiative; Hafnium no, Bananas yes; Red mercury under the bed; Osmium-187; Psychotronic warfare 4. The One True Book . .129 An inevitable conflict?; The crusade to miseducate the young; Intelligent Design; Creationist bills; No jobs for the boys?; Other worlds, other creations? 5. Ideology Overrules Science . 165 Racist pseudoscience; Eugenics; The moral compass; Corruption of science by the ideology of science; Media muffins 6. The Corporate Corruption of Science . .205 Tobacco and the climate; The hole in the ozone layer; The lead wars; The vilification of Rachel Carson; The beatification of sugar; “We repudiate the term ‘asbestos poisoning’”; Big bad pharma; Anticipating the post-antibiotic era; The diesel emissions fraud Part 2: The Political Corruption of Science 7. Nazi Germany . 321 Geopolitics; Die Deutsche Physik; The Aryan dream; The medical nightmare 8. Stalinist Russia . 342 Heredity cast down; Dialectical materialism defines physics; The lunatics conquer the asylum 9. America in the 21stCentury . 358 Nasty! dirty! horrid!; Matters of war; The air we breathe, the water we drink; Appointments and Dis-appointments; Scott Pruitt and the dismantling of the EPA; The inconvenient truth; Our responsibility Endnotes . 419 Bibliography . 427 Index . .437 Dedication to the First Edition To Keith Barnett (1938–2006), the best big bro any little bro could have hoped for Dedication to the Second Edition To Carl Fink, for countless words of encouragement over the years Corrupted Science ◆ i Introduction “Science is a set of rules that keep the scientists from lying to each other.” —Kenneth S. Norris, cited in False Prophets (1988) by Alexander Kohn People in general believe what they’re told. That seems hardwired into the human brain. One can understand why this should be so: verbal com- munication presumably came about as a means of exchanging vital information among tribal members (“the food’s over there”) and with members of other tribes (“if you try to take my food I’ll kill you”). Speech would have had little survival value for tribal peoples—and indeed little purpose—un- less the information it contained were true. We can guess that the invention of the lie came some while after speech was in widespread use—and a devastating invention it must have been. Even today we naturally tend to believe what we’re told—skepticism is an educated response, not an instinctive one, as demonstrated by the ease with which parents can fool small children with tall tales. Similarly, most of us tell the truth almost all of the time.* In general it’s essential for the smooth functioning of society that this be so. Consider the simple social interaction in which you ask a passing stranger for directions. Society would soon weaken if strangers habitually gave false directions, or if tourists habitually disbelieved the directions given to them by strangers. Of course, sometimes strangers do quite delib- erately give false directions, either because they don’t know the answer and have an infantile dislike of displaying ignorance, or in the misguided belief that it’s funny. Similarly, travelers sometimes disbelieve genuine directions because “they don’t make sense.” * Hence the effectiveness of the old joke about politicians: Q: How can you tell if he’s lying? A: His lips move. ii ◆ Introduction The deliberate giving of false directions can be regarded as a small-scale demonstration of the inherent flaw in our natural assumption of truth- telling. If one party, almost always the teller, disobeys the tacit rules of the game, the other is exceedingly vulnerable. Hence the effectiveness of false propaganda, as exemplified today by broadcasters such as Rush Limbaugh and the pundits of Sinclair Broadcast and Fox News: they can tell whatever fibs they like, secure in the knowledge that a high percentage of the audience will believe what they say; further, since those members of the audience who perceive the lie will soon go elsewhere for their information, the “credulosity quotient” of the remaining audience tends to rise. This particular dishonest gambit is, of course, not a new development: it can be traced back through most of recorded history. False tales of the dis- gusting licentiousness of Cleopatra were circulated in Rome to shape the citizens’ attitudes toward the Egyptian queen. Lies concerning the sexual appetites and extravagance of Marie Antoinette contributed to the onset of the French Revolution. And we all know the devastating human costs of the early-twentieth-century antisemitic propagandist forgery, Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.* The same vulnerability in our social structure is of course exploited alike by the hoaxer, the forger, the fraud artist, the trickster, the prank- ster, the dissembling politician, the televangelist, the propagandist and the straightforward liar. Sometimes, as per the Protocols, the efforts of these assorted crooks have enormously damaging consequences; political and media denials of imminent catastrophic climate change, for example, may spell the collapse of human civilization. Most hoaxes and frauds are outside the purview of this book, in which we’re concerned only with the sciences, but that still leaves us plenty to play with. We’ll start with scientists themselves—scientists who for one reason or another have felt driven to fake things—before turning to those who’ve corrupted science not from within but from without: ideologues (religious and otherwise), powerful corporations and of course political regimes, three of which I’ll discuss in the final three chapters of the book. The political corruption of science is not new. Since the dawn of the twentieth century there seems to have been an upsurge in ideology-based * This was actually a reworking of Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu (1865) by Maurice Joly. Joly’s original was a satirical attack on Napoleon III. All the anony- mous forgers of the Protocols did was change a few names and details and pretend it wasn’t a satire. Corrupted Science ◆ iii distortion of public science by those in political power. The three clas- sic cases over the past century are Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s USSR, and twenty-first-century America. The third of these is treated in slightly more detail here than the other two not just because it is current but because its ideological spread has arguably been on the widest scale, affecting not one or two sciences but many. It is also, because of its assault on climate science, potentially the most globally dangerous in human history.

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