Customer Reviews

The Great Betrayal: Fraud in Science

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

To me the most valuable parts of the book are those exposing the details of investigations and the politics of fraud. In my experience the general public is not aware of how science actually works, but rather embraces an idealistic, naive picture of science as a self-correcting system that reveals "truth" about the world. In reality, this is true about science inasmuch as it is true that politicians make decisions that are in the best interest of the general public.
My experience as a scientist is also that scientific community does not discuss fundamental problems of fraud openly, if at all, but leaves it to young scientists to learn it the hard way that science nowadays is not very different from politics or show business. Cherry-picking the data that fit your needs in a highly competitive environment has become a standard that only a few can afford to violate, and faking the data is not that rare either.
This book is therefore a valuable document for both the general public and young people considering science as a career. Much of the criticism I see in the reviews boils down to staring at the finger when someone is pointing to the Moon. The book raises important questions by documenting the workings of modern science, and these questions should not be ignored.

I really wanted to read about fraud in science. It is an important topic, which should interest most of us, not least those who research. And, there are interesting stories told here indeed, and much to think about. I especially enjoyed reading about the Baltimore case. And, I can think of many reasons to discuss the potential problem with current science funding and system for academic recognition. Personally I find that this book has plenty enough of information to deserve more stars than some reviewers give it here at Amazon.

However, I too found that the book lost energy after a while, the same arguments were repeated, the analysis seemed a bit thin, but the pages long.
Fraud in science is interesting stuff, and I was a little sad to admit to myself I was getting bored. Please someone, follow-up with a deeply researched and detailed account of later cases, and dare to discuss more the motives of fraud.

First of all, this is not really a book about fraud in science. The analysis of specific cases of scientific fraud is thin and focused mostly on procedural matters; actual science behind each case is almost completely missing from Judson's analysis. His analysis of fraud as a phenomenon is even more superficial. For all the 400-plus pages of pomp, he fails to look at the obvious: what drives scientists to work in science? A quick look at a randomly selected group of postgraduate students would have revealed that there is a very broad distribution of reasons, ranging from the very global (desire to better understand the surrounding reality) to practical (making a living), to idiosyncratic personal reasons (e.g., looking smart in the eyes of the opposite sex). Where there is a distribution of motivations, there will be a distribution of rules by which people play - including some people bending the rules unacceptably far. Sociology of science is probably as complex as of the society at large; and as in any complex group, fraud is unavoidable.

Which brings us to the second point. Judson's real reason for writing this book seems to be the critique of the ways by which science is funded and by which scientific publishing works. He uses the existence of fraud to attack the existing system of scientific publishing (formal, peer-reviewed, commercially run journals) and claims that a transition to an arXiv-style system will all but eliminate scientific fraud. Unfortunately, his arguments are thouroughly unconvincing. The way scientific results are reported and published may well have a second-order effect on the incidence of fraud, but it is hardly the determining factor of the latter. Risk-vs-benefit factors - what one has to gain by publishing high-profile papers - seems to have much more to do with the occurence of fraud. Because the scientific establishment is not a uniform, Mertonian-type system, there will always be cheaters. The only reason they have not used arXiv so far is that currently one has nothing to gain by submitting a fraudulent publication there. This would change as soon as arXiv became the primary mode of scientific publishing.

Judson's recipe seems to be based on an over-simplified, neo-positivist philosophy of science, with its inherent assumption that scientific community is an ideal, uniform collection of people without agendas, personal ambitions, or theories to prove - what one might call an "ideal-gas approximation" of the scientific community. This might be to a limited degree applicable to biomedical research, which consists largely of data mining, but it completely breaks down in natural sciences. His arguments for open publishing are thus largely ideologically driven, and in his push for the desired conclusion he contradicts both the logic and himself. Of known cases of fraud, how many were caught by people scrutinizing someone else's published papers? Perhaps 10%? Most were discovered by chance - by a postdoc digging up old lab books; a technician noticing dodgy practises; by historians going through old raw data; by an author accidentally coming across an article identical to his own. This seems to be Judson's conclusion as well. Why does he think that community-scrutinized arXiv publishing would be more self-correcting than peer-reviewed traditional publishing? Both logic and experience suggest otherwise. Peer review may be costly, awkward, and inefficient, but it does keep junk science in journals with impact factors <1 - which noone reads. Without it, scientific publishing will quickly become awash with self-posted garbage (for a proof, look at the percentage of garbage on the Internet - it's hardly lower than in published journals!) Judson evades this obvious fact by saying that even garbage papers eventually get published in peer-reviewed journals, conveniently omitting that in most cases they get published in journals which have no impact.

To be sure, the book does contain a few fresh ideas. The first couple of chapters provide a good discourse in the philosophy of science. Some ideas regarding ArXiv are also quite nice, as long as they are not presented as some magic bullet which will miraculously eliminate scientific fraud. But were these worth reading through 400 pages of naive populism written by someone who, by own admission, has never been a practising scientist? I'd say no.

Judson has done an excellent job in exposing intellectual fraud in general ,as well as concentrating specifically on the attempt by David Baltimore to cover up the extremely shoddy,error filled work of a colleage,Imanishi-Kari.Baltimore had agreed to put his name on a paper that he had not read carefully,if at all. Margot O'Toole exposed the paper,showing that it was riddled with errors.Baltimore engaged in an attempted coverup ,believing that his great reputation,based on his being a Nobel Prize winner with a number of accomplishments ,would serve to sidetrack any call for the retraction of the paper.An excellent summary of this scientific fiasco is given on p.242 by Judson when he cites the final judgment of another Nobelist,the late Howard Temin:" David's misconduct was-When an experiment is challenged no matter who it is challenged by it's your responsibility to check...When you publish something you are responsible for it.And one of the great strengths of American science...is that even the most senior professor,if challenged by the lowliest technician or graduate student,is required to treat them seriously...It is one of the most fundamental aspects of science in America".
In fact,what Temin is stating is not just the most fundamental aspect of American science.Transparency,the requirement that results be checked and rechecked before the publication of an article in a scientific journal,is the most fundamental aspect of science.Error correction is a necessary condition for any field to be called "scientific ".Fields or disciplines that do not prevent or correct error filled articles from being published or that do not retract such articles once they are exposed ,like most social sciences,economics and psychology in particular,are not considered hard science.

Judson is an academic manque who wrote an interesting if overly pretentious and self-agrandizing history of molecular biology. Unfortunately this book, which, as Judson states early on, could not find a publisher, would have been better left unpublished. This desultory history of scientific fraud simply rehearses what has been better said elswhere. The standard fraud cases - from Newton to Pasteur to Freud to Darsee to Baltimore - are given a superficial treatment. Especially egregious is the hatchet job on Baltimore and Imanashi-Kari. Anyone wanting to find out how shoddy and partisan his treatment of the later affair is ought to read the thoughtful and well researched "The Baltimore Case" by Daniel Kevles. Since Judson seems to regard himself as a purveyor of scientific ethics in a time of lapsing moral values in the scientific enterprise, one can only hope that the scientific community can protect themselves from such scrutiny. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes.

Science as a discipline is not immune to fraud, as Horace Freeland Judson demonstrates in his study The Great Betrayal: Fraud In Science. Judson is the former director of the center for History of Recent Science: his background lends to his survey of dozens of cases where scientific fraud and aberrant scientists have threatened the very reliability and foundations of the scientific process. Chapters chart cases of scientific self-government and cases which came to light, examining events, causes, and resolution processes.

I would have given this no stars if it were an option.

The first 20 pages of this book bored and insulted me. Judson drones on about every fraud known to mankind, but only occasionally scientific fraud. He seems to hope that if we hear enough examples of fraud in the world, we will get fired up and join him in a lynching.

His tone is condescending and assumes that you already agree with him. This is not the type of academician that you could hope to have a meaningful conversation with. He laces his information with references to "the epidemic" of fraud and nobody being "immune" to it, as if by the weight of these descriptive terms you will be swept into his inevitably correct conclusions. I suspect that Judson would have presented a more objective book if he had more worthwhile information to offer.

Judging by the title, I was expecting a very interesting book. However, after only a few pages, my eyes began to glaze over. With all the possible material to choose from, the author chose to focus on the "Baltimore Affair." I had never heard of this "affair" before, but now know that I didn't miss much. The entire book is written more in the dry style of a academic paper than one for the general reader. While it may appeal to some insiders in the research community, to capture any wider audience the author needed to inject some spirit, graphic images, personalities, atmosphere, humor, drama, or anything into his account to spark some reader interest. Fraud in science is a great idea for a book, but the author having grabbed the ball...dropped it.