A Rum Affair: A True Story of Botanical Fraud [Hardcover]

Karl Sabbagh (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 2000

A fascinating true story of botanical fraud set on the exotic Hebridean Isle of Rum.

The mysterious Isle of Rum is one of the Inner Hebrides situated off the west coast of Scotland. Rugged and mountainous, its brooding beauty and natural diversity attracted an eminent British botanist, John Heslop Harrison of Newcastle University, who claimed to have discovered several species of rare plants there that had never been observed within five hundred miles of the island. These discoveries helped him make his mark as one of Britain's outstanding scientists. But in A Rum Affair, Karl Sabbagh begins to question those discoveries, after stumbling onto a veiled reference in an obituary of amateur botanist John Raven, Heslop Harrison's accuser, and he soon finds himself pursuing a fifty-year-old open secret: Were the plants indigenous? If not, how did they get there? And what was Heslop Harrison's motive? Sabbagh also explores the oddly congenial relationship between accuser and accused, detailing Raven's unusual attempts to keep his discoveries secret. Like a skillful whodunit, A Rum Affair savors each of its surprising revelations of hubris and chicanery as its tale unfolds among the exotic flora and fauna of Rum.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Take a garrulous old university professor with a knack for making extraordinary (and highly suspicious) botanical discoveries, a scientific community becoming increasingly skeptical of his claims, and an amateur botanist keen to find out the truth, and the stage is set for an absorbing tale of scientific chicanery and academic intrigue.

Professor John Heslop Harrison of Newcastle University was one of the most respected and knowledgeable botanists of the first half of the 20th century. His greatest passion was for the plants of the Hebridean islands off the west coast of Scotland. He came to believe that some of the islands' plants were survivors from a time before the last Ice Age, a theory bound to be controversial given that the last advance of the ice sheets extended well south of mainland Scotland. In support of his theory, Heslop Harrison began to report sightings of plants that no one had ever seen on the islands before, and the botanical community started to get suspicious. Were the plants really where Heslop Harrison claimed they were? If so, how did they get there? Could they really have survived on the islands since the last interglacial? Or had the wily old professor carried the specimens to the Hebrides from their sites of origin and planted them?

Karl Sabbagh relates the shady tale of John Heslop Harrison in his highly engaging book A Rum Affair (Rum is the name of the Hebridean island where Harrison made many of his most extraordinary--and suspicious--discoveries). Sabbagh examines the thoughts, actions, and motivation of Harrison and his academic enemies with great aplomb, and goes on to explore how some scientists are driven to the belief that fakery can be in the interest of science. Sabbagh's writing style is sometimes dry and detailed, as befits the treatment of a rather touchy subject, but the book is also laced with absorbing anecdotes and wry humor. It's a winner in a popular history of science genre that is becoming a bit overpopulated these days. --Chris Lavers, Amazon.co.uk

From Publishers Weekly

Class warfare in British universities! Wholesale deception in top research journals! Sedge grasses covertly transplanted to islands in the Inner Hebrides! Clearly fascinated by this long hushed-up scandal in a quiet field, Sabbagh (Skyscraper: The Making of a Building) has produced a fluent, attentive and compact chronicle of scientific deception and detection. Newcastle University's John Heslop HarrisonAa confrontational man and a coal miner's sonAascended to the top of U.K. plant science in part on the strength of unusual grasses that he and his students "discovered" on Scotland's Isle of Rum. The classical scholar and expertAbut amateurAbotanist John Raven found in the late 1940s that Harrison had brought the unusual species to the island in order to later claim credit for finding them there. The "discoveries" supported Heslop Harrison's theory that parts of England and Scotland retained plant species from before the last Ice Age. Wanting to avoid a public controversy, Raven never published his clearest indictment of Harrison, instead making his evidence known to others in charge of classifying plants. The Heslop-Raven controversy could bear all sorts of sociological glosses: did it set a hardworking professor from the provinces against a privileged Oxbridge amateur? Or an arrogant professional against a diligent, careful outsider? Did it show how science can police itself, or how collegiality lets coverups go on? Sabbagh considers all these aspects of the case as he sketches the two men's personalities and those of many other relevant characters. Sabbagh's final chapters consider parallel frauds in other scientific fields, presenting credible explanations for how a few scientists steeped in the codes of their profession perpetrate outright fraudsAand how other scientists get taken in. (July)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 276 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1st edition (July 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374252823
• ISBN-13: 978-0374252823
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,621,182 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I enjoyed this book., July 31, 2000

By 

rpk - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Rum Affair: A True Story of Botanical Fraud (Hardcover)

The topic of the book is: did Professor Heslop Harrison, who was an eminent British botanist during the first half of the 1900s, fake some of his results? This might sound dry, but the book is not. Sabbagh has written an engaging story about the effects of ego on scientific inquiry. As a scientist-in-training myself, I found the story fascinating. Why would someone with an established reputation take such a risk? Or was he merely persecuted by jealous colleagues, as he claimed himself? Why did the scientific community react as it did? As well as detailing the history involved, Sabbagh explores the psychology of the main characters in an attempt to find an answer. The specific scentific issues are explained clearly and concisely. He includes a section briefly discussing other scientific frauds that lends more depth to the analysis of this particular case. This is a good book, funny, and very well written.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Real-Life Mystery Examined Through Circumstantial Evidence, March 20, 2001

By 

Donald Mitchell "Jesus Loves You!" (Thanks for Providing My Reviews over 109,000 Helpful Votes Globally) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: A Rum Affair: A True Story of Botanical Fraud (Hardcover)

Science makes progress by the innovations of individuals. Upon noticing something new, others try to replicate the results. When they do, scientists start to feel confidence that reality has been established. When the results cannot be replicated, doubt begins to build. Sometimes, the innovator made a mistake. Sometimes, the emulators don't quite understand what needs to be done. And occasionally, the innovator made up the results in the first place (like the little boy who cried "wolf").

This book focuses on parts of the career of Professor John Heslop Harrison of Newcastle University, who was a famous botanist in the British Isles during the first half of the 20th century. Over his career, he had discovered or been present when many rare species had been found in new places. While many of these discoveries were replicated by others, many of the ones he made on the private island of Rum (also spelled Rhum) in the Hebrides did not have that replication. Some botanists became suspicious, and encouraged a talented amateur botanist, John Raven, to inveigle an invitation to Rum to see the specimens. What he saw led Mr. Raven to conclude that someone (possibly the good professor) had planted these specimens on Rum, rather than occurring there naturally. Based on these researches and a letter to "Nature," the professor's discoveries that others could not document were gradually withdrawn from the scientific literature.

The book looks at the whole problem from our time now. The author interviewed people who were alive and participating in the controversy then, as well as examined the documents and letters involved. He turns up a series of questionable "discoveries" also including butterflies and beetles that suggest a systemmatic pattern. In a final amusing aside, he visits the professor's home and is amazed to discover that the postal address he used for it is false. He chose to pretend he lived on the most fashionable street in town, when he did not.

The circumstantial evidence (and it is hard to have more, unless you see someone literally planting the specimen) does get a bit tedious, but the author does a nice job of considering the motives behind scientific frauds. Generally, they are tied to a desire to make a big breakthrough, and the "scientist" is convinced the theory is right . . . even though the evidence don't show it yet. In Professor Heslop Harrison's case, he wanted to build a new theory of the evolution of species and also wanted to change the view about how the last ice age had occurred in Britain. These "discoveries" tended to support those theories.

The book's approach is quite a thorough one, and since Mr. Sabbagh is not a botanist he makes the book more understandable to those of us who are not. He also as a wry sense of humor that makes for comic relief throughout the book.

On the other hand, reading exhaustively about weeds, beetles, scientific controversies, and whether the samples were received or not is dull. Although well written and fascinating for its broader implications, the writing style left my mind wandering a bit. If the book had been written to about 70 percent of this length, it would have been more appealing. Many of the letters could have been edited down or included in the appendix material. I graded the book down one star for being cumbersome in this way.

As to what really happened, no one will ever know for certain. Certainly, the weight of the evidence suggests to me (a nonscientist) that sloppiness at least was involved in some cases, and possibly conscious fraud. If no one ever turns up these specimens again (and they haven't in decades in some cases), the preponderance of the evidence will favor their never having existed naturally in the sites claimed.

Where else do we rely on claims that are hard to substantiate? How can we defend against "false" claims occurring? My mind is drawn to SUVs as an example. Many people originally bought these believing that they were safer alternatives to smaller vehicles. No one discouraged that view. Recent statistics suggest that people in SUVs are more likely to be injured than people in some smaller cars. How could a misperception like this have been established, and how could have been allowed to persist? It seems like some people will pay with their lives, as a result.

Look for independent information, well verified by others who have no vested interest!

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars clearly not for everyone, May 10, 2002

By 

H. Hardman (Pasadena, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Rum Affair: A True Story of Botanical Fraud (Hardcover)

The merest possibility that a geographic botanist would actually falsify a discovery and violate the sanctity of the British scientific aristocracy is not only enough excitement for one book, but plenty for a sensational story. However, you might have to be an unabashed fan of all things Anglo like myself; also perhaps a talented amateur horticulturist who thrills to the details of the growing conditions necessary for the disputed "discoveries" of J. Heslop Harrison (the names of the characters alone make this a fun read). Sabbagh navigates the touchy territory of real peoples' reputations with great subtlety and renders a fascinating picture of the British universities, their scientists and personalities. Of course there is no silly confrontation scene! All the drama is handled with typical British restraint, which makes the book and this true story all the more enthralling for the right type of reader.