Many scientific discoveries now raise too many questions, but it was not possible to prove the fact of deception one hundred percent. Researchers and extra-class, sometimes even recognized geniuses, resorted to cheating, what can we say about mere mortals. However, this shadow side of the history of science is not particularly advertised, although it does exist, writes WashProfile.
For example, in the 1970s, texts were discovered in Mexico and subsequently published, which, it was claimed, were created by the Mayan civilization. The famous scientist, Nobel Prize laureate in physics in 1965, Richard Feynman, who also translated the Maya hieroglyphs (he translated the astronomical treatises of this civilization), after analyzing these texts (more precisely, after analyzing the astronomical data contained in them), came to the conclusion that before him a fake. However, it was not possible to prove this precisely: the fact is that very few books created by the Maya survived, so there is a possibility that these texts were indeed created by an illiterate ancient Indian.
In 1884 in the state of Delaware on the Atlantic coast of the United States, an ancient pendant was discovered by archaeologist Harald Cresson. It was made from a sea shell and featured a mammoth. The suspension allowed us to draw two sensational conclusions: firstly, mammoths migrated to North America from Siberia together with the first inhabitants of the American continent, and secondly, North American mammoths have survived almost to the present day.
These theories survived until 1988, when historian James Griffin published an article in American Antiquity arguing that the suspension was a fake. He argued that, firstly, Cresson was little known in archaeological circles before this sensational discovery, and secondly, many archaeologists were initially suspicious of Cresson's find, and thirdly, despite the fact that the shell was clearly of local origin, this proves nothing, fourthly, the engraving was almost an exact copy of the image of a mammoth found in Europe, etc. Radiocarbon analysis showed that the shell was born from 1.5 thousand to 110 years ago. Theoretically, mammoths could indeed have been hiding somewhere in the vastness of North America during this era, but no remains of them have yet been found.
Late 2005 - early 2006 were marked by a series of high-profile scientific scandals
Famous scientists were seized by the hand - they are accused of manipulating facts, manipulating evidence and other similar sins.
At the end of December 2005, Wu-Suk Hwan, a professor of veterinary science at Seoul National University, was accused of deliberately fabricating the results of experiments on cloning human embryonic stem cells, violating the rules for working with donors, dishonest handling of public funds and a whole bunch of other deviations from the principles of scientific ethics and legal norms.
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The scandal reached its peak in early January 2006, when a commission appointed by the university leadership, in the main, confirmed the validity of these accusations. A month later, Hwan was removed from office pending the end of the proceedings, and in mid-March, the Korean Society for Molecular and Cell Biology expelled him from its ranks. Investigators from the prosecutor's office took up Khwan's case.
In early March, prosecutors announced that Hwang had admitted to giving one of his assistants orders to modify several lines of conventional somatic cells so that they could be passed off as cloned stem cells. It is possible that for Hwang the case may end in prison. On March 16, the South Korean Ministry of Health revoked Hwang's license to conduct embryonic stem cell experiments.
In mid-January 2006, it became known that the Norwegian oncologist Jon Sudbo had come up with nearly a thousand fictitious case histories to support his conclusions about the possibility of treating oral cancer with non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (he published an article about this in 2005 in the serious British medical journal Lancet).
Around the same time, trouble began for Stefan Willich, director of the Berlin Institute for Social Medicine, Epidemiology and Health Economics. Willich was accused of deliberately manipulating clinical data in an effort to prove that loud noise dramatically increases the likelihood of acute cardiac abnormalities.
Also in early March 2006, the editors of the English journal Nature reported serious doubts about the scientific validity of the claims of the American nuclear engineer Ruzi Taleyarkhan, who for several years claims to have observed thermonuclear reactions occurring under the influence of sound shock waves. Purdue University, where Talleyarhan now works, has so far been wary of starting a formal investigation into the case, but hastily announced that it will be referred to a commission of experts.
In mid-March 2006, Ian Wilmut, considered the creator of the world's first cloned animal, Dolly the sheep, admitted that his role in this discovery was greatly exaggerated.
Even recognized geniuses were involved in cheating
Horace Judson, author of The Great Betrayal: Fraud in Science, provides evidence that even such giants as Isaac Newton and Robert Millikan, who won the 1923 Nobel Prize in Physics for work on the determination of the elementary electric charge and the study of the photoelectric effect. However, their partial bad faith did not affect the quality and value of their research.
Naturalist, monk and abbot of the monastery Gregor Mendel - the founder of the doctrine of heredity. In the middle of the 19th century, Mendel conducted extensive experiments on the hybridization of peas. Mendel was the first to reveal the patterns of free divergence and combination of hereditary factors. However, now researchers of Mendel's works pay attention to the fact that in his works the results of experiments are excessively flawless. However, apparently, Mendel was not engaged in scientific fraud - he simply stopped the experiment in time - at the moment when he received data that satisfied him.
Eugene Mallow, a long-time researcher of Sigmund Freud, winner of many scientific awards, published The Faults and Frauds of Freud, where he presented evidence that the creator of the theory of psychoanalysis fabricated evidence.
According to Mallow, Freud's theory is based on six fundamental stories of six people with whom Freud worked for a long time as a doctor. However, an analysis of the archives showed that one of the patients stopped visiting Freud three months after starting therapy, and two patients had never had any contact with Freud at all. Of the three remaining, only one shared his subconscious fears with Freud. That is, the creator of psychoanalysis based his theory only on the stories of one person. Mallow believes that Freud went on forgery quite deliberately, since he believed that it was impossible to learn psychoanalysis from books - a specialist in psychoanalysis was obliged to independently analyze human behavior.
The famous German biologist and philosopher Ernst Haeckel, an enthusiastic follower of Charles Darwin, discovered in 1866 the so-called “bioenergetic law”, according to which the individual development of man in a simplified form repeats all stages of the evolution of mankind. That is, the human embryo in the process of development goes through the stages of fish, amphibian, etc. As evidence, Haeckel presented the corresponding images of the embryos. The forgery was discovered by his colleagues, who brought Haeckel's case to a university court. Haeckel admitted that he "painted on" the necessary details. In the 1950s, it was finally proved that even in the earliest stages of development, the human embryo is not identical with the embryo of a fish, reptile or bird.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the famous French physicist, Corresponding Member of the French Academy of Sciences, Rene Blondlot reported on the amazing discovery of N-rays (named by analogy with X-rays - X-rays, the letter N appeared because of the city of Nancy, where Blondlot worked), which all types of matter emit, with the exception of green trees and some metals. The N-rays penetrated tissue paper and platinum plates, but tracing paper and stone were impenetrable to them. Blondlot won the laurels of the great inventor. Between 1903 and 1906, about 120 French scientists published more than 300 scientific articles that analyzed and explained the phenomenon of N-rays. Blondlot himself has published 26 articles and a book.
However, Blondlot had obvious difficulties demonstrating his experiments to foreign scientists - the experiments were carried out in the semi-darkness, it was extremely difficult to observe Blondlot's actions, even the purpose of the scientific equipment was unclear. In 1904, the first articles appeared, the authors of which claimed that Blondlot was cheating - one of the proofs of this was the fact that the experiments of the French genius could not be reproduced anywhere except in his laboratory.
It is curious that in the 1920s, individual scientists in Great Britain and Ireland confirmed the existence of N-rays. It didn't hurt Blondlot's career - he returned to electrical engineering and published some good research. Science historian Robert Lagemann, author of New Light on Old Rays: N Rays, notes that the French scientists' fascination with N-rays was like a mass madness.
Often, scientists passed off other people's discoveries as their own
In the 1870s, French sheep breeders suffered terrible losses from the anthrax epidemic. Annual losses from the death of animals amounted to 20-30 million francs, at that time it was a huge amount. The great microbiologist and chemist Louis Pasteur undertook to help the farmers. In February 1881, he published an article in which he announced that he had succeeded in creating a protective vaccine against this disease. However, Pasteur was cunning, the newspaper notes.
The effectiveness of the vaccine Pasteur proved in a public experiment, carried out very theatrically. On May 31, Pasteur and his assistants infected 50 sheep with anthrax at a farm near Paris. Earlier in the same month, 25 animals were immunized in two doses with the new Pasteur drug.
Pasteur announced in advance that these sheep would not get sick, and the others would certainly perish. Two days later, on June 2, at the invitation of Pasteur, representatives of local authorities, journalists, deputies and farmers - a total of more than two hundred people - came to the farm. They were amazed at what they saw. The 24 vaccinated lambs looked perfectly healthy, only one died, which was soon to be sworn. But of the unvaccinated, 23 have already died, the remaining two were at their last gasp. Messages about the next brilliant success of the great Pasteur spread all over the world.
This textbook version of events has survived almost to the present day. However, in 1995 the American historian of science Gerald Gayson published the book Private Science of Louis Pasteur, in which the same events are presented from a different angle.
He showed that Pasteur prepared his vaccine according to someone else's method! One of the methods of vaccination is the introduction of a live, but weakened culture of the pathogenic microorganism. At the end of the 1870s, Pasteur conducted successful experiments on obtaining a vaccine against chicken cholera, which led him to the idea that in order to weaken the pathogenic microbe, his culture should be kept in an oxygen environment for a longer time, simply put, in air. True, this method did not work directly for anthrax, since its bacillus (and it was already known by that time) forms very stable spores in the air.
But Pasteur got around this obstacle by learning how to weaken the anthrax bacillus by keeping it in chicken broth. Another French bacteriologist, Charles Chamberlain, who was then working in Pasteur's laboratory, weakened the same bacillus by means of an antiseptic, potassium dichromate. Gason proved that Pasteur cured the sheep with a vaccine that he made in the same way as Chamberlain.
Pasteur did not tell either the public or his colleagues, but he did in his laboratory notebooks. In 1964, one of Pasteur's heirs donated these diaries to the National Library, which opened them for study seven years later. Gason was the first historian of science to undertake their deciphering. He spent 12 years on this work (there are more than 10 thousand pages covered with a very illegible handwriting). His conclusion is unambiguous: Louis Pasteur weakened anthrax bacilli by means of dichromate.
Gason argues that Pasteur deliberately misled both the general public and his colleagues in the profession, but did so, in general, out of noble motives. He really believed in his method of keeping the anthrax pathogen in chicken broth, and by the end of the spring of 1881 he had already begun to receive drugs in this way that looked quite promising.
In the middle of the summer, he considered this work completed and with full success began to use his own vaccine to immunize animals. Perhaps, in May, he just did not dare to apply it yet, believing that it needs improvement. Be that as it may, then he used the method of Chamberlain, but never once referred to the true author of this discovery.
A record number of widely known scientific forgeries and fakes are associated with research in history, paleontology, archeology
Examples of such forgeries - for example, "creative editing" or making additions to ancient manuscripts - can be traced back to the early Middle Ages. However, the era of rapid scientific progress has provided many new models.
Perhaps one of the most striking examples of this kind is the story of George Psalmanazar. In 1704 he arrived in England, where he told everyone (including serious scientists) that he was captured by the aborigines of the island of Formosa (now Taiwan). The stories of Psalmanazar made it into sailing directions, books on geography, etc. As it soon became clear, Psalmanazar simply invented the language, culture, religion, calendar and customs of the inhabitants of Formosa.
"Man of the Dawn". In 1912, near the town of Piltdown (England), ancient fragments of a human jaw and skull were discovered. The discovery was made by renowned archaeologist Charles Dawson and science enthusiast Arthur Woodward. They concluded that the Piltdown Man lived about 1 million years ago. By that time, the remains of a Neanderthal were discovered in Europe (he lived 200-300 thousand years ago), and Homo Erectus, which was about 700 thousand years old, was discovered in Java. The Piltdown Man had a big brain. Thus, they were the oldest representative of Homo sapiens. He was named Eoanthrope Dawson ("Dawson's Dawn Man").
In 1953, anthropologist Joseph Wiener first doubted that eanthrope really existed. As numerous studies have shown, the jaw and teeth of the eanthrope belonged to an orangutan, and part of the skull to an Englishman, most likely a contemporary of Shakespeare. Now historians argue about who forged the oldest gentleman in England.
Kenneth Feder, author of Frauds, Mysteries and Myths: Science and Pseudoscience in Archeology, believes that the author of this forgery could be either amateur paleontologist Father Pierre Thur de Chardin, who received participation in those excavations and the famous writer Arthur Conan Doyle, who lived nearby and had a wealth of experience in organizing such pranks.
Archaeroraptor. In the 1950s, "black archaeologists" from China discovered the remains of a creature that was deemed the "missing link" between a dinosaur and a bird. A creature in the form of a bird with a dinosaur tail. It was called the archaeroraptor, but later became known as the "Piltdown turkey" (an allusion to eoanthrope). The historical bones were taken from China and sold to a private American collector. In 1999, National Geographic magazine published an article describing another discovery related to the Archaeoraptor - the bones of a bird and a dinosaur were glued together by someone.
"God's hand". The famous Japanese archaeologist Shinichi Fujimura made many discoveries and was nicknamed the "Hand of God" for his rare luck. He found ample evidence that Japanese civilization arose from time immemorial. In 2000, a Japanese newspaper published two series of photographs, one showing Fujimura burying Stone Age artifacts in an ongoing excavation, the other showing Fujimura triumphantly excavating these historic stones and shards.
"Missing link". Several years ago, near Hamburg, the remains of a man who lived about 36 thousand years ago were discovered. This became a scientific sensation, because these remains could be a "transitional link" between a Neanderthal and modern man. The discovery was made by Professor Rainer Protsch von Seiten.
However, later, the University of Frankfurt, where von Seiten worked, announced that the professor no longer works within its walls, as he systematically falsified Stone Age artifacts. A man of "transitional link", as shown by an examination carried out by Oxford University, lived not 36 thousand years ago, but 7.6 thousand years ago. Checking other findings of the professor also showed that he skillfully "aged" artifacts. However, the professor's dishonesty was proven only after he tried to sell the university's collection of chimpanzee skeletons.