La souris truquée. Enquête sur la fraude scientifique

by William J. Broad, Nicholas Wade

*From Wikipedia* Betrayers of the Fraud and Deceit in the Halls of Science is a book by William Broad and Nicholas Wade, published in 1982 by Simon & Schuster in New York, and subsequently (1983) also by Century Publishing in London, and with a simplified subtitle as Betrayers of the Fraud and Deceit in Science by Oxford University Press in 1985. The book is a critique of some widely held beliefs about the nature of science and the scientific process. The book argues that the conventional wisdom that science is a strictly logical process, with objectivity the essence of scientist's attitudes, errors being speedily corrected by rigorous peer scrutiny and experiment replication, is a mythical ideal.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, History, Philosophy, Psychology, Popular Science, Academia

Pocket Book

Published March 28, 1994

About the author

William J. Broad is a best-selling author and a senior writer at The New York Times. In more than thirty years as a science journalist, he has written hundreds of front-page articles and won every major journalistic award in print and film. His reporting shows unusual depth and breadth—everything from exploding stars and the secret life of marine mammals to the spread of nuclear arms and why the Titanic sank so fast. The Best American Science Writing, a yearly anthology, has twice featured his work.

He joined The Times in 1983 and before that worked in Washington for Science, the magazine of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Broad has won two Pulitzer Prizes with Times colleagues, as well as an Emmy and a DuPont. He won the Pulitzers for coverage of the space shuttle Challenger disaster and the feasibility of antimissile arms. In 2002, he won the Emmy (PBS Nova) for a documentary that detailed the threat of germ terrorism. He was a Pulitzer finalist in 2005 for articles written with Times colleague David E. Sanger on nuclear proliferation. In 2007, he shared a DuPont Award (The Discovery Channel) from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism for the television documentary, Nuclear Jihad: Can Terrorists Get the Bomb?

Broad is the author or co-author of eight books, most recently The Science of Yoga: The Risks and the Rewards (Simon & Schuster, 2012), a New York Times bestseller. His books have been translated into dozens of languages. His other titles include Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War (Simon & Schuster, 2001), a number-one New York Times bestseller; The Universe Below: Discovering the Secrets of the Deep Sea (Simon & Schuster, 1997); Teller's War: The Top-Secret Story Behind the Star Wars Deception (Simon & Schuster, 1992); and Betrayers of the Truth: Fraud and Deceit in the Halls of Science (Simon & Schuster, 1982).

Broad's reporting has taken him to Paris and Vienna, Brazil and Ecuador, Kiev and Kazakhstan. In December 1991, he was among the last Westerners to see the Soviet hammer and sickle flying over the Kremlin.

Broad's media appearances include Larry King Live, The Charlie Rose Show, The Discovery Channel, Nova, The History Channel, and National Public Radio. His speaking engagements have ranged from the U.S. Navy in Washington, to the Knickerbocker Club in New York, to the Monterey Aquarium in California. He has also given talks at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. and the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City.

Broad earned a master's degree in the history of science from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He has three adult children and lives with his wife in the New York metropolitan area.

Reviews

[Simon Mcleish · Rating 4 out of 5]

Originally published on my blog here in November 2002.

Scientists have generally portrayed themselves as they have perceived themselves: as objective searchers after truth. This is itself not entirely the way things are even at the best of times, and on reflection it could hardly be the case. Scientists are human too; the ideas on which they work are the products of human minds; and total objectivity can only be an ideal to aspire to.

It is the dichotomy between the ideal and the reality which is the subject of this book - the whole spectrum of deceit in science, ranging from outright fraud to massaging of results to bolster a conclusion to subconscious self-deception. Topics touched on also include the relationships between the different people involved in research - such as senior and junior researchers, or co-authors of papers. The authors set out to determine what it is about the (then) current scientific culture which encourages fraud and its cover up, and they are particularly interested in the ways that process supposed to act as checks and balances (peer review of grant applications, refereeing of papers, and replication of results) have been corrupted. Broad and Wade seem to imply that a major source of problems - which are clearly wider than can be seen by examining only those scandals which have become public knowledge - are consequences of the professionalism of science (as it has this century become more of a career and less the province of the dedicated amateur) and the massive increase in the size of the scientific culture (they estimate that 90% of all scientists who ever worked were active at the time of publication, and that many papers and journals are virtually unread, making it easier to get away with plagiarism). This is however balanced by accounts of (relatively minor) fraud by some of the greatest names in science in previous centuries - men like Galileo, Newton and Mendel reporting experimental results unbelievably close to the predictions of their theories. The verdict of the historians of science seems to be that this is OK, provided that the theory turns out to be correct.

I'm not sure that the selection of the professionalisation of science as a major cause of fraud is entirely correct. One of the other interesting things that comes out of reading Betrayers of the Truth is that almost all the recent examples discussed come from the biological sciences, particularly medicine. This is something which the authors put down to the higher mathematics content in physics and chemistry. The twentieth century expansion of science as a whole is disproportionately centred on biology, and in medical research in particular are combined high pressure to produce results and massive rewards (both in money and status) potentially available, and considerable difficulty in designing, carrying out and correctly interpreting experiments. This is something which seems to me to be a basic part of the reason behind modern fraud, and it makes it especially tragic when flawed experiments can be used as the basis for new treatments.

It is now twenty years since the publication of Betrayers of the Truth; have things changed? I can't see that deliberate fraud and self deception will have gone away. One of the most famous episodes in science in the last few years falls pretty definitely into the latter category, for example - the story of cold fusion. That shares many features with cases described here (especially that of N-rays to which it has frequently been compared). One particular common feature is the attitude of the authorities involved, with the attempts of the university to play things up to attract grant money and the use of rhetoric rather than logic to argue the merits of the case. These are aspects that one would expect to have changed, as high profile cases of error would argue caution, but this does not seem to have happened.

Many scientists manage to go through their entire careers without coming across a case of fraud, though I suspect that most would harbour suspicion that some massaging of results has gone on at some point. One of the major surprises to me in this book is the consistent attitude of senior scientists that fraud hardly ever happens; that it is only the sick of mind who attempt it; and that accusations of fraud are best covered up. (This last is a regrettable consequence of the generally positive fact that scientists see themselves as a community.) There was an article in Physics Today (Investigation Finds that One Lucent Physicist Engaged in Scientific Misconduct) in November, which showed that lessons still hadn't been learnt - despite Broad and Wade bringing this up repeatedly twenty years ago, the investigating committee still said that the responsibilities of co-authors to check for fraud were not clear.

One of the most interesting points that Broad and Wade make is that attempting to understand how science works by discussing what ideal science would be like, as philosophers and scientists tend to do, is likely to lead to distortion of the truth and, in particular, to the reluctance to accept the existence of fraud that seems to still be rife. They would argue that the pathology of the scientific culture should be considered as well as its ideals; knowledge of how things can go wrong can help bring understanding of the healthy system. There is something in this, but it can be equally misleading to go too far the other way, basing understanding of the healthy on examination of the sick; this was a problem with the early development of psychiatry.

Betrayers of the Truth is a thought provoking and frequently shocking read, clearly written, in a journalistic style admirably appropriate to the topic.

[Carlo Fabrizio · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bel libro, molto istruttivo, anche se datato. Qualunque scienziato o interessato all'argomento "scienza" in generale dovrebbe leggerlo.

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

IS SCIENCE TRULY AN ‘OBJECTIVE’ AND ‘SELF-VERIFYING’ FIELD?

The authors wrote in the Preface to this 1982 book, “This is a book about how science really works… According to the conventional wisdom, science is a strictly logical process, objectivity is the essence of the scientist’s attitude to his work, and scientific claims are rigorously checked by peer scrutiny and the replication of experiments. From this self-verifying system, error of all sorts is speedily and inexorably cast out. We began to doubt this view in the course of reporting some of the recent cases in which scientists had been discovered publishing results that were fictitious… As more cases of fraud broke into public view… we wondered if fraud wasn’t a quite regular minor feature of the scientific landscape… we soon came to perceive … fraud was a phenomenon which the conventional ideology of science could not properly account for; therefore, the ideology itself must be flawed or seriously incomplete…

“Fraud, we believe, offers another route to understanding science… By studying science through its pathology rather than through some preconceived criterion, it is easier to see the process as it is, as distinct from how it ought to be… This book presents an analysis of what can be seen of science from the perspective of scientific fraud. Our conclusion, in brief, is that science bears little resemblance to its conventional portrait… In the acquisition of new knowledge, scientists are not guided by logic and objectivity alone, but also by nonrational factors as rhetoric, propaganda, and personal prejudice… Science should not be considered the guardian of rationality in society, but merely one major form of its cultural expression.”

They note, “It is difficult for a nonscientist to appreciate the overriding importance to the researcher of priority of discovery. Credit in science goes only for originality, for being the first to discover something. With rare exceptions, there are no rewards for being second. Discovery without priority is a bitter fruit.” (Pg. 23)

They assert, “History shows that deceit in the annals of science is more common than is often assumed. Those who improved upon their data to make them more persuasive to others doubtless persuaded themselves that they were lying only in order to make the truth prevail. But almost inevitably the real motive for the various misrepresentations in the history of research seems to arise less from a concern for truth than from personal ambition and the pursuit, as Darwin put it, of ‘the bauble fame.’” (Pg. 35-36)

They recount, “Elias A.K. Alsabti operated at the extreme edge of the U.S. research establishment, publishing stolen work with impunity in seldom-read journals.” (Pg. 38) Later, they add, “In his goals… Alsabti was n different from millions of other researchers… For many, however, a more immediate objective often intrudes into vision, that of establishing credit. The basic currency of credit in the scientific work is the article published in a learned journal. A long list of publications… helps in the continual struggle to secure government grants and helps with academic promotion.” (Pg. 52-53)

They note, “Plagiary, the wholesale theft of another’s work, is so outrageous and obvious a crime that an outsider might predict scientists would never commit it. The evidence shows that, to the contrary, plagiary in the scientific community is not rare, that it probably often escapes detection…and that even those discovered committing plagiary are often able to continue their careers unaffected. If plagiary, the grossest offense against intellectual property, merits just knuckle-rap treatment from the scientific community, what degree of indulgence must be accorded to lesser crimes?” (Pg. 59)

They point out, “About one-half of all scientific papers are never once cited in the year after they are published. Since scientists are supposed to cite all papers on which their own work depends, for an article never to be cited means that it probably has had no influence on any other scientist’s work, and hence no impact on the progress of science as a whole. This uncited half of the scientific community’s gross national product is essentially unchecked, unreplicated, and maybe even unread. This is the milieu in which the Alsabtis of science thrive and flourish with no impediment to their activities.” (Pg. 79)

They report, “The early attempts to teach speech to chimpanzees had faltered… Much greater progress was made when Allen and Beatrice Gardner … taught American Sign Language to their chimpanzee Washoe. Washoe and her imitators readily acquired large vocabularies … Then came a serious crisis in the form of an ape named Nim Chimpsky… Nim’s trainer, psychologist Herbert Terrace… was eventually forced to decide that Chimpsky, and indeed the other pointing pongids, were not using the signs in a way characteristic of true language. Rather, they were probably making monkeys out of their teachers … Nim’s linguistic behavior was more like that of a highly intelligent, trained dog than of the human children he so much resembled in other ways.” (Pg. 111-112)

They note that “Intelligence tests were invented by a Frenchman, Alfred Binet. He laid down three cardinal principles for their use, which were systematically ignored and perverted by his American imitators. Binet’s Rule 1 was: The scores do not define anything innate or permanent. Rule 2: The scale is a rough guide for identifying and helping learning-disabled children; it is not a way or measuring normal children. Rule 3: Low scores don’t mean a child is innately incapable.” (Pg. 198)

They write, “A problem that affects research in general is the excessive proliferation of scientific papers. Too many scientific articles are published. Many are simply worthless. Moreover the worthless papers clutter up the communications system of science, preventing good research from receiving the attention it deserves and protecting bad research from scrutiny.” (Pg. 221)

They continue, “The root of the publication problem lies in a system that is carefully protected from market constraints. The research journals that publish the articles that no one needs to read are twice subsidized, both times by the taxpayer. Their publishers levy page charges on authors to defray the printing costs. The scientific libraries that buy the journals are also subsidized. Both the page charges and the library funds come from researchers’ government grants. The subsidies underlie the ease with which almost any scientific article, however, poor, can get into print.” (Pg. 222)

They conclude, “Time and again, the truth has been betrayed by scientists, whether unintentionally, or for their own ends, or because they presumed to lie on truth’s behalf. Scientific authorities deny that fraud is anything more than a passing blemish on the face of science. But only by acknowledging that fraud is endemic can the real nature of science and its servants be fully understood.” (Pg. 224)

This book will be of great interest to those studying such issues as scientific fraud.

[Zachary · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was published in 1982, when it caused a firestorm. It was the first major book length examination and exposure of how widespread fraud and fabrication are in science, serving to highlight that, for all of the idealism, power, and value of science, it was (and is) still a human institution and social activity, and so subject to the same distortions and perverse incentives as any other. In the case of science, the authors note the dependence on trust, combined with careerism and competition that favors rapid, voluminous publication, the typically human desire for status and recognition, and the lack of robust safeguards encourage scientists to play fast and loose, often in good faith, but also often through misconduct. Moreover, science does not work the way it is often represented. Foremost is that peer review is usually poor and subject to manipulation and replication is rarely done, so lousy science is not caught, possibly ever. What is galling is that every problem the authors highlight is just as bad now. The reforms they suggest include many that are still being suggested. Things need to change, and graduate students in science need formal training in ethics as a part of their education. I am doing my part by foregrounding the issues this and later books bring up in my teaching, and also introducing ethics into the curriculum. Too little was done over the last 40 years, but maybe we can change things in the next 40. Time will tell.

[James Sheaves · Rating 3 out of 5]

Between this, Bad Blood, and the film Fyre, I've been on something of a fraud kick recently. The sort of person who commits an audacious fraud of the type contained in those works emerges as something of a type: ambitious, persuasive, egotistical, and of course pathologically deceptive. But there are also many cases presented in this book of less ambitious frauds committed by people caught up in the pressures of scientific publishing; the sort of fraud I could imagine myself succumbing to under the same circumstances (I recall a few research projects from my undergraduate days where, with a deadline looming, I may have filled in some of the gaps in my data collection). But that's quite enough about my failings! Broad and Wade's picture of science's failings seems as relevant as ever, given the ongoing replication crisis, and many of the critiques they make hold up.

Some arguments that I found less convincing appear in chapter 7, where Broad and Wade address the inadequacies of traditional philosophy of science. They make heavy reference to Karl Popper, and I don't think they quite get him right, though the point can well be made: if two science journalists don't have a perfect understanding of Popper's theory of scientific discovery, then everyday working scientists can hardly be expected to be using his pure theories as the underpinning of their work. And, indeed, they probably don't; the book notes that there are more scientists working now than in the entire rest of human history, and it is most certainly not the case that all of them have a deep familiarity with and commitment to Popper's theories.

The philosophers who Broad and Wade suggest instead as giving a better model for theories of science are Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend. Kuhn, with his coining of the "paradigm shift," fits well with the thought attributed to Einstein that the theory determines the facts you can observe; quite the opposite of the Popperian maxim to let your facts dictate your theories! It's counterintuitive, but it does make sense. Feyerabend, on the other hand, seems like nonsense to me. The claim Broad and Wade ascribe to him, that scientific knowledge doesn't grow more true, only more complex, seems, uh, utterly wrong to me. Maybe they weren't conveying his views adequately, though from what I know of him it does seem in-character.

Elsewhere, in their final chapter of recommendations for the reform of science, Broad and Wade make a clumsy reference to Adam Smith, and then recommend more private patronage of science, citing Milton Friedman. This casts the whole book with the flavour of free-market hack, which would perhaps explain their preoccupation with the apparent overabundance of researchers that make no significant contribution to scientific progress (taxpayer dollars going to fund science that ends up read by nobody? The horror!). But in spite of this, many of Broad and Wade's observations are insightful, and their accounts of fraudsters running amok are amusing in much the same way as Bad Blood and Fyre are.

[Lynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

overall is an interesting summary of the history (and current at the time) fraud in science
also has some forays into philosophy and criticism of science that were quite good

it’s unfortunate that the conclusion is full of either p astute suggestions that have mostly gone unused and unchanged in the 40 years since publication or fully unhinged suggestions like cutting all government scientific funding and putting it all up to private fundraising to support science (what?)

Especially bc they specifically mention basic research here the kind that is notoriously the least likely form of research to receive private funding as it becomes the basis for understanding bio/chem/physics that can later be built upon for cures or vaccine research but at the basic level is p much Never supported by private interests.

or that adam smiths????? economics are in anyway a good analogy for the pursuit of truth in science like…. public good produced out of actions for private gain?? when they had just expounded on how scientists in it for the fame and recognition over understanding of the truth are much more likely to commit fraud. Like why did we bring adam smith into this at all anyway jesus

they also in their recommendations missed a third subsidy in publishing of scientific research taxpayers pay for the research itself in most cases, then the publication fee to the journal (especially if open access), and the library or university fee to access those journal articles from the journals.

but other than the Weirdness of the conclusion (and the stephen jay gould recounts of head size stuff that while correct in criticism but is Also fraught with multiple errors in measurement and statistics) this was a good book covering scientific fraud and philosophy of science

ps: there is an update of the same topic in science fictions by stuart ritchie in 2020

[Toni K. · Rating 5 out of 5]

So much in this book I never saw coming! I will not give spoilers. Enzo and Kai heat things up. We begin with more details of what we learned in the last book. Half way through you will get a very surprising truth. Then at the end, one that didn’t surprise me so much, and then the cliffhanger. Yikes! What next?
I really get annoyed being left hanginging, but at least Ella doesn’t make us last too terribly long, each book has some real substance, and they are reasonably priced.
This is an ARC, but is superbly edited.

I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.

[Groucho42 · Rating 5 out of 5]

2021 re-read of an excellent book about the problems in research, both academic and business. It's primarily focused biology and chemistry but there are enough examples from other disciplines. The upshot is that "self-policing" works no better in science than it does with police, doctors or lawyers. Fraud is the natural result of too much pressure in an insulated environment that has an ability to cover it up.

[Alexandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love this book and a must-read for those who blindly appeal to authority and make the assumption that those in lab coats are infallible to outright deceptions -- or that institutions have the apparatus to see those lapses in integrity right away.

[Matt Warren · Rating 2 out of 5]

Extremely dated. Probably was interesting 30-35 years ago.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

the title of this book sounds much more sensational than the content really is.
the book is a summary of fraud within science. it is a very illuminating look into the world of science and has caused me to be much less accepting of what scientists say. to be more cautious about scientific claims. the book shows how prevalant fraud is, even gregor mendol and galileo fudged some of their statistical data to make their theories seems stronger. both of their theories happened to turn out to be correct and so the fudged numbers are often forgotten and forgiven.
however, despite how common fraud is shown to be within science, it does seem that it does little to impede the forward march of knowledge in the world. for most fraud is either committed by people working on something very obscure and irrelevant, so makes little difference, and the fraud was committed for the sake of the scientist to large amounts of work. or the fraud if the fraud is committed in relation to something more relevant, it will simply not stand the test of time, when other scientists try to build upon the fraudulant theories they will find them faulty and so fall by the wayside and be forgotten.
one interesting point the book makes repeatedly is that the part of the scientific method most people think of as being the safe guard to prevent fraud, the step of other scientists trying to repeat the studies of their colleagues is mostly non existent. most scientists have little reason to try and repeat someone else's study, unless they are doing so to build upon it. and for the most part, if a scientist fails in trying to repeat someone else's experiment they assume it was some fault of their own rather than that the data was false.

[Melissa Rodriguez · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was a must-read for someone in science like me. It was published over 20 years ago, but shockingly, (or maybe perhaps not), not much has changed in the halls of science. What struck me most is that I have encountered situations that exemplify exactly what the author says here, which you would expect do not happen anymore, living in the age we do. But they do, and with great frequency. In fact, I'd dare to say it's gotten worse. Now, universities are graduating hundreds of thousands of PhD's, preparing them for academic jobs that simply are not there, and the science elite deals with it by extending the training requirements of the postdoctoral fellow. What once was a training "stepping stone" of 2-3 years has morphed into 8-10 years of overworked, underpaid "training" for an academic position that just isn't there. The pressure to publish is incredibly high, with better rewards given for the number of publications, not the quality of publications, and the "minimum publication unit" - the minimum amount of data you need to crank out a publication, is rampant. This day and age, if you do not publish in the elite journals, Nature, Cell, Science, your chances of getting an academic position are extremely slim, because hiring committees use the presence of these publications in your CV as screening tools to weed out the "unqualified" candidates. But you cannot publish in these journals if you don't have the right connections or are extremely well funded. The system is rigged against the young, developing researcher, to a point where even the NIH has recognized it as a problem, but even they can't seem to do anything about it.

[Joe Rogel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Describes a sad truth I already knew exists within academia: The concept of an impartial, unbiased, self-correcting scientific community is not the gleaming beacon of infallibility it presents itself to be. Between careerism, politics, and arrogance, the distinct scent of pants on fire have been detected in institutions of even the Harvard and Yale caliber.

The authors also bring to the forefront failures of a peer-review system that gives little incentive to actually review a peer, and how the transformation of publications into scientific "currency" has brought about an increase of poor quality publications for the sake of CV padding.

The researcher is a terribly vulnerable being, prone to worry over grant committees and competition before they can even begin to focus on their science. Because of it, the need to publish or perish is a very real concern. And though the idea of intentionally misleading others for the sake of publication is unthinkable to most, it is not unheard of.

For all researchers, it's important to remain vigilant of the bias that pervades this community while also ensuring that your own pants remain flame-retardant.

[Ian Slagle · Rating 2 out of 5]

*Betrayers* is fairly low on my list of science books, not because of its accusations of scientific giants manipulating data, but because their suggested solutions to problems presented seem more designed to stir up controversy than to actually fix anything. In other words, it has *Against Method*-itis. If you get rid of the final chapter and hope that other people will come up with better solutions, it's significantly better.

[Krista the Krazy Kataloguer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Scientific fraud-- and twenty plus years after this book was written, it still occurs.