Stuart Ritchie
Lies, Damned Lies & Research Findings
Fraud in the Lab: The High Stakes of Scientific Research
By Nicolas Chevassus-au-Louis (Translated from French by Nicholas Elliott)
Harvard University Press 205pp £28.95
In 1830, Charles Babbage, the English mathematician and ‘father of the computer’, wrote his Reflections on the Decline of Science in England, and on Some of Its Causes. He sketched out a typology of all the ways scientists could commit fraud: by hoaxing (where the idea is to reveal later that the scientific results were fake, to prove a point); by forging (where the results are made up from scratch and passed off as real); by trimming (chopping away inconvenient data points from studies); or by cooking (‘serving up’ only the best data, hiding the evidence that doesn’t back up a theory). Thus, even decades prior to major scientific successes like the development of the theory of evolution and the germ theory of disease, people had a good idea of how science could go wrong.
To put it mildly, Babbage’s problems haven’t gone away. Just ten years ago, a review of polls of scientists found that, when asked if they’d faked any results, 2 per cent answered in the affirmative. Bad enough, you might think; but when asked whether they knew any scientists who’d committed fraud, over 14 per cent said they did.
A modern follow-up to Babbage’s treatise is provided by Malscience: De la fraude dans les labos, a 2016 book by the French investigative journalist and ex-biologist Nicolas Chevassus-au-Louis. Newly translated into English by Nicholas Elliott, Fraud in the Lab consists of a series of short, punchy chapters on
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
It is a triumph @arthistorynews and my review @Lit_Review is here!
In just thirteen years, George Villiers rose from plain squire to become the only duke in England and the most powerful politician in the land. Does a new biography finally unravel the secrets of his success?
John Adamson investigates.
John Adamson - Love Island with Ruffs
John Adamson: Love Island with Ruffs - The Scapegoat: The Brilliant Brief Life of the Duke of Buckingham by Lucy Hughes-Hallett
literaryreview.co.uk
During the 1930s, Winston Churchill retired to Chartwell, his Tudor-style country house in Kent, where he plotted a return to power.
Richard Vinen asks whether it’s time to rename the decade long regarded as Churchill’s ‘wilderness years’.
Richard Vinen - Croquet & Conspiracy
Richard Vinen: Croquet & Conspiracy - Churchill’s Citadel: Chartwell and the Gatherings Before the Storm by Katherine Carter
literaryreview.co.uk