Betrayers of the Truth is about how science really works and why scientists are tempted to cheat. It shows that corruption and deceit are just as common in science as in any other human undertaking.

BETRAYERS OF THE TRUTH

Fraud and Deceit In the Halls of Science

By William Broad and Nicholas Wade

Pub. by Simon and Schuster ISBN: 0671447696

Possibly can be acquired via POWELL'S BOOKS 800-878-7323

Science is art.

* Isaac Newton, the first modern physicist, fudged data in his most famous treatise.

* Ellas Alsabtl, an Iraqi scientist working in America, plagiarized perhaps as many as 60 articles in order to advance his career.

* Cyril Burt, long considered one of the great twentieth-century psychologists, fabricated much of the data supporting his theory of inheritability of human intelligence.

* Mark Spector, a promising young Cornell biochemist, excited cancer researchers everywhere when in 1981, he performed complex experiments suggesting an important new mechanism of cancer causation. Unfortunately, as least some of those experiments were faked.

In spite of their growing frequency, disclosures of scientific fraud, both past and present are typically shrugged off by the scientific establishment. The individual perpetrators of fraud are Ñ so the scientific community claims Ñ just Òbad applesÓ; they neither reflect upon normal scientific practice nor cast doubt upon the time - honored notion of science as an objective self-correcting search for truth.

But in this eye-opening and fascinating book, authors William Broad and Nicholas Wade boldly contradict that claim and assert that Òthe roots of [scientific] fraud lie in the barrel, not in the bad apples that occasionally roll into public view."

In its descriptions of examples from astronomy, physics, biology and medicine, Betrayers of the Truth reveals how the supposedly fail-safe mechanisms of scientific inquiry often do fail to correct both the minor and major frauds that have become endemic to modern science.

From the tidying up of the experimental data and the fudging of statistics to the invention of whole scientific experiments out of thin air, the book examines the various means by which fraud is committed and how it can remain undetected for months, years or even centuries.

And it incisively analyzes how the lures of careerism and big money and the huge research factories common in modern science frequently lead scientists to betray their commitment to the discovery of truth and to abandon the lofty ideals of their profession.

Betrayers of the Truth is about how science really works and why scientists are tempted to cheat. It shows that corruption and deceit are just as common in science as in any other human undertaking.

Replacing our romantic notions about what science should be, Broad and Wade provide us with a vivid and unforgettable picture of what science actually is: more human, less Idealistic, but as dramatic and exciting as ever. 1982 256 pp, Indexed,

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