The Great Betrayal: Fraud in Science - Hardcover

HORACE FREELAND JUDSON is director of the Center for History of Recent Science at George Washington University.A MacArthur Fellow, he is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and has written for many publications, including the NewYorker,Time, Nature, Cell, Lancet, and Gene. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland

"Horace Judson's compulsively readable book reflects the despair and anger many of us feel against those who prefer to push dirt under the carpet. THE GREAT BETRAYAL crisply recalls cases of misconduct and roots out the truth of each, contextualizes scientific fraud within contemporary culture, and provides exciting visions for how we can wage battle against scientific dishonesty in the future. Medical and science authorities, who have done so little against fraud, should all be made to read this book."
-- Stephen Lock, Editor Emeritus, British Medical Journal

"Horace Freeland Judson turns an analytical light on faulty scientific practices and the circumstances that created them. We can no longer accept the bromide that science is an automatic system for discovering the truth, which scientists should be trusted to police by themselves. Perhaps Judson's graceful exposition is the "teaspoon of sugar that makes the medicine go down." In any event, the potion should be therapeutic to the body scientific."
-- Arthur Galston, Eaton Professor Emeritus, Department of Molecular, Cellular & Developmental Biology,Yale University

We live in a world transformed by science-from the DNA analysis we use to convict criminals, to the daring transplant surgeries we perform, to the pesticides we spray on our vegetables. Clearly, science and scientists make up an integral support to contemporary civilization. And, for many years, we have placed unquestioning trust in these scientists, this profession where data is holy and integrity a necessary credential.

But now, like in so many other institutions, science seems riddled with fraud. As the cases pile up-dozens in the past quarter-century-we can no longer shrug off fraud in science as the miscreance of aberrant individual scientists. Instead, we must look for the causes and remedies for this epidemic in the structures and cultures of scientific institutions themselves. Here, Horace Judson carefully details various types of scientific fraud and how they happen; considers science's self-government, including peer review and paper refereeing; and exposes the failures of academic, legal, and government responses. With reason for hope, he also points to how the movement toward Internet publication of papers promises remarkable new checks on fraud. More than an exposé, THE GREAT BETRAYAL dissects the scientific body to offer an anatomy of scientific fraud that will help us restore our faith in this venerable and worthy field.