Known or Suspected Cases of Scientific Fraud

Case: Hipparchus (Greek astronomer)
Date: Second century B.C.
Action: Published star catalog taken from Babylonian sources as if it were the result of his own observations.
Reference: G.J. Toomer, “Ptolemy,” Dictionary of Scientific Biography (Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1975), p. 191.

Case: Claudius Ptolemy (Egyptian astronomer whose theory of the solar system held sway for 1,500 years)
Date: Second century A.D.
Action: Claimed to have performed astronomical measurements which he did not.
Reference: Robert R. Newton, The Crime of Claudius Ptolemy (Johns Hopkins University Press,
Baltimore, 1977).

Case: Galileo Galilei (physicist and founder of scientific method)
Date: Early seventeenth century
Action: Exaggerated the outcome of experimental results.
Reference: Alexandre Koyre, Metaphysics and Measurement: Essays in Scientific Revolution (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1968).

Case: Isaac Newton (first modern physicist)
Date: 1687-1713
Action: Introduced fudge factors into his magnum opus so as to increase its apparent power of prediction.
Reference: Richard S. Westfall, “Newton and the Fudge Factor,” Science, 179, 751-758, 1973.

Case: Johann Beringer (German dilettante and collector of fossils)
Date: 1726
Action: Hoaxed by rivals in publishing book of fake fossils.
Reference: Melvin E. Jahn and Daniel J. Woolf, The Lying Stones of Dr. Johann Bartholomew Adam Beringer (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1963).

Case: Johann Bernoulli (mathematician who refined calculus)
Date: 1738
Action: Plagiarized his son’s discovery of the “Bernoulli equation,” backdating his own book so it appeared to have been issued before his son’s.
Reference: C. Truesdell, in introduction to Euler’s Opera Omnia, Ser. II, Vol. II, p. xxxv.

Case: John Dalton (father of modern atomic theory)
Date: 1804-1805
Action: Reported experiments that cannot now be repeated, and which probably could not have happened as described.
Reference: Leonard K. Nash, “The Origin of Dalton’s Chemical Atomic Theory,” Isis, 47, 101-116, 1956.

Case: Orgueil (a meteorite shower that fell on France)
Date: 1864
Action: Unknown hoaxster tampered with piece of meteorite so it seemed to bear organic remains, implying the existence of extraterrestrial life.
Reference: Edward Anders et al., “Contaminated Meteorite,” Science, 146, 1157-1161, 1964.

Case: Gregor Mendel (father of genetics)
Date: 1865
Action: Published statistical results too good to be true.
Reference: Several papers in Curt Stern and Eva R. Sherwood, The Origin of Genetics: A Mendel Source Book (W.H. Freeman and Co., San Francisco, 1966).

Case: Admiral Peary (American explorer)
Date: 1909
Action: Alleged he had reached the geographical North Pole when in fact he knew he was hundreds of miles away.
Reference: Dennis Rawlins, Peary at the North Pole: Fact or Fiction? (Robert B. Luce, Washington-New York, 1973).

Case: Robert Millikan (American physicist and winner of Nobel Prize)
Date: 1910-1913
Action: Kept unfavorable results out of published papers while publicly maintaining that he had reported everything.
Reference: Gerald Holton, “Subelectrons, Presuppositions, and the Millikan-Ehrenhaft Dispute,” Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences, 9, 166-224, 1978.

Case: Piltdown
Date: 1912
Action: Hoaxster planted fake fossils in gravel pit, presumably to cast Britain as birthplace of the human race.
Reference: J.S. Weiner, The Piltdown Forgery (Oxford University Press, London, 1955).

Case: Adriaan van Maanen (American astronomer at Mount Wilson Observatory)
Date: 1916
Action: Misreported the reliability of key astronomical observations.
Reference: Norriss S. Hetherington, Beyond the Edge of Objectivity, unpublished book MS.

Case: Paul Kammerer (Viennese biologist)
Date: 1926
Action: Kammerer or assistant faked breeding results with toads.
Reference: Arthur Koestler, The Case of the Midwife Toad (Hutchinson, London, 1971).

Case: Cyril Burt (English psychologist)
Date: 1943(?)-1966
Action: Fabricated data to support theory that human intelligence is 75 percent inherited.
Reference: L.S. Hearnshaw, Cyril Burt, Psychologist, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1979, 370 pp.

Case: James H. McCrocklin (president of Southwest Texas State College from 1964-1969)
Date: 1954
Action: Pirated parts of old report in Ph.D. thesis.
Reference: Texas Observer, March 7, 1969, pp. 6-8.

Case: “Traction” (pseudonym)
Date: 1960-1961
Action: A young researcher falsified work at Yale, then was hired by Fritz Lipmann at the Rockefeller Institute, where he published falsified work with Lipmann and was eventually found out.
Reference: William J. Broad, “Fraud and the Structure of Science,” Science, 212, 137-141, 1981.

Case: P.G. Pande, R.R. Shukla, and P.C. Sekariah (at Indian Veterinary Research Institute)
Date: 1961
Action: Claimed to have discovered parasite in hens’ eggs, but photomicrographs had been lifted from another publication.
Reference: The editorial board of Science, “An Unfortunate Event,” Science, 134, 945-946, 1961.

Case: “Fraley” (pseudonym)
Date: 1964
Action: A visiting professor in David E. Green’s University of Wisconsin lab faked several important experiments leading Green to announce retractions at a national meeting.
Reference: Joseph Hixon, The Patchwork Mouse (Doubleday, New York, 1976), pp. 146-148. Hixon refers to the perpetrator of the frauds as Fraley.

Case: Robert Gullis (biochemist from Birmingham University)
Date: 1971-1976
Action: Faked series of experiments on messenger chemicals used by the brain.
Reference: Mike Muller, “Why Scientists Don’t Cheat,” New Scientist, June 2, 1977, pp. 522-523.

Case: Walter J. Levy (parapsychologist and protege of father of parapsychology, J.B. Rhine)
Date: 1974
Action: Faked results of experiment in which rats were to influence equipment by brain power, a phenomenon known as psychokinesis.
Reference: J.B. Rhine, “ A New Case of Experimenter Un reliability,” Journal of Parapsychology, 38, 215-255, 1974.

Case: William Summerlin (immunologist)
Date: 1974
Action: In an attempt to bolster research that was under fire, Summerlin faked results of skin transplants with mice.
Reference: Joseph Hixon, The Patchwork Mouse (Doubleday, New York, 1976).

Case: Stephen S. Rosenfeld (undergraduate researcher at Harvard)
Date: 1974
Action: Forged letters of recommendation and allegedly faked series of experiments in biochemistry.
Reference: Robert Reinhold, “When Methods Are Not So Scientific;” The New York Times, December 29, 1974, p. E7.

Case: Zoltan Lucas (surgeon at Stanford University)
Date: 1975
Action: Admitted to faking citations to research papers of his that did not exist. Some of the fakery was aimed at winning NIH grants.
Reference: Series of news releases put out by Stanford University News Service, August, 1981.

Case: Wilson Crook III (graduate student in geology at University of Michigan)
Date: 1977
Action: Regents at the university in 1980 rescinded Crook’s master’s degree, saying that he had fraudulently claimed to have discovered a natural mineral called “texasite,” which in reality was a synthetic compound. Crook denied the charges.
Reference: Max Gates, “Regents Rescinds Student’s Degree, Charging Fraud,” The Ann Arbor News, October 18, 1980, p. A9.

Case: Marc J. Straus (cancer researcher at Boston University)
Date: 1977-1978
Action: Group of Straus’ researchers and nurses admitted falsifying data in clinical tests and charged that some of the fakery was done on Straus’ orders. Straus denied any wrongdoing.
Reference: Nils J. Bruzelius and Stephen A, Kurkjian, “Cancer Research Data Falsified; Boston Project Collapses,” Boston Globe, five- part series starting June 29, 1980, p. 1.

Case: Elias A.K. Alsabti (Iraqi medical student who worked at several research centers in the United States)
Date: 1977-1980
Action: Plagiarized scientific papers, perhaps sixty in all.
Reference: William J. Broad, “Would-be Academician Pirates Papers,” Science, 208, 1438-1440, 1980.

Case: Stephen Krogh Derr (radiation chemist at Hope College in Holland, Michigan)
Date: 1978
Action: Published allegedly invented results of remarkable treatment said to remove plutonium from the bodies of poisoned workers.
Reference: Lawrence McGinty, “Researcher Retracts Claims on Plutonium Treatment,” New Scientist, October 4, 1979, pp. 3-4.

Case: John Long (research pathologist at Massachusetts General Hospital)
Date: 1978-1980
Action: Forged data in the course of a research career spent studying cell lines that turned out to not come from humans but from a brown-footed Columbian owl monkey.
Reference: Nicolas Wade, “A Diversion of the Quest for Truth,” Science, 211, 1022-1025, 1981.

Case: Vijay R. Soman (biomedical researcher at Yale)
Date: 1978-1980
Action: Falsified results in three papers, threw away raw data in others, forcing retraction of twelve papers in all.
Reference: Morton Hunt, “A Fraud that Shook the World of Science,” The New York Times Magazine, November 1, 1981, pp. 42-75.

Case: Mark Spector (rising young biochemist at Cornell University)
Date: 1980-1981
Action: A series of elegant experiments by Spector that pointed to a unified theory of cancer causation turned out to be fakes. Spector denied any wrongdoing, saying somebody else spiked the test tubes.
Reference: Nicholas Wade, “The Rise and Fall of a Scientific Superstar,” New Scientist, September 24, 1981, pp. 781-782.

Case: M. J. Purves (physiologist at University of Bristol)
Date: 1981
Action: Falsified work presented in paper to International Congress of Physiological Science.
Retracted paper, resigned his post after university investigation
Reference: “Scientific Fraud: In Bristol Now,” Nature, 294, 509, 1981.

Case: John R. Darsee (cardiologist at Harvard Medical School)
Date: 1981
Action: Admitted faking one experiment and blue-ribbon committee found two others highly suspect.
Reference: William J. Broad, “Report Absolves Harvard in Case of Fakery,” Science, 215, 874-876, 1982.