As the title states anyone in a scientific field will do (ie doctors etc) - lying, dishonesty or proven to have done major unethical stuff. Just because I am curious.
And to get this one over and done with **Andrew Wakefield **Andrew Wakefield - Wikipedia
Ok who else?
The Wiki page on the infamous Tuskegee experiment has several candidates.
John Charles Cutler was involved in that and in other medical atrocities.
A 30-year old book may give you some of what you want. (I’d never heard of the book but stumbled on it just now Googling for mention of Galileo’s famous data fudging.)
The perpetrator of the Piltdown Man hoax, Chalres Dawson, would surely qualify. Was Pierre Teilhard de Chardin a co-conspirator, as Stephen Jay Gould thought? No, says Mary Lukas.
There are many cases given here:
The ‘cold fusion’ guys Fleischmann and Pons.
DId they lie or were unethical, or were they just wrong?
While this case wasn’t famous outside academic circles it had lasting impact on the way science education at the PHD training level was conducted. I was a new grad student when the impact of this event came crashing down, and it was all the faculty, students and post-docs could talk about. Maybe not a big deal to the lay person, but it was a big deal to those of us on the inside.
I was wondering whether to mention them. Hasty in announcing their work, and maybe not through the proper channels, but yeah, I’m not exactly sure they were out-and-out lying.
How about William Summerlin, the guy who claimed to have transplanted skin grafts between genetically unrelated mice without immune rejection?
I’ll second IvoryTowerDenizen’s suggestion of the Baltimore case. It is now the classic ethics case for every biomedical research student. And it’s really a shame that it has come to be known as the “Baltimore case”. David Baltimore was found to not be aware of the misconduct and to have acted appropriately. His career has recovered; he has served as President of Rockefeller, CalTech, and AAAS, all since the case was resolved. However, there was certainly a time when he was thought to be the biggest name to be brought down by academic fraud.
My favorite fraud case is that of Hyung-In Moon. He made up reviewers for his manuscripts to ensure their acceptance. He would have gotten away with it much longer if he had just been more patient. An editor caught on when all of the reviews for his paper were returned within 24 hours. Anyone familiar peer-review knows that a 24-hour review never happens.
Edward Teller, father of the H-bomb.
I like that he just drew the “transplanted” skin on with a felt tip pen.
Teller may be a jerk but I don’t think he’s really a liar. Lies by omission maybe, but not an out and out fraud.
Along similar lines is Amy Bishop – in an attempt to gain tenure, she published an article in a vanity-press journal and used her husband and small children’s names as her co-authors. Of course, that’s small potatoes compared to all the murder charges, &c
Well, the thing does work. What was his lie?
Dr Seitz is one of the big ones, not only did he sold his soul to the tobacco industry, he also did oversee many studies that **all **failed to show any harmful effects of cigarettes. The consensus was telling us the opposite by then and nowadays the evidence is more overwhelming on the harm of tobacco. But the Dr. never minded, the money coming to him was more important. He then testified to media and congressional critters that nothing should be done to the nice Tobacco companies.
Then magically, he became an “expert” in air pollution too, all bad effects of pollution coming from the fossil fuel industry were minimized by him. Including the effects of CO2 in the atmosphere. He lend his name and expertise to the fraudulent Oregon petition that was made to look like a peer reviewed paper and allowed even non scientists to become signers, inflating the number of the opposition. That petition has been used by politicians like Inhofe to delay any changes and regulations to global warming gas emissions. Prompting real scientific organizations to denounce Dr. Seitz and others involved in those shenanigans.
Climate Crocks video on Dr. Seitz and his sorry history.
I particularly like the part of how a tobacco executive in a memo declared that Dr. Seitz was incompetent or unstable, in essence declaring that they should look for better crackpots to use as fronts.
what the – sorry! I just checked and had a duplicate post.
Some of the names on this list should qualify.
Although it can be hard to differentiate lying from fanatical stupidity, being addled by drugs etc.
There were a lot of them. Read The Firecracker Boys for a full accounting. It could just be that Teller was delusional, but he deliberately falsified data on fallout readings on nuclear tests in order to justify his agenda of nuclear geo-engineering. This agenda included detonating devices to melt the polar caps in order to irrigate deserts, excavating a harbor in Alaska near populated areas, leveling mountains in order to provide city space and to create gaps through rugged ranges, etc. He maintained that fallout readings were way below danger levels to humans, when the data clearly showed otherwise. The guy was an egomaniac who was willing to endanger the population to further his goals.