Scientific Charlatans and Where to Find Them
Author: Konstantin Asimonov
Konstantin has a Ph.D. in Materials Science but has left the academic world to pursue a career in the industry. He is currently leading research and development and managing the IP portfolio of a start-up company in the field. In his free time, he enjoys diletante discussions about culture, wild theorizing, and worrying about the future of science. You can find more of his writing on his blog, Tap Water Sommelier.
1. A Rather Linguistic Introduction
The word “charlatan” made its way into English from French, where it originally meant a “potion seller”, a loud hawker noisily telling the crowd about a new miraculous remedy. The word likely comes from the Italian “ciarlare”, meaning “to chat” or “to prattle”. A classic example of a charlatan is Molière's Tartuffe, who always knows the trick of cloaking him with what we most revere. In English, the word “charlatan”, like many other French words (allons-y!), acquires a somewhat romantic tint. This is partially due to the charismatic image of the con artist, the “noble swindler”—from Robin Hood to Danny Ocean and his eleven friends—which has been established in popular culture. Below, I will often use the word “charlatan”, and I would like to ask particularly sensitive readers to remember that in its original meaning, “a charlatan” is, after all, “a blowhard”.
Now, a few words about the use of the second (or rather, the first) word in the title. Science seems like an obvious word, despite the fact that a large part of this article will be dedicated to its explanation. I just want to note the following: when I use the word science without quotes in the article, I mean science “as it should be”—an idealized version of science. It must be said that science, in the form it currently exists, is quite close to this. However, there are differences, and it's worth mentioning them. The reason for these differences is mainly the “human factor”, but more on that later. Speaking of people, the word scientist without quotes will exclusively mean a good, proper scientist. Thankfully, there are many of them, and we should aspire to be like them.
One more clarification: in most cases, in this article, the word “science” will mean “experimental science”, thereby excluding, for example, mathematics. Mathematics is undoubtedly a science—and what a science it is!—but it plays by somewhat different rules than the natural sciences, and I do not feel competent enough to explain them. In addition to that, I will refrain from talking about medicine. There is a debate on whether medicine should be considered a strict science. I have my own thoughts on that, but I don’t want to digress from the point of this specific essay. Plus, after COVID, the topic seems overheated, and I believe that takes, just like revenge, are better cold.
In this multi-part essay, I'll try to do two things: first, to present several interesting examples of outright charlatans, and second, to try to explain in simple terms the banal thing—how real scientists differ from them. I don't aim to prove the insolvency of any pseudoscientific theory or expose fraudsters. This has long been done for me—at best, I'll describe the evidence in very broad strokes and provide a link to more complete information. The people I talk about are deceivers. My goal is slightly different—to show that all such charlatans behave more or less the same way and that their stories are similar. That a person without deep knowledge of a particular science can determine, at least superficially, whether they are dealing with a real scientist or a charlatan. Therefore, I will spend more time not on the scientific aspect but on the development of events.
2. Deception in the Academy
Before discussing charlatans who are not scientists in any sense of the word, it's necessary to mention what happens when real scientists become frauds. Unfortunately, this does happen and, sadly, not as rarely as one might wish. It is both easy and difficult for one scientist to deceive another. Difficult because the bullshit meter is quite strong in this community. Easy because if the data seems reliable, the conclusions reasonable, and the topic isn't of paramount importance, it might not be checked by anyone. However, when scientific fraud is uncovered, the deceiver often finds themselves in a very bad situation. Here are a few well-known examples.
2.1 Hwang Woo-suk
Hwang Woo-suk, a globally renowned Korean scientist, made his name in cloning, which was also his downfall. In truth, there were always uncertainties surrounding him. He rose to fame in 1999 by claiming to have cloned a cow (the fifth in the world), and then another one, showing that his experimental approach can be replicated. The community believed him, despite the lack of solid data. Hwang then expressed his desire to clone a Siberian tiger and a mammoth, sparking widespread interest.
The next, truly great achievement of Hwang's team was the derivation of a line of human embryonic stem cells, published in Science. This stirred even more interest since it was previously thought to be nearly impossible. Hwang claimed that his team had to use 242 human eggs to obtain one stem cell. A year later, even more impressive results were achieved—11 lines from 184 eggs. To understand the significance of this discovery: embryonic stem cells can be used for tissue regeneration, cancer treatment, diabetes, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, heart attacks, strokes, blindness, and so on. Yes, and for cloning humans. When an unknown Korean veterinarian achieved this, everyone was quite surprised. The Times named him one of the most important people of 2004. In 2005, Hwang Woo-suk became the first person in the world to clone a dog, an Afghan hound named Snuppy, after SNU, Seoul National University.
Then the serious problems began. First off, everything related to human cloning is ethically murky. It turned out that the female donors were paid very little for the eggs. His research violated the Helsinki Declaration. Hwang resigned from all official positions. “I was blinded by work and the pursuit of success,” he said at a press conference. That same year, it was proven that all 11 cell lines were fakes. Hwang apologized but did not admit to the fraud, claiming his project had been sabotaged. He asked for six months to prove the validity of his research, but he was no longer trusted. The investigation revealed that he had coerced women working in his laboratory to donate eggs for his experiments.
After this, no one listened to him anymore, and his earlier results were also doubted. As a scientist, Hwang Woo-suk was completely discredited. He was expelled from the university and banned from practicing science in South Korea and America. Moreover, he was given a two-year suspended sentence. His scientific career was not finished, however, he just moved from the academy to the private sector.
It's unclear whether Dr. Woo-suk could actually clone humans. He maintained until the end that he could. He certainly could cows and dogs. There was undoubtedly real science in his research, as well as undeniable result fabrication. Dr. Woo-suk himself was a true fanatic, working in the lab for eighteen hours a day, seven days a week. “If I weren't a scientist," he said, "I would have become a monk. I respect their way of life.”
For a fuller story, you can also check out a recent Netflix documentary, “King of Clones”.
2.2 Jan Hendrik Schön
Jan Hendrik Schön would have received the Nobel Prize if he hadn't been a fraudster and a liar. A physicist by training, he specialized in micro- and nanoelectronics. In 2000, he announced that he had succeeded in creating a transistor the size of a molecule—the dream of every microelectronics specialist. In 2001, scientific papers under his name were published every eight days. In 2002, it turned out that he had made everything up from start to finish. He, apparently, simply invented all his data “out of thin air”.
For those in the know, this is astonishing. Astonishingly difficult. The man was infinitely talented—but not very wise. He was caught in the most banal way—because some of the data were duplicated, even down to the level of random noise. That doesn't happen; he messed up. That was enough to start an official investigation. It was found that: a) Schön kept no laboratory records; b) all raw data were deleted from his computer (because “there wasn't enough space”); c) experimental samples were destroyed or damaged. This is quite suggestive.
As a result, Schön confessed to falsification and data fabrication. Eight of his papers were retracted from Science, seven from Nature. Fifteen papers in journals of such caliber in three years, to make it clear—almost a guaranteed Nobel Prize. Currently, there are perhaps five to seven active scientists in the world with such a publication record. Schön was stripped of his doctoral degree and banned from academic science. He went on to work as a consultant for some engineering firm.
The Schön case had a profound impact on science as a whole. Firstly, people began to review the principles by which papers are selected for journals. Secondly, the rules regarding co-authorship changed slightly. Schön started with a very successful series of papers, where the lead author was an already established and famous physicist. The data were fabricated there too, but the author's name carried certain weight, and the papers were allowed to be published. Sadly, this still happens quite often.
2.3 Marc Hauser
A biologist and primate behavior researcher who was accused of data manipulation and fabrication. Among other things, his claims that tamarins—small South American monkeys—could replicate and follow simple patterns and rules were called into question.
Interestingly, unlike the previous two individuals, Marc Hauser is a well-known, prominent scientist. He has published over two hundred papers and six books and has received several international awards. Moreover, his discovery, though important in his own field, isn't a global sensation like the previous two. Therefore, if deceit was involved, its motives are unclear.
In 2010, after a three-year investigation, a committee found Hauser responsible for eight different instances of data fabrication. An article in The New York Times dedicated to the investigation stated, among other things:
“There's a wide range of scientific misconduct, from losing information to fabricating it. It's still not entirely clear where Marc Hauser's work falls on this spectrum. He has only admitted to 'mistakes' made, not to misconduct.”
Nevertheless, a year later, Hauser resigned from Harvard and moved to the private sector. His scientific career was over. The sad story has an ironic afterthought: one of Hauser's research subjects was morality, moral behavior in animals, and the nature of moral decisions.
24 Paul Kammerer
Paul Kammerer simply painted a toad. Or maybe he didn't. He lived in Vienna in the early twentieth century and, like many respectable people of that time, believed in Lamarck's theory. This is, in case anyone has forgotten, a dubious theory about the inheritance of acquired characteristics. As my biology teacher used to say, “No matter how many times you cut the tails off spaniels, they're still born with whole ones.” Paul Kammerer, however, tried his best to prove the opposite. And he did! Kammerer claimed that his midwife toads exhibited “nuptial pads” (an acquired characteristic)—dark spots on their feet—which were inherited. His opponents claimed that Kammerer simply injected ink under their skin. Kammerer immediately admitted that the ink was injected, but blamed it on his assistant. This was in August 1926. Six weeks later, Kammerer ended his life.
An expected result from this story is the loss of interest in Lamarck’s theories by the scientific community. An unexpected result was that the only place that kept and even strengthened its Lamarckian approaches was the Soviet Union, which tried to do everything in reverse. We will talk about Trofim Lysenko in one of the next parts, but keep the toad-painting story in mind.
The story took another interesting turn in 2009. Alexander Vargas suggested that the phenomenon observed by Kammerer was not fabricated but was a result of epigenetic inheritance. Similar phenomena have been discovered in other organisms. This interpretation remains controversial, but in the future, I might have to remove Kammerer’s name from that list.
2.5 Jacques Benveniste
Perhaps the saddest and most embarrassing story happened with Jacques Benveniste. Moreover, I find the behavior of the scientific community that condemned him, not Benveniste himself, to be shameful. Benveniste, like Hauser, was already a well-known, prominent scientist. He discovered the structure of PAF and the nature of its interactions with histamine, and was the head of INSERM, the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research. Problems began in 1988 when he submitted an article to the journal Nature describing the action of antibodies at ultra-low concentrations. In his solutions, there were practically no antibodies left—only water. Essentially, Jacques Benveniste scientifically proved the phenomenon of homeopathy.
Everyone was a bit stunned, especially John Maddox, the then-editor of Nature. Independent laboratories were asked to confirm the results, and the article was eventually co-signed by scientists from four countries. The article, titled "Human basophil degranulation triggered by very dilute antiserum against IgE," was published with a disclaimer, noting the incredulity of many referees and stating that there was no physical basis for such activity. Nature arranged for independent investigators to observe repetitions of the experiments.
The committee consisted of physicist John Maddox, chemist Walter Stewart, and... illusionist James Randi, who specializes in debunking fraud and charlatanism. I have nothing against Randi; he looks like a jolly old Santa, but he should not have been there. Based on Benveniste’s writing, he was deeply offended. He wrote in a column: “What matters is that this "exposé" transformed a prestigious laboratory of more than 50 research workers into a feather in a magician's cap.”
In short, the members of Benveniste's laboratory, where they had reportedly already opened the champagne in celebration, were shocked. The committee repeated Benveniste's experiment seven times. Three attempts were positive, and four were negative, leading Nature to decide that further investigation was necessary. After using a double-blind method and more precise measurements, it was established that Benveniste's data were erroneous. The committee concluded that the phenomenon observed by Professor Benveniste was not reproducible, and the effects were due to insufficient sample purification. Laboratories around the world still try to replicate Benveniste's experiment results, with very mixed success. There can be no general conclusions due to poor standardization of methods and the inability to distinguish artifacts from real experimental data. Similar experiments were later repeated, with some teams succeeding in replicating the results, and some teams failing.
Things only got worse afterward. Despite the obvious problems with his research, Benveniste stood by his claims, leading to reduced funding. He left academic science and started his own company dealing with “Digital Water”, along the way receiving two Ig Nobel Prizes—for the concept of "water memory," not even his own idea, and for persistence. He died at the age of sixty-nine after heart surgery.
I genuinely feel sorry for Jacques Benveniste. He was probably wrong, and after his debacle with Nature, he began to make nonsensical claims, but he was initially treated very unfairly and indignantly. It's unseemly when a recognized scientist is judged by a former magician. It's unseemly when a scientist is apriori treated as a charlatan. This is precisely the case where the truth is the truth, but consideration for others should also be taken into account. As Voltaire said, “Aime la vérité, mais pardonne à l'erreur” (love truth, but pardon error). The humiliating commission could have been avoided. After all, they could have simply not published the work. But the Nature editor wanted to have his cake and eat it too—to publish a possible great scientific discovery without taking any responsibility if it turned out to be a lie. A shame.
2.6 Interim Conclusions
These are the stories about how scientists deceived each other and what came of it. If you've noticed a certain pattern, at the very least, they ceased to be scientists. Why do scientists do this? Not very often, but still, they do. Why? David Goodstein, a physicist and an educator, lists several reasons: career pressure; fear that someone else will get there first; laziness (meaning when there's a reluctance to meticulously conduct all control experiments), leading to artifacts being mistaken for real data; money; ideology. All these reasons, except maybe the spirit of competition and the fear of being outpaced, seem contrived to me. Honestly, money, fame, career—these are trivialities. Because if you've faked truly significant results, people will try to replicate them. And when no one can, you won't have any money or a career, and your fame will be exclusively of a notorious nature. The main reason seems to me to be an impregnable confidence in one's own correctness and in the beauty and correctness of one's own theory. A confidence—even faith—so strong that minor experimental discrepancies can be “overlooked”. This is a very dangerous thing. It's called pride. Every prominent scientist, before going to bed, should hit themselves on the head with a book of Karl Popper's “The Logic of Scientific Discovery” and say, “My theories are rubbish”. The chance that a scientist will develop an inferiority complex as a result is extremely low. The chance of a concussion is also low. The book isn't very thick.
We can take a breather here, as well as summarize the topic of how to distinguish science from non-science and a scientist from a deceiver. Scientists are very afraid of being accused of lying. Truly. It's real paranoia. Because reputation in the scientific world is very quickly ruined and practically impossible to restore. For a charlatan, however, an accusation of lying is merely a way to attract more attention to themselves. Therefore, if a person accused of fraud eagerly gives interviews, criticizes everything and everyone, compares themselves to Galileo/Copernicus/Giordano Bruno/(insert your option), and shouts about their own misunderstood genius—they are most likely a deceiver. A real scientist, upon finding incorrect data, is more likely to lock themselves in the lab and recheck it.
From this, incidentally, follows another indirect difference. Scientists almost never hide their methods. It's in every scientist's interest for as many people as possible to be able to replicate the experiment. Therefore, having achieved something extraordinary, a scientist first thoroughly rechecks it, then writes an article (patent, or both), and—rushes to tell the whole world. About exactly how they achieved such remarkable results. There are several reasons for this, and not the least of them is the fear of being accused of deceit.
Another reason—developing a new method in science is often valued more than remarkable results. For example, a new general reaction is likely to be valued more by colleagues than simply the synthesis of some rare and complex substance. Therefore, if a scientist has achieved remarkable results using a unique method they themselves developed, they will shout about the method first and foremost. The results come later—as the cherry on top.
A third reason, of course, is that the more people know and can use the new method, the further science as a whole will advance. That's also important.
So, if someone claims to have achieved unique results with a super-secret method available only to them, they are likely a deceiver. A scientist, on the other hand, will do their utmost to explain what the method is and how it works—so that any laboratory with the necessary equipment can replicate it. We will see examples of deceivers with unique, unavailable to anyone else methods in the next part of this article. We’ve just tipped our toes in the kiddie pool of charlatans—now it’s time to leave the academy and dive into the world of true hustlers. The real world.
The rest of this essay can be found on my personal blog, Tap Water Sommelier. Parts 2 and 3 deal with proper charlatans, frauds and loonies, respectively. Part 4 is my attempt to explain how real science is different to a general, non-scientific audience.
Best,
Ꙝ
Oh!, before reading the article, which I will: in Academia!
Scientific Comedy:
https://open.substack.com/pub/federicosotodelalba/p/sci-and-math-are-having-a-second?r=4up0lp