d in an effort to keep himself from making heated replies. His eyes glared at his lounging opponent, who stood opposite him, glowering under his bulging brow, speculatively tapping his arm with his spectacles”. In the end, John Scopes was found guilty by the jury and fined $100. Both sides claimed a victory.

Probably the best known case of deception in the 20th century was that of ‘Piltdown man’. Piltdown was an archaeological site near Hastings, East Sussex, where fossil remains were found in 1913, which were thought to be the ‘missing link’ between men and

The news that the South Korean scientist Hwang Woo-suk has been fired from his prestigious seat with Seoul National University caused shock waves in the medical world and beyond. His claims, going back over several years, to have cloned the first human embryos and to have extracted stem cells from them, turned out to have been false. Six other professors working with Hwang have also been disciplined.

His research had raised hopes of finding cures for a range of afflictions, including Parkinson’s disease, and Alzeimer’s. The disgraced professor has apologised for producing faked results, but remains convinced that he was heading in the right direction, and that sooner or later someone else would make the breakthrough.

Not least of the outcomes of Hwang’s fakery is the damage done to the public perception of science. We tend to put scientists on a pedestal, and it comes as a shock when one of them is caught with his hand in the cookie jar. What happened at Seoul is grist to the mill of the anti-science lobby, which would claim it proves that science is unreliable and that scientists cannot be trusted.

In my opinion this argument misses the point. The integrity of scientists can be relied on precisely because falsification cannot be hidden, at least not permanently. The simple fact is that nothing in science is given credence unless it can be tested and verified independently by other scientists. That is what keeps science honest.

In 1925 science was, in effect, put on trial when a young biology teacher from Dayton, Tennessee called John Scopes, was arrested for teaching evolution in violation of state law. The Monkey Trial, as it became known, was really a show trial and Scopes was a willing guinea pig, used to test a new law which banned ‘any theory that denies the story and divine creation of man as taught in the Bible’

Clarence Darrow, America’s foremost lawyer at the time, offered to defend Scopes without a fee, and the prosecution was headed by a former presidential candidate, William Jennings Bryan. Darrow apparently had the best of it. The contentious HL Mencken was one of the reporters on the trial, and described how Darrow goaded his opponent; “His face flushed under Mr. Darrow’s searching words, and he writhed in an effort to keep himself from making heated replies. His eyes glared at his lounging opponent, who stood opposite him, glowering under his bulging brow, speculatively tapping his arm with his spectacles”. In the end, John Scopes was found guilty by the jury and fined $100. Both sides claimed a victory.

Probably the best known case of deception in the 20th century was that of ‘Piltdown man’. Piltdown was an archaeological site near Hastings, East Sussex, where fossil remains were found in 1913, which were thought to be the ‘missing link’ between men and a

for producing faked results, but remains convinced that he was heading in the right direction, and that sooner or later someone else would make the breakthrough.

Not least of the outcomes of Hwang’s fakery is the damage done to the public perception of science. We tend to put scientists on a pedestal, and it comes as a shock when one of them is caught with his hand in the cookie jar. What happened at Seoul is grist to the mill of the anti-science lobby, which would claim it proves that science is unreliable and that scientists cannot be trusted.

In my opinion this argument misses the point. The integrity of scientists can be relied on precisely because falsification cannot be hidden, at least not permanently. The simple fact is that nothing in science is given credence unless it can be tested and verified independently by other scientists. That is what keeps science honest.

In 1925 science was, in effect, put on trial when a young biology teacher from Dayton, Tennessee called John Scopes, was arrested for teaching evolution in violation of state law. The Monkey Trial, as it became known, was really a show trial and Scopes was a willing guinea pig, used to test a new law which banned ‘any theory that denies the story and divine creation of man as taught in the Bible’

Clarence Darrow, America’s foremost lawyer at the time, offered to defend Scopes without a fee, and the prosecution was headed by a former presidential candidate, William Jennings Bryan. Darrow apparently had the best of it. The contentious HL Mencken was one of the reporters on the trial, and described how Darrow goaded his opponent; “His face flushed under Mr. Darrow’s searching words, and he writhed in an effort to keep himself from making heated replies. His eyes glared at his lounging opponent, who stood opposite him, glowering under his bulging brow, speculatively tapping his arm with his spectacles”. In the end, John Scopes was found guilty by the jury and fined $100. Both sides claimed a victory.

Probably the best known case of deception in the 20th century was that of ‘Piltdown man’. Piltdown was an archaeological site near Hastings, East Sussex, where fossil remains were found in 1913, which were thought to be the ‘missing link’ between men and

inion this argument misses the point. The integrity of scientists can be relied on precisely because falsification cannot be hidden, at least not permanently. The simple fact is that nothing in science is given credence unless it can be tested and verified independently by other scientists. That is what keeps science honest.

In 1925 science was, in effect, put on trial when a young biology teacher from Dayton, Tennessee called John Scopes, was arrested for teaching evolution in violation of state law. The Monkey Trial, as it became known, was really a show trial and Scopes was a willing guinea pig, used to test a new law which banned ‘any theory that denies the story and divine creation of man as taught in the Bible’

Clarence Darrow, America’s foremost lawyer at the time, offered to defend Scopes without a fee, and the prosecution was headed by a former presidential candidate, William Jennings Bryan. Darrow apparently had the best of it. The contentious HL Mencken was one of the reporters on the trial, and described how Darrow goaded his opponent; “His face flushed under Mr. Darrow’s searching words, and he writhed in an effort to keep himself from making heated replies. His eyes glared at his lounging opponent, who stood opposite him, glowering under his bulging brow, speculatively tapping his arm with his spectacles”. In the end, John Scopes was found guilty by the jury and fined $100. Both sides claimed a victory.

Probably the best known case of deception in the 20th century was that of ‘Piltdown man’. Piltdown was an archaeological site near Hastings, East Sussex, where fossil remains were found in 1913, which were thought to be the ‘missing link’ between men and

ial and Scopes was a willing guinea pig, used to test a new law which banned ‘any theory that denies the story and divine creation of man as taught in the Bible’

Clarence Darrow, America’s foremost lawyer at the time, offered to defend Scopes without a fee, and the prosecution was headed by a former presidential candidate, William Jennings Bryan. Darrow apparently had the best of it. The contentious HL Mencken was one of the reporters on the trial, and described how Darrow goaded his opponent; “His face flushed under Mr. Darrow’s searching words, and he writhed in an effort to keep himself from making heated replies. His eyes glared at his lounging opponent, who stood opposite him, glowering under his bulging brow, speculatively tapping his arm with his spectacles”. In the end, John Scopes was found guilty by the jury and fined $100. Both sides claimed a victory.

Probably the best known case of deception in the 20th century was that of ‘Piltdown man’. Piltdown was an archaeological site near Hastings, East Sussex, where fossil remains were found in 1913, which were thought to be the ‘missing link’ between men and

d in an effort to keep himself from making heated replies. His eyes glared at his lounging opponent, who stood opposite him, glowering under his bulging brow, speculatively tapping his arm with his spectacles”. In the end, John Scopes was found guilty by the jury and fined $100. Both sides claimed a victory.

Probably the best known case of deception in the 20th century was that of ‘Piltdown man’. Piltdown was an archaeological site near Hastings, East Sussex, where fossil remains were found in 1913, which were thought to be the ‘missing link’ between men and apes. In 1953 it was discovered that the cranium was of a modern human and the jawbone belonged to an ape. The discovery caused enormous embarrassment in scientific circles, particularly in view of the amount of time which had elapsed since the original excavation. To some, this was proof positive of the fallibility of scientific results, but in fact scientists were denied access to the remains for many years, and had to be content with plaster models.

It is stating the obvious to say that in the ninety years or so which have elapsed since the Piltdown discovery, technology has improved beyond anything dreamt of in those days. There are now many ways of testing and examining fossil remains, and taken together, they remove most of the guesswork from the dating process. In the end, the fraud perpetrated on the scientific community by some unknown person all those years ago, was uncovered by scientists, which surely demonstrates that science is able to correct its own mistakes.

Whoever set up the Piltdown fraud was clearly bent on mischief, but in the case of Paul Kammerer and the Midwife toads the scientist involved acted from the same muddled good intentions as Hwang Woo-suk. Paul Kammerer was an Austrian biologist, working in the early part of the 20th century. He had what we would call celebrity status, and besides being a renowned scientist, he was a musician and composer, mixing with the Viennese intellectuals, artists and musicians of the time, including Gustav Mahler and the conductor Bruno Walter.

Kammerer wanted to resurrect the earlier theories of Jean Baptiste Lamarck, which postulated an alternative view of evolution to that of Charles Darwin. Lamarck suggested that physical characteristics (and by inference, mental ones), acquired during the lifetime of an organism, could be passed on to its offspring. Lamarckism had long since been abandoned by scientific thought, but Kammerer believed he could induce hard pads on the forelimbs of Midwife toads which could then be passed on to the next generation, and so prove Lamarck’s theory of the inheritability of characteristics.

Unfortunately for him, at the height of his fame, an American scientist by the name of GK Noble, on examining one of Kammerer’s specimens, discove