Do we need to lay down some ground rules?
Yes, you're quite right, the matter is by no means straightforward. In part, it comes down to the old
mens rea
problem. "Purposefully, Knowingly or Recklessly". But this is further complicated by psychological matters, which researchers such as John Ronson have long been investigating. His recent book and radio series
Things Fell Apart highlights several instances of this - cases where what seemed to have been a genuine, well-qualified scientific researcher later became caught in a whirlpool of conspiracy theories, and became an almost rabid promoter of them. In some cases it seems that such people had severe personality disorders from the first. A bit of anal retentiveness may help research, but beyond that..... [/quote]
Was Elizabeth Holmes a fraudster in science and medicine? Or was her fraud merely of the general public and investors?
I think Charles Dawson almost* certainly counts as a proper scientific fraudster. He (probably) faked actual physical evidence that took in at least some of the scientific community of the time. A lot of modern scientific fraud involves merely massaging numbers on a spreadsheet or manipulating digital images.
* "almost" not because what happened might not have been scientific fraud but because the evidence is strong but not definitive that he was the perpetrator.
In specifying Charles Dawson, you've chosen a character who almost certainly held up evolutionary anthropological research for some 50 years. You say 'almost certainly' and indeed it seems that he was instrumental in the Piltdown Hoax. But Stephen J Gould pointed to another important player in the saga: the Jesuit priest Teilhard de Chardin (and promoter of 'spiritual evolution'), who as a young man was Dawson's protégé. Gould first suggested that Teilhard was a co-conspirator in his 1980 essay Hens' Teeth and Horses' Toes, but he was castigated for perpetrating deliberate errors to sustain his argument; he later corrected these, but came to the same conclusion. Teilhard certainly had an invested interest in suggesting that the apparent large brain and apelike jaw of
Piltdown Man was complementary to his own philosophy/theology of all evolution being impelled by the Holy Spirit towards "Omega Point", since the 'fossils' seemed to indicate that this mental evolution had occurred fairly early on. We now know that a whole range of real fossils had to mark time in given serious consideration because of this. It must have been very frustrating for Prof. Raymond Dart and Louis Leakey with their supremely important Australopithecine finds to have had their research dismissed as a collection of ancient apes, with no real connection to the human line. All the Australopithecines, of course, including A. afarensis (closest to Homo habilis) show that the development of the jaw towards a more human appearance came way before the massive enlargement of the brain.
Closer to home, anyone want to take a stance on the proliferation of "Detox" books, a number of which have been churned out as definite money-spinners by national treasures such as Carol Vorderman? How much brass neck does it take to roll out such shameless shit? I think we all know that fresh fruit and veg are good for us, but beyond that? The kidneys and liver "detox"; wheat-grass smoothies do not. It seems that these amateur nutritionists do not take the least trouble to investigate the scientific principles of digestion, and the function of the body's organs of elimination. We of course know (courtesy of Gillian MacHeath) that green things are good for you because they can produce oxygen in your gut. Photosynthesis is well known for taking place in complete darkness......
