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Title: Tendentious at best
Review: Judson is an academic manque who wrote an interesting if overly pretentious and self-agrandizing history of molecular biology. Unfortunately this book, which, as Judson states early on, could not find a publisher, would have been better left unpublished. This desultory history of scientific fraud simply rehearses what has been better said elswhere. The standard fraud cases - from Newton to Pasteur to Freud to Darsee to Baltimore - are given a superficial treatment. Especially egregious is the hatchet job on Baltimore and Imanashi-Kari. Anyone wanting to find out how shoddy and partisan his treatment of the later affair is ought to read the thoughtful and well researched "The Baltimore Case" by Daniel Kevles. Since Judson seems to regard himself as a purveyor of scientific ethics in a time of lapsing moral values in the scientific enterprise, one can only hope that the scientific community can protect themselves from such scrutiny. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes.
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