1. The ancient fossil of Biltang-the great scam of the century
This great scam of the century is one of the most famous scientific scandals in history. In 1911, Dawson, a British lawyer, claimed to have found a part of an ape's skull in Biltang. In 1913, Dawson and Woodward, a famous British anthropologist, announced that they had unearthed a kind of biological skull that was half ape and half man, and said that this creature lived about 5, years ago. Their "discovery" is regarded as a strong evidence of Darwin's biological evolution theory, named "Shuren" in anthropology, considered as a transitional creature in the evolution from apes to humans, and even appeared on stamps as a major scientific achievement. In 1928, scientists determined the age of ancient fossils by fluorine content, and found that the skull of Shuren was not earlier than Neolithic Age, and the mandible belonged to a juvenile chimpanzee. They also found that the skull and mandible were all dyed. An elaborate scam finally came to light.
2. N-ray-collective self-deception
After the British scientist Roentgen discovered X-ray in 1899, in 193, the famous French physicist Brownlow announced that he had discovered a new kind of X-ray. It has aroused the enthusiastic pursuit of French physics, and many scholars including Nobel Prize winner Bekkerel have followed suit. In the first half of 194, only the Journal of the French Academy of Sciences published 54 papers on N-rays. But outside France, no one can find this kind of radiation. Later, the British physicist Wood proved that the N-ray was totally false. Brownlow took his subjective judgment as an objective fact out of his eagerness to make great achievements and compete with the British. Other French scientists rallied around Brownlow out of a sense of national pride, thus creating this farce of collective self-deception.
3. Millikan chooses data when doing experiments-flaws in great men
In 191, American physicist Millikan conducted a famous "oil drop experiment", which measured for the first time that hydrogen was 1836 times heavier than an electron and won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1923. At the same time, the physicist Ellen Gaft, who is more famous than him, is also doing the same experiment, but no corresponding results have been obtained. After 6 years, historians found that the 58 observations published by Millikan were not "unselected" as he vowed, but were selected from 14 observations! He only collects the beautiful data that are beneficial to him, and deletes all the unfavorable data. This discovery shocked the physics community.
4. Cold nuclear fusion-eager to become a laughing stock
On March 23, 1989, Burns of the University of Utah in the United States and Flajsman of the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom held a press conference, claiming that the "cold nuclear fusion" was realized at normal temperature and pressure by using palladium as cathode to electrolyze heavy water in a small laboratory device. However, no one in more than 1, laboratories around the world has ever successfully repeated the experimental results of Burns and Flajsman, and finally denied this achievement. Their story has become a negative textbook that is almost known to everyone in the scientific community.
5. Schon's "Science" series of papers faked-the fall of tomorrow's stars
The "Schon incident" is considered to be one of the largest academic fraud scandals in the history of contemporary science. On November 1, 22, American Science magazine published a short statement by American physicist Schon and his eight collaborators, announcing the revocation of eight papers published in Science magazine from 2 to 21. The first authors of these eight papers are all Schon, covering the achievements of organic transistors, superconducting devices and molecular semiconductors. Schon, then 32, had published nearly 9 papers in academic journals and was once considered as a candidate for the Nobel Prize. However, Schon's research results were questioned by some peers, so Bell Laboratories invited five external experts to investigate. According to the survey results obtained by experts in September, Schon fabricated or tampered with the experimental data in at least 16 papers, and his collaborators were innocent and had no knowledge of it. The reason for Schon's large-scale fraud is that he has a strong desire for fame and fortune, hoping to gain honor by publishing some conjectures first, and eventually his reputation is ruined.
6. Changing water into oil-a modern fable
In the 198s, Wang Hongcheng, a native of Harbin, China, declared that "changing water into oil" had been realized. His theory is to prepare a mother liquor, and then mix it with ordinary water at a ratio of 1: 1, to become a "water-based fuel", which can replace gasoline and has low cost. Only a simple machine can produce 1 ton of mother liquor every 2 minutes, and 1 ton of mother liquor can prepare 1 tons of water-based fuel. Through his performance, Wang Hongcheng persuaded some famous scientists, and the president and party secretary of Harbin Institute of Technology believed in him. Some media called it "the fifth great invention of China", which made changing water into oil a hot news at that time. Before a number of CPPCC members jointly raised questions in 1994, this scam lasted for more than ten years in China, causing hundreds of millions of yuan in national losses. Wang Hongcheng was finally sentenced to ten years in prison.
7. Liaoning archaeopteryx —— Shame on the hometown of fossils
The fossil "Liaoning archaeopteryx" is a false fossil made up of bones of different animals. After it was smuggled to the United States in 1999, it attracted great attention from American scholars. The famous American National Geographic magazine published an article saying that the ancient pirate bird is the missing link connecting dinosaurs and birds, which provides a direct basis for the dinosaur origin theory of birds. Later, Chinese scientist Xu Xing debunked this scam. This scientific scandal immediately caused an uproar in western countries, including NBC, USA-Today, Nature and Science.
8. lysenko Incident-Power Distorted Science
In the 193s and 196s, Lamarck and michurin's concept of acquired genetics became orthodox in the Soviet Union. For political and other reasons, lysenko, the representative of Lamarck, refused to accept Mendel and Morgan's genetics supported by experiments, and called western geneticists enemies of the Soviet people, persecuting their opponents with political tools, which caused havoc in the Soviet Union's genetics and spread to China. The lysenko incident is a typical case in which political authority replaces scientific authority to adjudicate scientific disputes.
9. Mouse immunization in summerlin —— Watergate Incident in American science
In the early 197s, William summerlin, a scientist at Si Long Catalin Institute in new york, claimed that he had successfully transplanted the skin of a black mouse into a white mouse. Summerlin seems to have found a way to avoid rejection without immunosuppressive drugs. This discovery is of great significance for organ transplantation. In 1974, summerlin's fraud was exposed. It turned out that he achieved this result with the help of a thick black felt pen. An observant assistant in the laboratory noticed that the black spots on the back of mice could be washed away, so everything else was washed away. Later, summerlin admitted everything and defended himself with heavy work. Finally, he was found guilty of misconduct. The summerlin incident caused a strong shock in academic circles, and many newspapers called this scandal "Watergate Incident in American Science".
1. Baltimore Incident-The Storm of Nobel Prize Winners
In April 1986, Baltimore, winner of the Nobel Prize in Biomedicine, and her collaborator Teresa Carrie jointly published a paper in the famous academic journal Cell. However, a postdoctoral fellow brought by Theresa found that the experimental data obtained by her laboratory was flawed, which probably caused widespread concern. Sadly, during the five-year investigation, Baltimore has always used its reputation to publicly threaten investigators and oppose outside intervention. In March 1991, after two rounds of investigation, the National Institutes of Health formally accused two key experimental data in the paper of being forged, which was a serious scientific misconduct. Although it was later confirmed that Baltimore did not know about the data error and restored his reputation, he withdrew the paper at that time, publicly apologized to Otto, the whistleblower, and resigned as the president of Rockefeller University.