Junk Science

Science Fictions: A Scientific Mystery, a Massive Cover-up and the Dark Legacy of Robert Gallo  by John Crewdson, Back Bay Books, 2003.  Plagiarism in AIDS Research This book is a very detailed exposition of the scientific career of an AIDS researcher, Robert Gallo. Gallo claimed to have discovered the virus (HIV) that causes AIDS, but this virus was actually discovered in France. France sent a sample of their HIV virus to Gallo’s laboratory at the National Institutes of Heal

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup  by John Carreyrou, Vintage, 2018.  Blood Draws Elizabeth Anne Holmes fooled investors into believing that she had invented a machine to perform multiple blood assays on a single drop of blood obtained from a finger prick, thus obviating the need to perform a needle stick to draw a vial of blood. Her company was called Theranos. Her partner in this scam was Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani. Holmes was very secretive and few of her

The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist: A True Story of Injustice in the American South  by Radley Balko, Tucker Carrington, John Grisham (Foreword), Hatchette Book Group (2018)  Two Murders in Mississippi Through the lens of two particular murders in Mississippi, this book describes the corruption of the criminal justice system through good old boy networks, resulting in wrongful convictions. There is a particular focus on junk forensic pathology. There are poorly conducte

Kinsey, Sex and Fraud: The Indoctrination of a People  by Judith Reisman and Edward W. Eichel (authors); J. H. Court and J. Gordon Muir (editors), Huttington House Publishers, 1990.  Agenda-Driven Research This is a book about a scientific fraud named Alfred C. Kinsey, who greatly exaggerated the actual incidence of uncommon sexual practices among the American public. Kinsey engaged in junk science in order to advance his political agenda of making sexual perversion both lega