Book Review: Corrupted Science by John Grant

Corrupted Science: Fraud, Ideology and Politics in Science by John Grant (2007)

Overall		Writing
Re-Readability		Info

Grant provides an entertaining, sometimes outrageous, usually fascinating survey of scientific research and publication that has been corrupted in different fashions — faking data (intentionally or not), seeing what is expected (or desired) out of experiments, military wild goose chases (and corrupted budgets), religious and other popular ideology, and, finally, by governments with axes to grind. In the last case, Grant focuses in on Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Bush’s America.

The writing is anecdotal and episodic, making it an easy book to pick up and set down. That’s also its biggest drawback. Grant’s thesis on the falsification of science — that the scientific method is so powerful because it is self-checking, but occasionally weak because it presumes good faith on the part of its participants — holds true, but is diluted by the myriad causes he describes, as well as the increasing political vitriol (deserved, but over-wrought) in his final chapter on the Bush Administration’s shameless and wanton twisting (and denial) of science to their own ends. 

Still, it makes for some interesting contrasts. Some anti-science True Believers will be most tickled by the first few chapters, where we see scientist successfully (for a time) getting away with faked or delusional results, and the not-infrequent resistance of the scientific community to turn on them when the perpetrators are important or have powerful supporters. Those same gleeful readers will in turn pitch a fit when it comes to Grant’s resounding dismissal of Creationism/Intelligent Design and lambasting of the Dubya years when science was repeated distorted or disregarded to deny global warming, condemn abortion, and support abstinence education,  along with other business- and/or conservative-friendly results.

It’s all pretty good stuff, well-organized in its far reach, but ultimately diluted by it. This could have been easily turned into three or four books on its own; by squeezing it into one, some of Grant’s focus is lost, even if any given page or chapter remains highly entertaining.

(Thanks, Jackie!)