Scientific fraud

Yesterday I divined the position of a garden slug. There, under that particular tuft, that small square of soil (I said) lies a fat slug. I dug up the tuft, and there the slug lay, smiling like Mona Lisa. I now add to my list of recondite & entirely uncommercial attainments that of being able to unearth slugs at any given moment. If we ever possess a parrot or a canary, my gift will be distinctly useful. If not, it can still be used as a method of bridging over any awkward pause in the conversation. ‘Find a slug for the gentleman.’ ‘Certainly, my dear.’ And so saying, I produce from the potato bed a black juicy specimen with a long mane.

— Dylan Thomas, letter to Pamela Hansford Johnson, 20th July, 1934, Selected Letters of Dylan Thomas, New Directions, 1965, 137.

But there’s no doubt that those folk are all men of my kidney who delight in miracles and fictitious marvels, whether hearing or telling about them. They can never have enough of such tales when there are any wonders to relate about ghosts, spectres, phantoms and the dead, and all the countless miracles there are of that kind. The further these are from the truth, the more eagerly they are believed and more agreeably they titillate the ear. Such things not only serve remarkably well for whiling away a tedious hour but can also be profitable, especially for preachers and demagogues.
— Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466 – 1536), Praise of Folly, Penguin Classics p 125

[Of Blondlot’s –rays] I expressed surprise that a ray bundle 3 mm. In width could be split up into a spectrum with maxima and minima less than 0.1 of a millimetre apart, and was told that this was one of the inexplicable and astounding properties of the rays. I was unable to see any change whatever in the brilliancy of the phosphorescent line as I moved it along, and I subsequently found that the removal of the prism (we were in a dark room) did not seem to interfere in any way with the location of the maxima and the minima in the deviated (!) ray bundle…

The approach of a large steel file was supposed to alter the appearance of the spots … A clock face in a dimly lighted room was believed to become much more distinct and brighter when the file was held before the eyes, owing to some peculiar effect which the rays emitted by the file exerted on the retina. I was unable to see the slightest change, though my colleague said that he could see the hands [of the clock] distinctly when he held the file near his eyes, while they were quite invisible when the file was removed …My colleague could see the change just as well when I held the file before his face, and the substitution of a piece of wood of the same size and shape as the file in no way interfered with the experiment. The substitution was of course unknown to the observer.
— Robert Williams Wood (1868 – 1955), Nature, 70, 530, 1904, quoted in Gratzer (ed) “The Bedside Nature”, Macmillan, 1996, 118.

In the course of my research, anomalies have sprung up in every direction. I have felt like a traveller navigating some mighty river in an unexplored continent. I have seen to the right and the left other channels opening out, all claiming investigation, and promising rich rewards of discovery for the explorer who shall trace them to their source….

Nor must we forget that the more rigidly we scrutinize our received theories, our routine explanations and interpretations of nature, and the more frankly we admit their shortcomings, the greater will be our ultimate reward. In the practical world, fortunes have been realized from the careful examination of what has been ignorantly thrown aside as refuse….
— Sir William Crookes (1832 – 1919).

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