"The case of fraud by a leading evolutionist, British botany professor John Harrison, was documented by reviewing his published writings in peer-reviewed scientific journals. One of the most well-known examples of Harrison’s frauds, and the best documented case, was the Rùm Affair;
Harrison was a leader in the movement to build an evolutionary foundation for science. He published over 500 articles in the peer-reviewed scientific literature on his research.
Fellow botanist, Professor John Raven, after reading several of John Harrison’s publications in leading scientific journals, concluded that it was obvious Harrison had committed fraud.
After realizing the harm Harrison had caused science, Raven looked
John William Heslop Harrison (1881–1967) was, for most of his career, a professor of genetics and botany at Newcastle University, UK, specializing in the genetics of moths.
In 1999, The Guardian, a daily British newspaper, described him as a fraudster who planted evidence of rare plants on the Isle of Rùm in the Hebrides Islands for scientists to later ‘discover’, a scandal exposed after half a century.
In 1948, Harrison was accused by University of Cambridge tutor John Raven of making false claims, such as claiming to have discovered that certain plant species naturally grew on the small island of Rùm on the west coast of Scotland. Raven published a report in Nature in 1949 that revealed, though cautiously, evidence of potential fraud on the part of Harrison. Specifically, the fraud involved moving certain plants from locations where they normally grow and transplanting them to the Isle of Rùm, where they do not naturally grow. Evidence of these grasses growing on Rùm was pivotal to Harrison’s theory that the islands escaped the so-called ‘last ice age’. In his Nature report, Raven stated that the
“… close juxtaposition of two exceedingly rare plants is most unexpected … . The above observations seem to leave little doubt that Polycarpon tetraphyllum is an alien introduction into Rhum … . These ruderal species, especially the Sagina, would scarcely be expected in such a locality … . The close association of annual ruderal species with Carex bicolor, its extreme rarity, its distribution, and the absence of arctic-alpine associates suggest that it too, like Polycarpon tetraphyllum, is an introduction into Rhum.”
Harrison argued that the increase of black peppered moths (Biston betularia) in manufacturing districts in England was due to mutations that only affected the genes for melanin production, and no other genes. He argued that lead salts and manganese present in the pollution soot selectively caused the specific mutations that targeted specific genes that controlled moth colour. This would have been an example of the inheritance of acquired characteristics (Lamarckianism). Harrison rejected the widespread conclusion that the dominance of dark moths was due to bird predators selectively eating light moths more readily in post-industrialized England. This was because they were more easily seen than the dark ones on the tree trunks recently blackened as the result of industrialization in the manufacturing districts of England. This blackening was from pollutants such as soot both directly discolouring the trunks plus causing die-back of the light-coloured lichen covering them. The dark-winged, or melanized, moths were thus more likely to have survived, and consequently their numbers increased relative to their lighter counterparts.
To support his alternative ‘mutation triggered by the environment’ conclusion, in the 1920s Harrison completed several experiments exposing peppered moths to lead salts and manganese. He claimed this resulted in melanized peppered moths. However, several later breeding experiments involving 3,265, and then 1,920, peppered moths failed to support Harrison’s results. Other scientists that failed to replicate his results included British geneticist, lepidopterist, and medical doctor Henry B.D. Kettlewell.
His fraud was often designed to support evolutionism, both of the Lamarckian and/or the neo-Darwinian type, despite claiming that the latter suffered from major problems, and that therefore a form of Lamarckianism was a more viable explanation for how evolution took place. This was not unusual at the time he worked because, in the early 20th century, much disagreement existed about the mechanisms of evolution.
I was able to locate over 300 publications by J.W. Heslop Harrison, either as the first author or a co-author, in peer-reviewed scientific publications. His obituary noted that he was widely published in the peer-reviewed literature, which labelled him as a “gifted biologist and field naturalist. His memory for biological facts was prodigious and his knowledge of flowering plants and insects was of a most unusual depth and understanding.” Since his credibility has now been seriously compromised, one has to wonder how many of his hundreds of articles contain fraudulent research. He is now remembered more for his part in academic fraud than for his scholarly research." CMI
