COLIN STEELE reviews a new book that tells true story of a “fraudulent, fantasist scientist”… a revelation written by the ‘Bogus Boffin’s’ daughter!

Joanne Briggs’ memoir of her father, Michael Harvey Briggs (1935-1986), is a true story of staggering deception.

Adam Courtenay recently reflected that his father, Bryce, was “the greatest fabulist of his age”. Joanne comes close to that description in The Scientist Who Wasn’t There (Ithaka. $45), calling her father a “fraudulent, fantasist scientist”.

When Briggs was appointed Deakin University’s Foundation Dean of Sciences in 1976, he had an international research reputation as a hormonal researcher with numerous publications. He had held, although often briefly, numerous international academic and commercial research positions. 

Joanne reflects that her father’s career was one “of him abruptly moving away from situations where he might get found out and towards lesser-known institutions who were grateful to have him. 

“They thought he was marvellous because he told them he was – it’s a classic conman routine”.

Another Briggs flight was when he left his wife, daughter Joanne, then seven and son Andrew in 1971. Now 61, Joanne, a former barrister, uses her legal research skills to fully document how her father, as the News of the World put it, became, “the Bogus Boffin”.

At Deakin University, he was to prove to be the Wizard of Oz in more ways than one. 

He received $3 million in research funds from two leading drug companies, but his research publications and supporting data were ultimately proved to be fraudulent or non-existent.

Joanne writes that the ”Deakin Hormonal Laboratory only really existed in my dad’s mind”. Internal whistleblowers at Deakin University, queried Briggs’ results and claimed drug firm funding was finding its way into his personal bank account.

Briggs lobbied the vice-chancellor and the chancellor to reject a damning report findings by Prof Jim Rossiter, chair of the Deakin ethics committee. By the time of a third Deakin inquiry nearing conclusion in 1985, Briggs abruptly resigned with the university happy to let the matter rest.

Briggs fled to Spain where he died aged 51 in late 1986, just as the Sunday Times was to assert that Briggs had faked his research relating to his work on the oral hormonal pregnancy test Primodos, which had been given to 1.5 million women in Britain alone in the 1960s and 1970s.

Primodos was alleged to cause birth defects and was to be the subject of a British all-party parliamentary group investigation from 2020 to 2023, culminating in the publication of A Bitter Pill: Primodos-the Forgotten Thalidomide in 2024.

The resurfacing of Primodos in 2020 had caused Joanne to investigate her father’s career, which had spanned jobs in Britain, America, Africa, NZ and Australia, including stints as a NASA space scientist, working as research director for  a West German drug company and an adviser to the World Health Organization.

She found that Briggs, having obtained a master’s degree at Cornell University in the 1950s, had fraudulently changed the title pages of the thesis to transform it into a PhD, which future employers never physically checked.

After spending three years at the Victoria University in Wellington, Briggs managed, through administrative chicanery, to gain, at the age of 27, a honorary doctorate of science, based on a questionable publication record.

Many of Briggs’ career publications, which ultimately numbered nearly 200, were mostly short one page articles, literature reviews or invited articles. Many were non-peer-reviewed and published by drug companies or in journals owned by pharmaceutical companies. Nonetheless, these fake results found their way into the wider scientific literature and impacted subsequent research.

The Scientist Who Wasn’t There is a compelling combination of personal memoir and detailed investigation into Briggs’s misconduct and a lack of diligence by the scientific research establishments that appointed him.

At times, a stream of consciousness seeps into the factual narrative as Joanne reconstructs scenes from Michael’s life.

Ultimately, Joanne reflects: “Maybe he thought he hadn’t the time to stand still and prove to everyone how clever he was – that he needed to fake it until he made it. And then he kind of forgot he was faking it”. In that context, her father’s greatest invention was himself.

In the scientific world, where the pressure to publish continues, peer reviewing is under pressure , AI is increasing the potential of fraud, and Trump’s attacks science, we need to reflect on Elizabeth Finkel’s words in her recently published book Prove It: A Scientific Guide for the Post-Truth Era (Black inc,$36.95) that we all “rely on the proper functioning of the scientific machine. We must not stand by and see it dismantled”.