A Rum Affair: A True Story of Botanical Fraud Book + PRICE WATCH * Amazon pricing is not included in price watch

A Rum Affair: A True Story of Botanical Fraud Book

Take a garrulous old university professor with a knack for making extraordinary (and highly suspicious) botanical discoveries, a scientific community becoming increasingly skeptical of his claims, and an amateur botanist keen to find out the truth, and the stage is set for an absorbing tale of scientific chicanery and academic intrigue. Professor John Heslop Harrison of Newcastle University was one of the most respected and knowledgeable botanists of the first half of the 20th century. His greatest passion was for the plants of the Hebridean islands off the west coast of Scotland. He came to believe that some of the islands' plants were survivors from a time before the last Ice Age, a theory bound to be controversial given that the last advance of the ice sheets extended well south of mainland Scotland. In support of his theory, Heslop Harrison began to report sightings of plants that no one had ever seen on the islands before, and the botanical community started to get suspicious. Were the plants really where Heslop Harrison claimed they were? If so, how did they get there? Could they really have survived on the islands since the last interglacial? Or had the wily old professor carried the specimens to the Hebrides from their sites of origin and planted them? Karl Sabbagh relates the shady tale of John Heslop Harrison in his highly engaging book A Rum Affair (Rum is the name of the Hebridean island where Harrison made many of his most extraordinary--and suspicious--discoveries). Sabbagh examines the thoughts, actions, and motivation of Harrison and his academic enemies with great aplomb, and goes on to explore how some scientists are driven to the belief that fakery can be in the interest of science. Sabbagh's writing style is sometimes dry and detailed, as befits the treatment of a rather touchy subject, but the book is also laced with absorbing anecdotes and wry humor. It's a winner in a popular history of science genre that is becoming a bit overpopulated these days. --Chris Lavers, Amazon.co.uk Read More

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  • Product Description

    A fascinating true story of botanical fraud set on the exotic Hebridean Isle of Rum.

    The mysterious Isle of Rum is one of the Inner Hebrides situated off the west coast of Scotland. Rugged and mountainous, its brooding beauty and natural diversity attracted an eminent British botanist, John Heslop Harrison of Newcastle University, who claimed to have discovered several species of rare plants there that had never been observed within five hundred miles of the island. These discoveries helped him make his mark as one of Britain's outstanding scientists. But in A Rum Affair, Karl Sabbagh begins to question those discoveries, after stumbling onto a veiled reference in an obituary of amateur botanist John Raven, Heslop Harrison's accuser, and he soon finds himself pursuing a fifty-year-old open secret: Were the plants indigenous? If not, how did they get there? And what was Heslop Harrison's motive? Sabbagh also explores the oddly congenial relationship between accuser and accused, detailing Raven's unusual attempts to keep his discoveries secret. Like a skillful whodunit, A Rum Affair savors each of its surprising revelations of hubris and chicanery as its tale unfolds among the exotic flora and fauna of Rum.

  • 0374252823
  • 9780374252823
  • Karl Sabbagh
  • 1 July 2000
  • Farrar Straus Giroux
  • Hardcover (Book)
  • 276
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