A Rum Affair: A True Story of Botanical Fraud by Karl Sabbagh

A Rum Affair: A True Story of Botanical Fraud by Karl Sabbagh

Author:Karl Sabbagh [Sabbagh, Karl]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Science & Technology, Non-Fiction
ISBN: 9780306810602
Google: tgqFHoEo-VoC
Amazon: 0306810603
Barnesnoble: 0306810603
Goodreads: 1768976
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Published: 1998-12-31T23:00:00+00:00


* Area where sedges were cultivated.

9

The Aftermath

If John Raven had been a writer of fiction, he could not have created a more circumstantially compelling case against Heslop Harrison than the twenty-one closely written pages of his report to the Council of Trinity. Raven’s report displays an ability to use his skills in the way a writer of fiction should, to involve the reader, keep him guessing, maybe even sensationalise a little.

To the Council of Trinity College this might all have seemed very persuasive. Few if any were botanists; several were scientists but from very different disciplines; the rest – the majority – were historians or philosophers or members of other humanities faculties.

Fifty years later, it was impossible to find out what really transpired when the council was presented with Raven’s report. The college archivist could find nothing relevant to the matter, and in talking to people who might know something, I came across the merest hints, surmises based on second- or third-hand information, about what might have happened. Tim Clutton-Brock, for example, the Rum deer expert, told me: ‘My memory is that John said that the people in Trinity suggested that Heslop Harrison should be put on formal academic trial in front of his peers at the Royal Society, and then they debated that and decided that it shouldn’t go that way.’

It is actually difficult to see what the council could have done in any official sense. They had no control over Heslop Harrison or any official connection with the botany establishment or any other body that might have been able to reprimand or castigate him, or publicise his misdeeds to a wider audience.

By late 1948, the circle of people who knew about Raven’s report was wider than the Council of Trinity. Enough people had been consulted by Raven about parts of the story for the word to get around that something was afoot. And since those people already had reason to doubt some of Heslop Harrison’s earlier discoveries, there was a sense that the matter could at last come to a suitable and destructive climax. Some of this was expressed in a letter to Raven from Vero Wynne-Edwards. He had turned down Heslop Harrison’s hurriedly written article and accompanied the rejection with the intimation that the pages of the Scottish Naturalist were not open to him. He thanked Raven for his comments on the article and continued:

I have so lately been drawn into this deplorable business, and am so innocent of the facts, compared with a number of other people, that I do not feel I am the right person to take the responsibility for making a public exposure. I have an idea that A.J. Wilmott may already have organised some plan for doing this, and believe you should get in touch with him if you have not already done so.

It is difficult to know from this quite what Wynne-Edwards had heard. Since Raven and Wilmott had been in close contact over the preceding weeks, it may be that the idea of some kind of publication was already being hatched between them.



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