Judith Reisman: Social Charlatan
March, 1989
Science is not immune from charlatans--and scientific quacks often have many followers. In 1486, two Dominicans published a document, Malleus Maleficarum, that was essentially a manual for persecuting witches; it was taken very seriously by 15th Century zealots. In the late 1700s, Franz Mesmer purported to cure mental disorders through therapeutic sessions akin to séances; he had a lucrative practice. From 1929 to 1965, Trofim Lysenko practiced unorthodox genetic biology (he claimed that wheat p...
