Alma Mahler Gropius Werfel (1879–1964), Getty Images. The principal matter of importance in this is an artificial coloring, probably with India ink, through which the black coloring of the skin in the region carrying the stripes is said to have been faked. Therefore it would be a matter of deception that presumably will be laid to me only. Who besides myself had any interest in perpetrating such falsifications can only be very dimly suspected. … I hope that I shall gather together enough courage and strength to put an end of my wrecked life to-morrow. Rather than committing fraud, it seems that Kammerer had the misfortune of stumbling upon non-Mendelian inheritance at a time in which Mendelian genetics itself was just becoming well accepted. I kept records, very exact records. That, too, irritated Kammerer. Somewhat less accurate records with positive results would have pleased him more. Paul Kammerer (1880–1926), from J. R. Whittaker (Aug. 1985) Paul Kammerer and the suspect siphons. MBL Science. When a scientist commits suicide a few weeks after a paper in Nature shows that he faked a critical experiment, we might assume the case closed. However, if the scientist is the Viennese biologist Paul Kammerer (1880–1926) and if the case is the notorious “Case of the Midwife Toad,” then the docket remains open. Kammerer's wacky campaign to prove the heritability of acquired characteristics is as topical today as on September 23, 1926, when he shot himself on an Austrian hill. Not one of his controversial “discoveries” has ever been duplicated, his notion that musical talent is heritable remains on the shelf, and his contention that the Prohibition laws in America would induce a genetically superior race of teetotalers is too absurd to consider (4–6). However, his star has risen once again, thanks to a bold claim that he is the father of epigenetics (7) and a new look at his place in the history of image manipulation (4). Kammerer's claim in 1909 that male midwife toads pass on acquired nuptial pads to the fourth generation of their progeny has made him a hero to armchair generals in the nature/nurture wars (8). His career was first resurrected by a great writer, Arthur Koestler, who pleaded Kammerer's innocence in “The Case of The Midwife Toad” (9). Reviewing that book, Stephen Jay Gould thought that Kammerer's tale of the toad was probably alright; he cut Kammerer slack for his progressive politics and his “penetrating intelligence” (10). That was 1972, and the case became moot for a generation as DNA became RNA, etc., etc. Suddenly, last October, A. O. Vargas of Santiago, Chile, re-reinterpreted the midwife toads in the light of modern epigenetics and paternal imprinting. Based on his analysis of “parent-of-origin” data buried in Kammerer's toad papers, Vargas argued that Kammerer was “the actual discoverer of epigenetic inheritance” (2, 7). Editorial fanfares in the Journal of Experimental Zoology and Science praised Vargas for unearthing what “may have been the first demonstration of a recently recognized [sic] phenomenon: epigenetics” (11, 12). Shucks, and I thought Waddington charted the epigenetic landscape, Shirley Tilghman got imprinting right, and Jean-Pierre Changeux planted the flag for epigenesis in synaptic affinity (13–15). The processes that Kammerer reports I could not confirm, neither in his experiments nor in my own even though I have been monitoring his imprecisely executed experiments constantly for nearly ten years … Kammerer's representations contain crude untruths and falsifications of the actual circumstances. (16) Her lovers were many and varied, From the day she began her—beguine. There were three famous ones whom she married, And God knows how many between. Alma, tell us! All modern women are jealous. Which of your magical wands Got you Gustav and Walter and Franz? (18) He wanted positive results in his research so much that he would unconsciously depart from the truth. This trait explains to me his later problems when English researchers showed that “on further examination, his [salamander] experiments proved invalid.” On that occasion the mimicry of salamanders was the subject. These experiments, with which I helped, were rushed into print and not accurately documented. (3) The salamander experiments that Alma had witnessed established Kammerer as the father of photographic image manipulation (19, 20). Kammerer explained to his protesting editor that he had inked in colored spots on photos of experimental salamanders, as “The glare from the skin gave the impression of spots where none were present and the spots that were present were washed out in the glare” (21). The passage is worthy of Danny Kaye in “The Court Jester”: “The pellet with the poison's in the vessel with the pestle, the chalice from the palace has the brew that is true,” but image manipulation is serious business these days. A male midwife toad, Alytes obstetricians, Getty Images. Our Viennese friend was finally undone, not by image manipulation but by India ink. Kammerer, it seems, had mastered another art form: the manipulation of actual specimens. We know now that his unrepeatable salamander data were the result of fraud or foolishness but so was the midwife toad. Kammerer admitted in his suicide note that he had found his preserved salamanders “blackened,” ditto the pads of the midwife toad (12)! Ciona intestinalis, J. R. Whittaker, Op. cit. Kammerer's last words about the matter pointed to another origin of the specious: “Who besides myself had any interest in perpetrating such falsifications can only be very dimly suspected” (1). Thomas Hunt Morgan of Columbia wrote to his friend G. K. Noble shortly after Kammerer's suicide note appeared in Science: Kammerer has done one more dirty trick in trying to put the fraud over on to one of his assistants. Remember that this is not the first time. either, that he has been caught and all responsible people will, I think, draw the same conclusion. (30) It was certainly not the first time that he had been caught. Kammerer claimed that the critical experiment, which “prove the inheritance of acquired characteristics,” was the heritability of hyper-regenerating siphons in the tunicate, Ciona intestinalis (31). Kammerer purported to show that when the two siphon ends (see photo above) of this protochordate were amputated, the new siphon tubes became longer upon regeneration than the original tubes and that the complete elongation was inherited by the next generation. The whole experiment supposedly involved two sequential siphon regenerations, after which, a regeneration of a lower section of the body, containing the gonads, was caused to occur before the animals were crossed for the next generation (32). Ciona siphons did not, of course, regenerate longer after their surgical removal. But most telling was the gonadal regeneration part of Kammerer's supposed experiment. This involved a completely lethal operation from which animals could not recover … I was left with no remaining doubt that the Ciona results were also an invention of Paul Kammerer's high-strung imagination. (32) Kammerer … claims that an interest in music on the part of parents produces offspring with musical talent. In such claims much depends upon the subjective interpretation of the observer. The writer is not aware that there is at present on record a single adequate proof of the heredity of an acquired character. (36) BIOLOGIST TO TELL HOW SPECIES ALTER DR KAMMERER, “DARWINS SUCCESSOR” ARRIVES FROM VIENNA FOR LECTURES A scientist who did not hesitate to explain to his editor that he was forced to manipulate spots on photos of salamanders had no trouble assuring the Times that “The next generation of Americans will be born without any desire for liquor if the prohibition law is continued and strictly enforced” (6). He also assured those packed audiences at his lectures that Germany and Austria were far ahead of the United States in their effort to improve the race by cultivating physical fitness and eugenical breeding in accord with his personal notion of Korperkultur und Rasse (Bodily Fitness and Race Culture) (38). I'm afraid that Kammerer's story remains pertinent today, when our journals print retractions of articles that have sported manipulated images, duplicated data, and fabricated authorship. Somebody desperately wants them to be okay! We live, these days, with virtual reality and biased avatars; it's hard to pick out fact from faction. Fraud tends to be ignored by those who agree with the conclusion it reaches, whether facts support it or not. For a lie to persist, or to be resurrected like the midwife toad, there has to be an audience that requires belief. But, as Robert Graves observed in both the social and natural sciences, “Theft is theft and raid is raid/Though reciprocally made.” Kammerer, Koostler and Whittaker were the subject of a correspondence between my MBL colleagues, Porter Anderson and Gary Borisy; this editorial followed their discussion. It was written in the same library that Morgan, Loeb and Whittaker used to sniff out Kammerer's work.