[Excerpts taken from the article “A miracle cancer prevention and treatment? Not necessarily as the analysis of 26 articles by legendary Hans Eysenck shows” by Tomasz Witkowski and Maciej Zatonski, published in Science Based Medicine]

“In May 2019 a report from an internal enquiry conducted by the King’s College London (KCL) was released. This report diplomatically labels 26 articles published by Professor Hans Jürgen Eysenck as “unsafe”…”

“Eysenck was one of the most renowned and influential psychologists of all time. When he died in 1997, he was the most cited living psychologist and the third-most cited of all time, just behind Sigmund Freud and Jean Piaget. In the global rating of most cited scholars across all social sciences Eysenck ranked third, following only Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx.”

“The report published by the KCL committee scrutinised only articles from peer-reviewed journals that Eysenck co-authored with Ronald Grossarth-Maticek, and analysed data relevant to personality and physical health outcomes in conditions like cancer, cardiovascular diseases, their causes and methods of treatment. All of reviewed research results were assessed as ‘unsafe’.”

“In their publications both authors claimed no causal connection between tobacco smoking and development of cancer or coronary heart disease, and attributed those outcomes to personality factors…”

“In one of their research projects conducted among more than 3,000 people, Eysneck and Grossarth-Maticek have claimed that people with a “cancer-prone personality” were 121 times more likely to die of the disease than patients without such a disposition (38.5% vs 0.3% ).”

“The authors have also contributed personality factors to the risk of developing coronary heart disease. Their publications stated that subjects who were “heart-disease prone” died 27 times more often than people without such temperament.”

“The greatest hits in the album of suspicious publications are articles where the authors “demonstrated” that they can effectively “prevent cancer and coronary heart disease in disease-prone probands”. In one of their projects, 600 “disease-prone probands” received a leaflet explaining how to make more autonomous decisions and how to take control over their destinies.”

“This simple intervention resulted in one of the most spectacular findings in the history of medicine, psychology, and probably in the entire scientific literature. After over 13 years of observation, the group of 600 patients randomly assigned to this “bibliotherapy” (as it was called by the authors) had an overall mortality of 32% when compared to 82% among the 600 people who were not lucky enough to receive the leaflets.”

“However, the most destructive and infamous of his achievements was the publication of the book entitled The Causes and Effects of Smoking in 1980, where he condemned the already established causal relationship between tobacco smoking and lung cancer. His later cooperation with Ronald Grossarth-Maticek resulted in the publication of numerous articles that were recently assessed as “unsafe”. The irregularities uncovered during preparation of the KCL’s report appalled and shocked the global scientific community.”

“After humiliating degradation and after losing his job Diedrik Stapel published a particular memoir of a fraudster, where he described a rather accurate characteristics of the academia of psychologists. He emphasises virtually complete lack of any structure of control or self-correction: ‘Nobody ever checked my work. They trusted me.’”

“…the price for such misperceived and ill-understood academic freedom will be paid by members of the general public when they make everyday decisions related to smoking or when deciding to improve on their personalities, fed by misconstrued beliefs related to the development of cancer, unnecessary suffering, and premature deaths. Those damages will never be assessed.”

To read the article, click here.