The man who orchestrated a British medical scandal – and suddenly died
策划了一场英国医疗丑闻并突然去世的人

Joanne Briggs’s debut, The Scientist Who Wasn’t There, is an astonishingly original memoir about truth, identity and the ethics of science. It’s thrilling, unsettling – and really rather odd. Winner of theinaugural Bridport Prize for Memoir in 2023, the award that cinchedthe book’s publication, it explores the enigmatic – if not completely bizarre – life of Briggs’s father, Professor Michael Briggs, a man whose illustrious,globe-trotting scientific careerconcealed a vast labyrinth of deception.
乔安妮·布里格斯 （Joanne Briggs） 的处女作《不存在的科学家》（The Scientist Who Wasn't There） 是一部关于真理、身份和科学伦理的原创回忆录。这令人兴奋、令人不安——而且真的很奇怪。该奖项是 2023 年首届布里德波特回忆录奖得主，该奖项为该书的出版奠定了基础，它探讨了布里格斯的父亲迈克尔·布里格斯教授的神秘的生活，如果不是完全离奇的话。这个人杰出的环球科学生涯隐藏着一个巨大的欺骗迷宫。

Born in Manchester, Professor Briggs became a research scientist who worked at NASA, an advisor to the World Health Organisation, and a successful executive in the pharmaceutical industry. On paper, his was a classic rags-to-riches story: he was a self-made, charismatic visionary who surfed the post-war technology boom. But in 1986, his careerimploded when a Sunday Times exposé linked him to the hormone pregnancy test Primodos, which worked by triggering menstruation in non-pregnant women, and was alleged to have caused serious birth defects. It seemed Professor Briggs had been faking results.
Briggs 教授出生于曼彻斯特，后来成为美国宇航局的研究科学家、世界卫生组织的顾问，以及制药行业的成功高管。从纸面上看，他是一个典型的白手起家的故事：他是一个白手起家、有魅力的梦想家，在战后的技术繁荣中冲浪。但在 1986 年，当《星期日泰晤士报》的一篇曝光将他与激素妊娠试验 Primodos 联系起来时，他的职业生涯崩溃了，该试验通过触发非孕妇的月经起作用，并被指控导致严重的出生缺陷。布里格斯教授似乎一直在伪造结果。

Things get stranger. Professor Briggs not only appears to have forged his qualifications, laundered research funds and bullied sceptical colleagues and anyone who doubted him – he may also have been a spy. He appears to have worked for the British government, possibly connected to Cold War intelligence gathering; may have been involved in espionage in East Berlin, and then somehow got caught up in the making of Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey. His death abroad, aged 51, was so sudden that Briggs speculates that there may have been some kind of cover-up.
事情变得更奇怪了。布里格斯教授似乎不仅伪造了他的资历，洗白了研究资金，欺负持怀疑态度的同事和任何怀疑他的人——他还可能是一名间谍。他似乎曾为英国政府工作，可能与冷战情报收集有关;可能参与了东柏林的间谍活动，然后不知何故卷入了斯坦利·库布里克 （Stanley Kubrick） 的电影《2001：太空漫游》的制作。他在国外去世，享年 51 岁，非常突然，以至于布里格斯推测可能存在某种掩盖行为。

What begins, then, as a daughter’s ostensibly simple search for the truth about her absent father, soon becomes a forensic and yet also fantastical investigation – part legal inquiry, part philosophical meditation. A trained lawyer, Briggs approaches the evidence as a prosecutor would: poring over professional records, interviewing colleagues and meeting with the victims of her father’s lies and misconduct.
然后，一开始是一个女儿表面上简单地寻找她缺席的父亲的真相，但很快就变成了一场法医调查，但也是一场奇幻的调查——部分是法律调查，部分是哲学冥想。作为一名训练有素的律师，布里格斯像检察官一样处理证据：仔细研究专业记录，采访同事，并与她父亲的谎言和不当行为的受害者会面。

Primodos involved high doses of synthetic hormones and though the causal link has never been confirmed, women who used it reported children with defects such as spina bifida, limb abnormalities, and heart issues. Briggs reveals that her father manipulated or suppressed data about these effects while being professionally involved with the pharmaceutical company producing it.
Primodos 涉及高剂量的合成激素，尽管因果关系从未得到证实，但使用它的女性报告说，儿童患有脊柱裂、肢体异常和心脏问题等缺陷。布里格斯透露，她的父亲在专业参与生产这些数据的制药公司时，纵或压制了有关这些效果的数据。

But the book is also wildlysurreal: Briggs imagines conversations with her father in which they debate the boundaries between science and science fiction, and the book eventually resolves into musings and reverie. The overall effect, frankly, is dizzying – pleasantly so. Briggs often hints that she herself doesn’t know the difference between fact and fantasy; in a rather cryptic, ambivalent author’s note, she writes: “My memory of the past is as much made up of dreams, impressions, false beliefs, fantasies, feelings and notions as it is of facts [...] which I hope makes my memoir authentic. But is that a true story? Well, yes, it is to me.”
但这本书也极具超现实主义色彩：布里格斯想象着与她父亲的对话，他们在对话中争论科学和科幻小说之间的界限，这本书最终变成了沉思和遐想。坦率地说，整体效果令人眼花缭乱——令人愉快。布里格斯经常暗示她自己不知道事实和幻想之间的区别;在一篇相当神秘、矛盾的作者笔记中，她写道：“我对过去的记忆既是由梦、印象、错误的信念、幻想、感受和观念组成的，也是由事实组成的......我希望这能使我的回忆录真实。但这是真实的故事吗？嗯，是的，对我来说是这样。

True or not, the book defies neat categorisation. It’s certainly a book about a very peculiar, unsavoury man, but it’s also a vivid depiction of a world in which ambition and imagination collide, with devastating human consequences. Briggs does, at various points, express deep moral ambivalence about writing the book: she wrestles with the ethics of exposing her father’s legacy, particularly given the trauma already borne by his victims.
不管是真是假，这本书都无法进行整齐的分类。这当然是一本关于一个非常奇特、令人讨厌的人的书，但它也生动地描绘了一个野心和想象力碰撞的世界，给人类带来了毁灭性的后果。布里格斯确实在不同时刻表达了对写这本书的深刻道德矛盾心理：她与揭露父亲遗产的道德问题作斗争，特别是考虑到他的受害者已经承受了创伤。

She describes a childhood overshadowed by confusion, secrecy and emotional neglect, but also moments of awe and admiration for her father. Their relationship, as reconstructed here, was fraught and complex – marked more by absence than presence, but never entirely devoid ofconnection or longing.
她描述了一个被困惑、秘密和情感忽视所笼罩的童年，但也描述了对父亲的敬畏和钦佩的时刻。正如这里所重建的那样，他们的关系是令人担忧和复杂的——更多的是缺席而不是存在，但从来没有完全没有联系或渴望。

The Scientist Who Wasn’t There is not only an indictment of one man’s lies and deceit and his descent into moral oblivion, therefore, but a study of duplicity; personal, institutional, even national and international. Briggs slowly assembles a counterbalanced, complex kind of truth, one that acknowledges the impossibility of total objectivity but which nonetheless insists on the value of the attempt. “He only ever travelled in one direction,” Briggs writes of her father. “Forwards, away from the smoke of burning bridges.” She, in contrast, with admirable insight and considerable nerve, turns back – to sift through the still smouldering ruins.
因此，《不在场的科学家》不仅是对一个人的谎言和欺骗以及他堕落到道德遗忘的控诉，而且是对口是心非的研究;个人的、机构的，甚至是国内和国际的。布里格斯慢慢地组装出一种相互平衡的、复杂的真理，它承认完全客观性的不可能性，但仍然坚持这种尝试的价值。“他只朝一个方向走，”布里格斯写道她的父亲。“向前走，远离燃烧的桥梁的烟雾。”相比之下，她凭借令人钦佩的洞察力和相当大的勇气，转过身来——在仍然冒烟的废墟中筛选。

The Scientist Who Wasn’t There is published by Ithaka at £20. To order your copy for £16.99, call 0330 173 0523 or visit Telegraph Books.
The Scientist Who Wasn't There 由 Ithaka 出版，售价 20 英镑。要以 16.99 英镑的价格订购副本，请致电 0330 173 0523 或访问 Telegraph Books.

A shocking tale of abused women in a leading British hospital
英国一家领先医院受虐妇女的令人震惊的故事