The version of the NLM website for Joshua Lederberg that was observed
on March 23, 2007, differs from the one observed on April 8, 2011.
The difference seems benign, but in fact was forced upon the NLM as
their misrepresentations and factual errors were starting to become
an embarassment. Exactly what were these misrepresentations?
On March 23, 2007 Joshua Lederberg's NLM site said that he had
"almost single-handedly reshaped the field of bacterial genetics."
However, on April 8, 2011, "Joshua Lederberg"
is replaced by "Joshua Lederberg and his small lab
group at the University of Wisconsin", and
"almost single-handedly"
is replaced by "significantly". What does
this seemingly benign change signify? A mere correction? The
significance is that the "single" hand hid the participation of
over 400 other researchers, many of whom were well-known researchers
at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories and some of whom were Joshua
Lederberg's own professors: Francis Ryan, George Beadle, Ed. Tatum
(the latter two of whom became co-recipients of the 1958 Nobel Prize
with Joshua Lederberg), and his wife, Esther M. Zimmer Lederberg.
At the University of Wisconsin-Madison Archives Oral History Project,
1998, p. 52, paragraph 285, Joshua Lederberg's interviewer paraphrases
Joshua Lederberg, stating that Ed. Tatum and George Beadle "were people
who had preceded [Joshua Lederberg] by ten or fifteen years in their
own scientific development, and JL had “stood on their shoulders” for
the work he had done. At his NLM website, above, Beadle and Tatum
are not even mentioned. The Oral History referred to above may be
found at the NLM "Profiles in Science" website for Joshua Lederberg
(Document bbbdhf).
Thus, this seemingly benign change is a willful attempt to revise
(hide) the discovered misrepresentations discussed here.