Professor Michael Briggs, once central to the Primodos scandal, has been exposed by his daughter as a fraud who faked his qualifications and produced research still used in government reviews.
A leading figure in the Primodos pregnancy drug scandal has been unmasked as a fraud by his daughter, raising new questions about evidence used in one of Britain’s longest-running medical controversies.
Professor Michael Briggs, once a NASA scientist and adviser to the World Health Organisation, built his career on fake qualifications, according to revelations in The Scientist Who Wasn’t There, written by his daughter, Joanne Briggs.
“When I was small, I believed my dad to be the only man who knew all science,” she wrote, later discovering falsified PhD and doctorate papers.
Briggs, UK research director at Schering pharmaceuticals from 1966 to 1970, dismissed claims that Primodos harmed unborn children. “He never completed a sustained piece of work leading to a higher degree,” Joanne said.
Campaigners argue his fabricated studies may have influenced later reviews used to deny redress. “That doesn’t strike me as irrelevant,” Joanne told Sky News.