A Quiet Rebel: Sir John Scott

Robert WoolfSteven Galbraith - 1 November 2015

26 June 1931 - 20 October 2015

In December 1952, letters appeared in the Otago Daily Times reporting sightings of Unidentified Flying Objects across the length of New Zealand. The story was apparently quite convincing, as the correspondents were relatively respectable people scattered widely around the country.

Of course it was a hoax, but one that required a significant amount of preparation. Nowadays, with email and social media, one could set up such a prank fairly easily, but in the 1950s the work entailed was considerable. Who would go to the trouble to orchestrate such an elaborate hoax? Why choose the Otago Daily Times as the target? And why pull the prank in the first place?

John Scott was an undergraduate medical student at Knox College, Otago University in 1952. He and a circle of friends were angry at the conservative attitude of the Otago Daily Times. They didn’t like its politics, as it represented the right-wing establishment. As he put it “the Otago Daily Times led the charge for the National party.” They wanted to do something to discredit it as a reliable source of news.

In an interview earlier this year with NZ Skeptics, John well recalled the events of 1952. He told us that UFOs were the talk of the time, and that there had been “silly articles” about them in the Otago Daily Times. John and his circle were unconvinced about the existence of UFOs and thought that these columns were nonsense. So they decided it was timely to perpetrate a hoax and embarrass the newspaper.

John told us: “I wrote instructions. I sort-of controlled it all. We worked out there’d be three in one part of NZ and two in another. They’d go down the coast and back. We had the speed, number, what have you. Because everybody had a bit to write.” They had assembled a group of confederates that included university students, doctors and so on.

Everything went smoothly - the designated night was clear and everybody played their part. The Otago Daily Times fell for it hook, line and sinker.

They did not feel the need to reveal the hoax at the time, and for many years no one talked about it. Ken Nichol, in response to an article in the Christchurch Press, did reveal that it was a hoax in 1978. But many people then, and even today, were not convinced.

By then, John was focussed on his career in medical research and administration.

“By this stage I’d begun to be interested in medical policy and I was really left-wing. I was very suspicious of the doctors and their motives, and most things they did. In medicine, the more I learned the more corrupt I reckoned it. So I was always on the side of the reformers in medicine.”

He dedicated a large part of his career to these goals.

“My motivation … was to try and keep medicine reasonably clean, in terms of motivation; how it was organised; how it financed itself. It wouldn’t fleece the public. Wouldn’t be dishonest.” Working at the Medical School in Auckland gave him the opportunity to influence the next generation of medics “I was teaching medical students and they had to have a good example, so I tried to give it to them.”

So where did this quiet rebel with his strict moral principles come from?

John Scott was born in Auckland in June 26, 1931. His father was a schoolmaster, teaching maths at Seddon College in Auckland and his mother had an arts degree with honours from Canterbury University. John felt he was lucky to have such intelligent parents. His mother had grown up “as a wealthy aristocrat from Canterbury”. Her family owned a large amount of land, but they gradually lost it all, starting when her father died around 1918, and through the Depression. When John was growing up, his mother’s left-wing tendencies were apparent and she “quietly raised me to be like a Fabian” (socialist).

His mother’s influence was very important. She was impressed by Edward Sayers and his foreshadowing of a national health service. John was also impressed by the idea of public health: “the concept to her was common sense, and me also”.

The family moved south from Auckland when John’s father was appointed head of Palmerston North Technical College. His mother worked in the Patriotic Shop in Palmerston North.

“We used to walk to and from the shop on Friday. She worked in the shop and we would walk and talk politics. I was indoctrinated if you like.”

John was very bright at school and his parents supported his academic interests.

My IQ was very high. Didn’t impress my father one little bit. He knew an IQ was just a set of numbers.” He attended Palmerston North Boys High and then, for the last two years of high school, John moved back to Auckland to attend Mt. Albert Grammar School. He recalled some excellent teachers, and told us he was in a very bright class.

“I was nowhere near Dux, I was about 4th or 5th.”

He was attracted to mathematics and science (two of his father’s cousins were professors of mathematics in England). Initially John thought of studying engineering, but he spent a holiday standing in mud taking levels with a surveyor and “decided engineering was not for me, so I drifted into medicine. My mother had carefully prepared the ground.”

He spent his medical intermediate year in Auckland in 1949, followed by 1950-1954 at the Medical School at Otago University. On completion of his studies he had a junior research post in Auckland with John Eccles (later a Nobel prize winner) followed by a registrar job at Auckland Hospital.

In 1958 he went to the UK to conduct medical research. He worked for two and a half years in Birmingham with John Squire, who was an excellent scientist and wonderful supervisor: “He wanted to get to the truth. He didn’t kid himself.” Rather than accommodate his data to his expectations, he would not be satisfied with ambiguous results. “He’d say “ok that’s no good”’ and would start again. He was a great man - he was influential.”

During this time he worked on lipoproteins, an area in which he established himself as an authority, and was awarded a Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Birmingham.

John returned to New Zealand in late 1962. He was invited by Douglas Robb and Derek North to help set up the Medical Unit (research facility) in Auckland. He continued research on lipoproteins, as well as teaching and clinical work. His group was the first to show that cholesterol is transported around the body on lipoproteins. His research contributions are well documented elsewhere. As John puts it: “I settled down. Set up a medical unit in Auckland. Derek North and I worked along independent lines: he was a superb organiser, and it was research I liked.”

As his career progressed he took on more leadership roles (including Head of Department starting from the late 1970s). John also became interested in medico-legal matters, such as investigations into the conduct of senior clinicians in the hospital.

“I was always prepared to put my head above the parapet and line up my colleagues if I felt they were not behaving ethically.” Some of these cases are still embargoed.

Milan Brych (born 1939 in Czechoslovakia) entered New Zealand as a refugee in the late 1960s and claimed to have a medical qualification. He was charismatic, managed to obtained a position at Auckland Hospital, and was soon claiming miraculous success with cancer treatment. Before long he had established a devoted following of former patients.

We asked John about the amazing ease with which Brych got accreditation as a medical practitioner in NZ. John’s opinion is that he deliberately hoodwinked senior members of the hospital management. “He works on people very hard. Finds out all about them and their weak points, then he manipulates them. He’s got quite a good mind.”

Thus a proper verification of Brych’s credentials was never performed. “He works quietly away. He works very hard I understand. People think he’s a playboy, but he’s a lot more than a playboy.”

John first heard about Brych after a trip overseas: “I came back and heard about this miracle, but I said miracles don’t occur”.

Once John’s suspicions were raised, he checked up on Brych’s claims. “The sequence of events was: I got suspicious of Brych; I questioned him; he was found wanting; I challenged him; he reacted badly. So then I shadowed him. He and I paired off.”

However, Brych still had important supporters within the medical establishment who did not doubt his miraculous claims.

“They were hoodwinked.”

John recalls that Brych “carried on making millions. Salting it down.” It was the dishonesty and corruption, rather than the pseudoscience, that particularly offended John. Brych represented the worst of the corruption in the medical establishment he had been fighting all his career. So John systematically began to prepare a case against Brych.

“I carried on gathering information. I delved into his background a bit, both in NZ and in his homeland. Anything really. A terrible picture emerged.”

After confronting Brych “I found out he was a pretty nasty man. He began to attack the family here, in the house.”

John was under huge pressure to back off because of the large amount of time he was spending on investigating Brych. Some colleagues advised him to step back and leave it alone. But John felt he had an international responsibility to stop Brych practicing in NZ. He felt that for the honour of New Zealand’s credibility he had to act.

John then went to Europe to investigate Brych’s background. He said that Czechoslovakia in the 1970s was a dangerous place to raise difficult questions with the establishment.

“This was big-time politics. Up against the Czech government, secret police, you name it.”

Luckily John had some helpers within the country.

“Eccles put me onto Krooter. He’s the real hero. He was married to a French woman and couldn’t really be touched by the government.” (Editor note: We have not been able to confirm the accuracy of this.)

John was then interrogated by Czech government agents. This was a most unpleasant experience. He has tried to obliterate this memory of this and did not want to talk about it, adding that “They took me away in a helicopter. It was horrible.”

Despite the travails faced by John in his fight against Brych, he was heartened by support from some most unexpected quarters. He recalled a very helpful woman at the British Embassy in Prague who had worked at Bletchley Park and, it was rumoured, had been Alan Turing’s “girlfriend”.

She and John continued a correspondence for quite a long time.

“All sorts of people like that popped up along the way. They were fascinating. I was kept going by it. I think they admired that I was prepared to take this on.”

John also very much appreciated the support he got from the skeptical community during the worst of the Brych years: “I’ve been very grateful to the skeptics and the support they gave me over the critical time. It was very important.”

John returned to New Zealand having gathered further evidence to support his case against Brych. He said that some medical colleagues were still credulous, noting that “Scales started falling from some of the eyes, but hadn’t fallen from others.”

John was ultimately successful in his campaign to get Brych struck off the medical register in New Zealand and he was sent packing. Brych then went to the Cook Islands and John eventually drummed him out of there.

Then he went on to the USA: “He was trying to set-up in Texas.” John contacted colleagues in the USA and provided them with information about Brych.

“Well, the Americans rapidly got onto that and kicked him out. He came back to New Zealand, then we kicked him out. Landed in Australia, settled in Britain. And in Britain he’s quietly working away. Still seeing patients.”

At the time of the interview John was in his 80s and had suffered several periods of serious illness.

“I’ve thought I was going to die three times already. I’ve stopped apologising to people for my imminent death which then turns into recoveries.”

John’s clinical and rational approach to medicine continues: “I don’t indulge in witchcraft and so on. I’m on orthodox treatment.” John mentioned that one of his home-carers is training in homeopathy “I can talk to him while he helps me. I couldn’t budge him on some things.”

Regarding so-called complementary medicine John told us “I learned to pick out the good bits and to challenge the bad bits.”

On summing up his life’s work, John says “I was never afraid to speak out for the standards I believed in, even if it meant I was criticised by members of my own profession. I spent much of my life trying to change the views of sections of the medical and legal profession. I did have an agenda to see that the medical profession in New Zealand became responsive to the health needs of the country, to build their responses on empirical evidence and … to be what the community needs, not what the profession needs. You seek to leave behind a better world than when you started.”

One regret John has is not been more public and outspoken in his opinions. “I’m sorry I left it until this late in my career to talk to people”.

John’s wish is that his vision of an ethical and honourable medical profession will continue to be nurtured.

“I’m trying to make contact with a few students I want to carry the torch. Someone’s got to carry on.”