Should we ever fight lies with lies?

Photo from verdammelt's photostream

So here’s my moral dilemma. The pangolin is a threatened species. It is a peaceful creature which has evolved an impressive strategy of self-defence; it curls up into a scaly ball. The effectiveness of this strategy against predators can be seen here.  Unfortunately, this doesn’t work when your opponent has hands, and can just pick you up. Pangolin numbers are being depleted by poachers who sell them for Chinese medicine. Pangolin scales are known as Chuan Shan Jia and are reckoned to be effective for such purposes as “expelling wind-damp from the channels”. They are also recommended for treatment of cancer, see for instance, this website.

Although sterling work is being done by conservation agencies, time seems to be running out. So I wondered about taking a different tack. As Ben Goldacre has famously remarked, the Daily Mail has a mission to classify inanimate objects into those that give you cancer vs those that cause cancer, so how about getting pangolin scales on the former list? This idea has been germinating in my brain for a while, but there are two major obstacles. First, I have a reputation for truthfulness, which I’d be sorry to lose, and second, how would I start such a rumour?

Well, a recent post by Jo Brodie gave me an answer for part 2. Jo noted that if you upload photos to Flickr, they get picked up by people doing Google searches. Her photos of ads for weight-loss tea, accompanied by her comments that there’s no evidence for effectiveness, have actually appeared on websites advertising the stuff.

But Jo’s posts don’t involve any dishonesty. I want to spread a rumour about Chuan Shan Jia that is completely fictitious. I had some misgivings, but I did it. I opened a Flickr account and made a graph. I took a figure from a powerpoint presentation on cancer rates and doctored it to be about pangolin scales. You can see it here. [No you can't, link removed. See P.S. below!]. Whether the sort of people who use Chinese medicines will actually ever find this seems unlikely, but it seemed worth a shot. If anyone would be willing to translate the slide into Chinese, I'd be most grateful.

I had a moment wondering whether I’d get sued by purveyors of Chinese medicines, but I don't think I need to worry, since the use of endangered species in medicines is illegal.

So what about my reputation? Well I am hoping that I can preserve it by declaring here that you can rely on me to be honest in my science communications on all topics except use of medicines based on endangered species. If my pangolin hoax works, you can anticipate a Flickr posting on rhino horn next.

My husband is very disapproving and thinks it is never right to fight lies with lies. What do others think?

P.S. 20th June 2011

Well, the verdict in the comments is clear, and my husband is now feeling extremely smug. To go down this route is not just unethical but also foolish. So I won't. I had hoped that by declaring myself as a hoaxer at the same time as initiating a hoax, I could defend my integrity, but I see that this would be a dangerous assumption, and the unintended consequences could be serious.
Thanks to Jo, I've discovered that my inexperience with Flickr means that my hoax graph wasn't copyable anyway.
But I'm glad I posted this: very interesting and helpful to get the reactions, and Jo has given me ideas for pursuing my vendetta against pangolin medicines without any dishonesty. I also inspired a great set of tweets from @Artvanderley that demonstrate another approach: implant the idea there could be bad effects of pangolin medicine without claiming it: e.g. "40 years ago no one believed that ingesting pangolins was linked with cancer, excessive weight gain and genital atrophy". I suspect that some of you may think that even this may be sailing too close to the wind, but it's clearly far less heinous than inventing data.
I'm left feeling just a bit disappointed, as I have always been very well-behaved and law-abiding and was rather enjoying my brief dalliance with hoaxing. But yes, the issues are serious, and so I will climb wearily back up on the moral high ground.