Pamela C. Rasmussen - The Meinertzhagen Fraud

The Meinertzhagen Fraud

Rasmussen revealed the true extent of the major fraud perpetrated by the eminent British soldier, ornithologist and expert on bird lice, Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen. Meinertzhagen, who died in 1967, was the author of numerous taxonomic and other works on birds, and possessed a vast collection of bird and bird lice specimens; he was considered to be one of Britain's greatest ornithologists. However, British ornithologist Alan Knox had analysed Meinertzhagen's bird collection at the Walter Rothschild Zoological Museum in Tring, UK in the early 1990s, and uncovered significant fraud involving theft of specimens from museums and falsification of the accompanying documentation.

When researching for Birds of South Asia, Rasmussen examined tens of thousands of bird specimens, since the late S. Dillon Ripley had strongly favoured the use of museum specimens to determine which birds to include. With Robert Prys-Jones of the Natural History Museum, she showed that the decades-old Meinertzhagen fraud was far more extensive than first thought. Many of the 20,000 bird specimens in his collection had been relabelled with regard to where they were collected, and sometimes also remounted. The false documentation delayed the rediscovery of the Forest Owlet, since previous searches had relied on Meinertzagen's faked records. Rasmussen's successful expedition ignored these and looked in the areas identified by the remaining genuine specimens.

Meinertzhargen had been banned from the Natural History Museum's Bird Room for 18 months for unauthorised removal of specimens, and suspicions that he was stealing specimens and library material were documented by staff for over 30 years, twice reaching the verge of prosecution.

Falsified records identified by Rasmussen and Prys-Jones included high-altitude occurrences of Coral-billed Scimitar-babbler Pomatorhinus ferruginosus, out-of-range Kashmir Flycatcher Ficedula subrubra and Himalayan winter records of Ferruginous Flycatcher Muscicapa ferruginea and Large Blue Flycatcher Cyornis magnirostris (now Hill Blue-flycatcher C. banyumas). However, some records such as those for Afghan Snowfinch Montifringilla theresae, a species Meinertzhagen described, appear to be genuine.