A renowned pharmacologist and expert witness in the Primodos drug scandal has been unmasked as a fraud – by his daughter.

Professor Michael Briggs, who was also a NASA scientist and adviser to the World Health Organisation, built his glittering career on lies by faking his qualifications.

The revelations come in a new book called The Scientist Who Wasn’t There, written by his daughter Joanne Briggs – and Sky News can now reveal how his story sheds new light on a medical scandal that has rumbled on for five decades.

From 1966 to 1970, Professor Briggs was UK research director for Schering pharmaceuticals, which made the pregnancy test drug Primodos, sold in the UK with great commercial success.

Later, hundreds of mothers would claim that the drug damaged their babies in the womb – and Briggs was called as an expert witness to challenge their case.

His involvement in understanding the effects of Primodos runs from the 1960s to the current day, and questions remain over whether his research was among a more recent body of work which has been used by the government to justify not setting up a redress scheme for disabled claimants.

Yet, Briggs was a man who faked research.

“When I was small, I believed my dad to be the only man who knew all science,” Joanne Briggs writes.

Son of a typewriter mechanic from Manchester, he was an enigmatic figure, often dressed in a blazer and sunglasses. In one old family photo, Joanne says he looks like “an operative from MI5, after he’d been issued with a wife and child”.

Professor Briggs claimed he had advised film director Stanley Kubrick on the making of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

He had indeed worked for NASA on the Mars probe, based at the California Institute of Technology, though Joanne believes he used “a three-card trick” to get the job.

Speaking to Sky News in her kitchen in Sussex, she pulls out two A4-bound books.

One purports to be a PhD thesis from Cornell University in 1959 by MH Briggs. The other is a Doctor of Science degree dated 1961 from Wellington University in New Zealand.

“Both of these documents are unfortunately fakes,” says Joanne, explaining that her father worked for a year as a teaching assistant at Cornell and, at best, did a master’s thesis.

The “super doctorate” from Wellington would have required a real PhD, and Joanne believes he did submit something, but examiners described it as “unfavourable”.

“He had a very contorted CV, that’s for sure,” says Joanne. “He never completed a sustained piece of work leading to a higher degree of the kind that you would expect a scientist to have.”

Professor Briggs’s name cropped up in Sky News investigations into Primodos. First in leaked letters from Schering in which scientists were discussing their concerns about the safety of the drug.

Read more:
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A paediatrician named Isabel Gal raised the alarm in a paper published in science journal Nature, warning of a higher incidence of spina bifida in babies born to mothers who used hormone pregnancy tests.

Briggs then asked a statistician, Dennis Cook, to see if there was a correlation between increased sales of the drug and malformations in UK newborns.

Mr Cook, who later shared his study with Sky News, wrote to Briggs warning that the correlation was “alarming”.

Yet Briggs didn’t act on this.

He later left Schering, taking up senior roles in universities in Zambia then Australia, but in 1982, when Primodos campaigners attempted to sue Schering for damages, Briggs was a key expert witnesses offering to give evidence on behalf of the company.

Joanne says: “The collapse of the trial has been attributed to him by many people on the campaign side. He appeared to be an expert on a world stage, an incomparable expert.

“He advised the World Health Organisation’s hormone pharmaceutical committee, so you couldn’t ask for a better CV, but unfortunately what was in his CV was largely of his own making.”

Joanne describes her father’s career as “a series of fraudulent acts”.

In the late 1980s he was caught out by Sunday Times journalist Brian Deer who found Briggs had been fabricating research for Schering and another company, relating to the safety of the contraceptive pill.

Mr Deer told Sky News: “He was in those days of typewriters, essentially sitting there and thinking of what the data ought to be, and typing it in to tables and sending it off to medical journals to publish.”

Aged 51, Briggs died in mysterious circumstances, shortly after the article was published. But his legacy wasn’t over.

Sky News has found animal studies produced while he was UK research director at Schering were among dozens of studies submitted by the manufacturer for use in an expert working group (EWG) report published in 2017 that examined Primodos for the government.

Twenty-eight animal studies from the 1960s and 70s were provided by Schering, and while a number were produced in the late 70s after Briggs left the company, some of those were outsourced and done in preparation for the litigation in which Briggs was a key witness.

Joanne believes based on the dates and “hallmark characteristics of his turn of phrase” that some of the studies were produced by her father.

“There are research papers there that were actually produced by my dad,” she says. “And they were relied on by the expert working group as part and parcel of their conclusion.”

The EWG report has since been used by government and manufacturers to dismiss more recent claims by campaigners about the drug’s damaging effects.

When asked specifically about one rabbit study from 1970, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), which oversaw the EWG, was able to confirm it was not done by Briggs, but asked us to direct further questions about Schering’s studies to the manufacturer.

It added that the MHRA is “committed to reviewing any new scientific data which becomes available since the conclusion of the Expert Working Group’s review”.

Schering is now owned by Bayer, which told us: “In 2017, the Expert Working Group of the UK’s Commission on Human Medicines concluded that the available scientific data from a variety of scientific disciplines does not support a causal relationship between the use of sex hormones in pregnancy and an increased incidence of congenital anomalies or other adverse outcomes, such as miscarriage.”

Responding to specific questions about Professor Briggs, they added: “Backed by the considerable body of scientific research and evidence, Bayer maintains that there is no causal relationship between use of Primodos and an increased incidence of congenital anomalies.”

But they have not told us whether studies by a serial faker were or weren’t used to argue that the drug was safe.

Joanne hopes her revelations could lead to a rethink about the evidence.

“I think this story about a man in the centre of this who happens to be a fabricated person, a hollow man, who has been relied on to such an extent for his expertise,” she says.

“That doesn’t strike me as irrelevant.”

Donald Trump’s state visit next week will stand the UK in good stead to have “a better bilateral relationship with the US than any other country in the world”.

That’s the view of the man who was the head of the UK’s Foreign Office and Diplomatic service during Trump’s last state visit in 2019, as other British diplomatic insiders from the first Trump presidency say it’s essential he gets the honour again to keep onside “a man who changes his mind easily”.

Yes, we’ve seen Donald Trump in the UK for one of these before but brace yourselves for a supercharged state visit this coming week.

In April, Trump told reporters: “They’re going to do a second, as you know, a second fest… that’s what it is: a fest, and it’s beautiful, and it’s the first time it’s ever happened to one person.”

I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a few people in the Foreign Office and the palace who spat their tea into their china cups in surprise at that description, but it illustrated just how excited the president was and set the bar very high for what he expects.

Which is why they are literally rolling out all the red carpet they can find. The president and first lady are due to stay at Windsor Castle, they will get a carriage ride with the King and Queen, and we’ll see more military pageantry than we’ve seen for any other world leader on recent state visits.

Everything has been organised to be bigger and look more spectacular, and the White House will no doubt be delighted.

We have been here before. In 2019, it was a different monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, and a different location, Buckingham Palace. But again it was a huge display of how hard we were working to keep the US president on side.

Lord Simon McDonald was the permanent under-secretary at the Foreign Office and head of the Diplomatic Service at the time of that visit. He told me they didn’t have any trouble filling the seats for the “full monty” state banquet, and it was a trip that cemented President Trump’s relationship with the United Kingdom. “It’s not just about carriages and tiaras. It’s about the world agenda,” he said.

“India right now is suffering as a country because of a spat between Donald Trump and the prime minister of India. So, having Donald Trump in a positive frame of mind, I think, means that the UK has a better chance, probably a better bilateral relationship with the United States than any other country in the world.”

Keir Starmer, producing the invitation letter with such flourish from his inside top pocket in the Oval Office back in February, is another moment that may have made a few diplomats and palace staff splutter, with the King’s carefully chosen words wafted around for all the cameras to see.

But the main reason that would have made some cringe is that state visits are seen as the ultimate diplomatic gift. Hence, the questions over whether Donald Trump deserves the unprecedented honour of a second state visit.

But it is a powerful card that only the UK can play when we need to. And the government believes now is one of those moments.

Read more:
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Mandelson’s exit leaves Trump and his state visit in the lurch
Britain remains vulnerable with an unpredictable Trump

Lord Kim Darroch was the UK’s ambassador to the US at the time of Trump’s first state visit – a trip, where despite him criticising prime minister Theresa May in the run-up, the president “was absolute charm personified”.

He explained that this time, while the president is being wined and dined by the Royal Family, others will be pressing the flesh behind the scenes on matters of defence, business, and more.

“I mean, our relationship with Europe, with the European Union, is very important, but in terms of bilateral relationships, this is the biggest,” Lord Darroch told me. “If we had bad relations with the US, which translated into high tariffs, people would be losing their jobs in this country, and industries would be going bankrupt.

“So this is pure British interests at base. This really matters to us. We’ve made a good start for Donald Trump’s second term, but he’s a man who changes his mind easily.

“There’s always a threat of further tariffs out there. We need to keep that relationship as close as we can for the duration of his second term.”

Lord McDonald agrees and can understand why this visit has happened so quickly.

“Donald Trump, in his second administration, is doing things more quickly and more comprehensively than any of his predecessors. So getting in early, making your points effectively when there’s still three and a half years of the presidency to run, I think, is a better investment for the UK than waiting until the last six months he’s in office.”

It is still controversial, protests are planned, although the president won’t see them from the confines of Windsor Castle, where he’ll spend most of his time.

But the glamour of the castle can’t erase the backdrop of the recent Epstein scandal for both the UK government and the White House, and the ongoing geopolitical turmoil.

Trump won’t want any of that to overshadow his time with the Royal Family, but more of that may play out when he meets the prime minister at Chequers on Thursday.

However, author and journalist Michael Wolff, who has written several books on the president, including Fire And Fury, believes Trump will see this trip as a good distraction.

Wolff also travelled to the UK for the 2019 visit with Steve Bannon, the White House strategist fired by Trump. “One of the things is that (visit) left the president feeling great,” he said.

“Often, the president doesn’t feel great. He feels angry… So they were all grateful that the Queen had been nice to him.”

Talking about what we should expect this time, he told me: “Remember, Trump is a performer. It is all about Trump and Trump’s image.

“So what he’s looking for are some photo ops which are not just even helpful to him, but ones that can make him feel good, bolster the sense of himself. You know, I can’t see anything meaningful coming out of this on a policy basis or particularly on a political basis. I mean, this is a vanity trip.”

No doubt the US president will get the memories he wants, and this time everyone knows what to expect… who can forget the pictures of Trump walking in front of the Queen in 2018, even though that turned out to be Her Majesty’s mistake.

Once again, the interactions with the Royal Family will be something to behold – they always are on these state visits. Just look at those pictures of French President Emmanuel Macron winking at any royal he could clap eyes on during his recent state banquet.

But whether or not you agree that Trump deserves every bell and whistle of pageantry we can muster, ultimately the cost of it all has already been declared worth it in diplomatic circles before he’s even stepped off the plane.

This was the biggest nationalist rally in recent memory – perhaps ever.

Well before the march started, thousands of people flowed over Blackfriars bridge, or came up from Waterloo station, flags everywhere, hailing from everywhere – from Yorkshire roses to the diamond of the Isle of Wight.

What exactly it was that “United the Kingdom” was left vague, for people to cheer their own particular cause.

This was billed as a free speech rally and the most common chants we heard were “Keir Starmer’s a w*****r”, “oh Tommy Tommy” and “we want our country back”.

That means different things to different people.

As it happened: Thousands attend ‘Unite the Kingdom’ rally

Dawn, up from Southampton and wearing a red sequined jacket, said it was because the country was “getting overrun”. She said she was talking only about illegal migration.

Others didn’t draw that distinction.

Danny from south Birmingham was holding a sign that said: “Send them Back” – and said he was unhappy with migration “in general”. He came to “stand up for what we believe in, the religion and identity of our country”.

That’s been a difference with this rally compared to past ones I’ve covered – an overt Christian nationalism.

People carried wooden crosses. One person had a light up crucifix.

When the crowd arrived at Whitehall, they were led from the stage in a chant of ‘Christ is king’. And then a public recital of the Lord’s Prayer shortly after that. It’s an important difference. Not just a flag to rally around, but a religion too.

At the centre of it all, the anti-Islam activist Tommy Robinson.

When Robinson took the stage, it was more like a football match or festival than a political rally.

“We rode the storm, we weathered the storm, and today we are the storm,” he shouted hoarsely.

That’s not much of an exaggeration, not when Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, made a virtual appearance to back Robinson.

Other speakers included those who can be uncontroversially classed as far right. And thugs clashed violently with police.

And it’s clear that simply writing off protestors as far right doesn’t really capture what’s going on either. The audience is too broad to fit just that label.

The tinderbox summer of protest promised by activists never really caught flame. Instead, there has been the slow, steady burn of nationalism.

This was its culmination but also, those here hoped, the beginning of something even bigger.