Dr. Cook, Frederick Cook, Cook & Peary, The Cook Society, dr cook, hoaxes, fraud, North Pole

"...Bryce dwells on Cook, whose character clearly fascinates him."

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"...Cook had indeed faked his triumphs: cropping photographs, publishing accounts that varied markedly from his field notes, leaving tell tale erasures and inconsistencies in the notebooks themselves. After all this time, Cook has been damned, in effect, out of his own mouth." (librarian Bryce)

Arctic Snow Job

By Dennis Drabelle Sunday, March 2 1997;
Page X09 The Washington Post

Editors Note: The real snow job may be the one done on this Washington Post know-it-all writer. I assume Dennis had good intentions, but like many people who get a little knowledge he thinks he is an expert. He is not. Notice the portion below in red text? That is a classic Dr. Cook fraud that Dennis Drabelle has fallen for. Pernicious anemia is not detectable prior to the disease being diagnosed. Peary was not diagnosed with it until 2 years before his death in 1920. But Fred Cook, writing after Peary died, claimed he had diagnosed Peary with this disease "in its early stages" back in 1901. That is medically impossible, but Cook didn't know that in the 1920s (because medical science had not yet discovered this fact). Dennis Drabelle writing in 1997 did not know this! The point? Drabelle is perpetuating a classic Dr. Cook's lie while thinking he is giving factual information to his readers. Thus, the snow job is the one done on Drabelle. (V.R. 2-2002)

"... Peary may have been a spoiled, insecure New England aristocrat ... but he trekked onward despite being in the early stages of the pernicious anemia that eventually killed him. (this is incorrect—see explanation above)

...Bryce dwells on Cook, whose character clearly fascinates him. Late in his career, Cook was convicted of mail fraud in connection with a Texas oil well scheme, and served time in jail. ...Cook's last lineal descendant died in 1989, leaving her forebear's papers to the Library of Congress. "They were to reveal far more than anyone expected of them." What they showed, in essence, was that Cook had indeed faked his triumphs: cropping photographs, publishing accounts that varied markedly from his field notes, leaving telltale erasures and inconsistencies in the notebooks themselves. After all this time, Cook has been damned, in effect, out of his own mouth. What will always remain a mystery is how he ..justified his lies to himself." ...Bryce has made what seems to me a strategic mistake: laying out the facts with next to no comment in Part One and interpreting them in Part Two. This division burdens the reader with too many pedestrian pages to labor through ...even in Part Two Bryce's style fails to evoke the drama called for by the material..."