Years of work shrugged off, dismissed with the flick of a finger. Sheldon Harris, the reigning expert on Unit 731 and the American appropriation of Japan’s germ-warfare research, denounced the book in the Journal of American History. “It is easy to dismiss this book as a black mark on the historical profession, and several scholars have done so,” he said. “Sadly, this study is a prime example of shoddy scholarship masquerading as an objective examination of a controversial topic.”

Nicholson Baker, Baseless- My Search for Sec…, loc. 135