Founding Fraudster?: Did Ben Franklin really fly that kite--or was this the first instance of scientific misconduct in North America?

Benjamin Franklin: Statesman, author, post-master, inventor of the bifocal, the lending library and the Franklin stove. Most Americans know the highlights of this polymath's life. Few, though, know that he was also a prolific prankster. In Bolt of Fate: Benjamin Franklin and His Electric Kite Hoax, author Tom Tucker audaciously argues that one of history's most celebrated scientific experiments was a fiction. In Franklin's own account of his experiment, a kite fashioned from a silk …

…experiment--minus the lighting strike--and got results comparable to those Ben described. It's possible, says Moore, that Franklin confused a direct strike with a remote one. Does Tucker prove his case? No. Ben most likely sent his kite aloft, but misunderstood, or misdescribed, what happened. That hardly makes him a fraud. Tucker, though, is to be congratulated for having launched a spirited, well-researched assault. History only grows more robust when our most sacrosanct tales are challenged.