Scientists and Scoundrels is a piece of popular science ephemera, a kind of long-form Cracked listicle repackaged for reasons I can't divine. This book came out in 1965, at a time when according to Wikipedia Silverberg was writing and selling 50,000 words a week (and a decent novel is between 70k and 120k words). So it's the kind of thing that summarizes twenty or thirty books your little local library might not have into one book about scientific frauds. The stories are short and mostly tragic, the only one that sticks in the mind is the alleged North Pole expedition of Frederick Cook, which may have just hung around Greenland for several months. There are many motivations that drive scientific fraud (fame, wealth, to bring down a rival), but it seems to always end poorly.

And for someone getting this book in 2020 because a Grandmaster of Science Fiction's name is on it, well, Silverberg's name is on a lot of better things too. I don't regret the afternoon I spent with it, but there's not much to keep a second look.