Narrator/Reporter
Appearances
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
This, she said, this is exactly the kind of thing he loved to do. He liked to prank people. And he told lots of big stories about himself, many true and some not. You can never totally believe him and never quite not believe him. In fact, she says, it would help explain this other thing, that even though her father supposedly won the bet, his buddy never paid him.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
Well, so now knowing all this, do you feel convinced that he didn't write the letter?
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
So it seems like Howard didn't write the fake prank letter that caused decades of chaos. His prank was that he said he had written the letter. He was claiming credit for chaos he didn't create. It was complicated to even think about.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
First, the world believed MSG was bad for you, and it wasn't. And now, we nearly believed a second piece of fake news, that it all started with Howard. Here's where Anna came down, loving her father and his best friend, but also, what the hell?
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
So many people near the end of their lives are trying to make things right. He was trying to make trouble. Like a last, like a last act, like a lifelong legacy prank. Kind of.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
Howard died just a few months after he laughed his way through those interviews. He was 97.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
When Howard Steele left that voicemail for Jennifer LeMessurier, she calls him back right away. Gets the whole story from him. She doesn't record it, though. And a few months later, Dr. Howard Steele dies. But before he died, the Colgate Alumni Magazine. Remember, Jennifer teaches at Colgate. Howard's on their board. They did a couple interviews with him that they did record.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
That's Michael Blanding, the journalist who did the interviews. He's the one you can hear typing during this call.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
Howard's friend Bill was a doctor, too. They'd eat, drink, and talk shop. And they got to talking about being published in medical journals.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
Howard's friend was a doctor of internal medicine, which he was constantly reminding Howard is a much smarter breed of doctor.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
Bill bet Howard $10 that he couldn't get published there. It's one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world, which Howard took as a challenge.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
Human Croc. Homan Kwok. I know. Cringy. An offensive pun on a Chinese name. A white guy playing an Asian for laughs. Keep in mind, this is the 60s. He said he made up the name of Dr. Kwok's research institute, and his title, too. He said the Chinese food wasn't the point of it, except for that they were at a Chinese restaurant, eating and drinking a little too much the night they made the bet.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
And Howard won that bet. Yes, it wasn't an article. It was a letter. But it was printed in the journal. Good enough for them. Here's Michael Blanding, the reporter who interviewed Howard.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
So he was horrified at first. He wasn't happy that he won the bet?
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
So that's Howard's story. And then, this joke of his snowballed. After the letter was published, other doctors wrote in, some of them making jokes about this Chinese restaurant syndrome, but also often recounting their own experiences and symptoms. The New York Times notices 10 letters from doctors, publishes an article.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
Remember, no scientific studies at this point, just letters, some of them jokes. The headline was, Chinese Restaurant Syndrome Puzzles Doctors. The news spread from there, under headlines like Kwok's Queez and Chinese Chow Numbs Some. Here's Jennifer, the professor who traced the history.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
To this day, lots of Chinese restaurants post no MSG signs in their windows and print it on their menus.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
Howard told lots of people this story over the years. He told groups of other doctors. He told Jennifer, who believed him. She alerted the alumni magazine, who recorded those interviews. They pitched the story to us. And we were like, 96-year-old man confesses to writing a prank letter that drove the nation to a decades-long scare about a toxin that's not actually toxic?
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
He's dead, but you have recordings? We're in. But as we and Michael the reporter started looking into this more carefully, there were a few things that were puzzling. For one, the name of the research institute Howard said he invented, the National Biomedical Research Foundation, Michael discovered it was a real place. And the real Dr. Kwok had worked there.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
Kind of a coincidence if Howard made up the name like he said he did. It also seemed weird if the journal published a fake letter with Dr. Kwok's name and institution on it, and it was quoted in over a hundred newspapers, naming him and the letter.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
It seemed weird that the real Dr. Kwok never set the record straight, never published a letter complaining in the New England Journal of Medicine or in any of those newspapers. Also, Howard said he tried to get the journal to retract it, that he called and the editor wouldn't take his calls. We reached out to the New England Journal of Medicine. They declined to comment.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
But it seems strange just on the face of it. Howard became a highly acclaimed surgeon. He invented important medical procedures. It seems like for sure he could have gotten the attention of someone at the journal. It's hard to verify what really happened because everyone involved in this is dead. Howard is dead. The friend he made the bet with is dead. The real Dr. Kwok is dead.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
But Dr. Kwok has kids. We called them and talked to his family. We also spoke to one of his colleagues at the Research Foundation and the son of his boss there. They all said yes, Dr. Robert Holman Kwok did write the letter. His daughter said he was proud of it, that he was a concerned doctor and a curious scientist who'd often pose questions like this. It wasn't a joke at all.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
The thought that Howard was going around telling this story for years, it creeped her out a little. And when you read the original letter, there are details that seem more likely to come from her father than from Howard. Like when he says he moved to the U.S., which the real Dr. Kwok did. And how he's very specific that the syndrome happens with northern Chinese food.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
In the 60s, how many white guys in Philadelphia would have made that distinction? Also, Ho Mon Kwok is an actual Cantonese name. What are the odds that Howard Steele threw together random Chinese-sounding syllables to arrive at that? I called up Jennifer, the professor that Howard Steele had left the voicemail for. I finally reached the Kwok family.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
And they told me something. They say that their father did write the letter.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
Me neither. I just, like, I cannot believe that Dr. Steele made this up.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
Someone has been telling a story that's not true for 50 years. One of these two men, both of whom were, by all accounts, brilliant, upstanding pillars of their communities. Either Howard was fessing up to something he totally did not do, claiming responsibility for the whole MSG mess, when actually he had nothing to do with it, Or Howard was telling the truth.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
And Dr. Robert Holman Kwok, beloved pediatrician and researcher, had seen this letter to the editor in the journal with his name on it that he didn't write, was delighted with his good fortune and rolled with it for 50 years. I had one person left to call, Howard Steele's daughter, Anna. She grew up hearing this story. I told her everything I just told you.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
But actually, not that big a shock. It took her about two seconds to make sense of all this. She believed the Kwoks, not her father.