Mark Smyth was one of Australia’s very top cancer scientists. Or, as one former colleague puts it, “the god of immunology."

But Smyth was a god who fell to earth and doubt now surrounds his work after a public unravelling.

Today, The Age and Sydney Morning Herald's national science reporter Liam Mannix on Smyth’s so-called “lab of secrets”, and his faked data, which now underpins a cancer drug being given to patients.