The New Zealand Herald is bringing back some of the best stories of 2020 from our premium syndicators, including The New York Times, Financial Times and The Times of London.

Today we look at the man responsible for worldwide panic over vaccinations, the star of New York real estate who was living a lie, Jerry Seinfeld on surviving quarantine, the keto diet and celebrity journalist Ronan Farrow.

Brian Deer on how he exposed Andrew Wakefield

Seldom has any new book been more timely this year than The Doctor Who Fooled the World. As its author says: "To understand where we are now with Covid, you need to know the past — to see how that anti-vaccine movement developed. If we don't learn from the past, and understand who the anti-vaxxers are and where they've come from, then we're not well placed to evaluate their messages. This is how we got here: through this man and what he did."

"This man" is Andrew Wakefield, the disgraced British doctor who fabricated evidence, published in The Lancet in 1998, to make a link between the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine and autism in young children, triggering a worldwide panic about the safety of vaccination.

Decca Aitkenhead of The Times speaks to the journalist who discovered the truth about the disgraced doctor.

Wakfield falsified medical records and doctored parents' accounts of symptoms to conceal the fact that some had displayed symptoms of autism long before receiving the MMR jab. Photo / 123RF

She was a star of New York real estate. Her life story was a lie

Wrapped in furs, dripping with diamonds and with her blonde hair perfectly coiffed, Faith Hope Consolo cut a glamorous figure in the flashy, late 20th-century world of New York City real estate.

Consolo was born into the business, benefiting from her father's legacy as a real estate executive and emboldened professionally by her mother, a child psychiatrist.

In late 2018, Consolo died unexpectedly of a heart attack at age 73. As someone who had covered her for years, I wrote her obituary, which included some details confirming her place in this rarefied world.

But those details, I soon discovered, were lies.

Julie Satow of The New York Times looks at how Consolo had the entire press fooled for years.

Faith Consolo played a major part in revitalising Midtown East as a hub for luxury shopping. Photo / AP

Jerry Seinfeld is making peace with nothing: I'm 'post-show business'

Many of us were wondering this year what Jerry Seinfeld, the sitcom character, was doing in the era of home quarantines and social distancing: how his extreme fastidiousness, self-centredness and constant scrutiny of quotidian details (not to mention the hyperbolic traits of his fictional friends and neighbours) would be stretched to hilarious extremes in an environment of isolation and anxiety.

However, the real Jerry Seinfeld — the one who gave up the sitcom long ago to focus on an occasional talk show and a peerless stand-up career — is not the same guy.

In a wide-ranging interview from his home quarantine, the comedian told The New York Times why his Netflix special released this year may be his last.

Jerry Seinfeld, photographed via FaceTime, by Daniel Arnold in the photographer's home. Photo / Daniel Arnold, New York Times

What is the keto diet and does it work?

A recent survey of registered dieticians named the low-carbohydrate keto diet yet again as the most popular diet in the United States. Powering this diet is fat, and loads of it — all the way up to a hefty 90 per cent of one's daily calories.

Its fans (and marketers) feed social media with before and after photos, crediting the diet for life-altering weight loss or other effects. They swirl butter into their coffee, load up on cheese, and eat lonely burgers without its bestie, the bun. Staples like whole grains, legumes, fruit and starchy vegetables are being largely pushed off the plate as devotees strive for ketosis — when the body begins to burn fat instead of glucose as its primary energy source.

The diet is hailed for dropping pounds, but for how long?

The ketogenic diet calls for 90 per cent of daily calories to come from fat. Photo / 12RF

Is Ronan Farrow too good to be true?

Ronan Farrow may now be the most famous investigative reporter in America, a rare celebrity-journalist who followed the opposite path of most in the profession: He began as a boy-wonder talk show host and worked his way downward to the coal face of hard investigative reporting.

The child of actress Mia Farrow and director Woody Allen, he has delivered stories of stunning and lasting impact, especially his revelations about powerful men who preyed on young women in the worlds of Hollywood, television and politics, which won him a Pulitzer Prize.

He has delivered revelatory reporting on some of the defining stories of our time.

But a close examination by Ben Smith of The New York Times reveals the weaknesses in what may be called an era of resistance journalism.

Ronan Farrow may now be the most famous investigative reporter in America. Photo / Getty Images