In his 1988 memoir Moonwalk, Jackson wrote that he had had his nose altered twice and a cleft put in his chin, and he denied other procedures such as cheek or eye work. [1] He told Oprah Winfrey in 1993 that he had had “very, very little”. [3]

The autopsy report, released in 2010, noted scars near the nostrils and behind the ears that are consistent with cosmetic surgery. [2] It did not catalogue a history of operations, and it is not a surgical record.

The strongest version of the skeptics’ case is simple: his face changed far more than two nose jobs would explain. That is a fair observation, and the scars behind the ears suggest more than he described. But the tabloid counts of 30, 50 or more operations come from anonymous sources and have never been backed by medical records. The honest answer is “more than he admitted, but no one has shown how many”.