FABULOUS SCIENCE: FACT AND FICTION IN THE HISTORY OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. by John. Waller (PDF)

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User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐This book analyses some of the more dubious aspects of the conduct of famous scientists without disparaging much of what has been achieved. This is not a book that advances the idea that science is essentially rubbish, but rather one that analyses how fame has often been misappropriated and that highly deserving individuals have not achieved the recognition they deserve whilst less scrupulous but more self-serving scientists have advanced their own reputations by dubious means. It puts many of the famous scientists into a more human category and removes them from the heroic pedestals to which they have been inappropriately elevated. For those who like their science carefully analysed for its accuracy as well as the myths that have accumulated around individuals, this is an interesting and entertaining read.

⭐Fascinating backstories on all the “heroes” of science. More interesting than the whitewashed bios usually presented as fact.

⭐My son is has a Masters and is working on his Doctorate and this book humanized some famous scientists for me and made it easier to understand the processes he goes through now to do research. It was also just a good read.

⭐Haven’t finished it, yet, so hard to give you a review.

⭐Waller sets a lot straight. It shows science as a human product. History a dynamical discipline: it needs revision from time to time.

⭐Didn’t receive ?!

⭐The science establishment admits that science is an `industry’ exposed to market pressures: relentless demand for usable output, the need to promote its products and to parry bad publicity, the need to reconcile conflicts of interest between marketable research outcomes and validity of those outcomes (especially acute in the pharmaceutical industry). Today bogus science so widespread that the catchphrase `junk science’ has become a label to nullify the prestige of the `science’ label adeptly used to recruit the credibility of the naïve or the uninformed. Another effect is the nearly universal institution of codes of conduct to for scientists.Waller bypasses this contemporary territory to come at his theme in a series of case studies of historically high profile achievements that have proved to be somewhat inflated, or outright `fabulous’. Among his cases are Louis Pasteur’s disproof of spontaneous generation, Arthur Eddington’s experimental proof of Einstein’s general relativity theory, Joseph Lister’s introduction of surgical antisepsis; Alexander Fleming’s discovery of penicillin, Robert Millikan’s discovery of the electron, and Darwin’s `proof’ of evolution. In each case the author identifies the legend to be corrected and then takes us inside the story of what actually happened. We are shown something of the personalities of the scientists involved and their motivation. The lesson concludes with guesses about why they behaved as they did and how they got away with it. I’ll mention just one of Waller’s cases.It is the famous debate between Bishop Samuel Wilberforce and Thomas Huxley at a session of the 1860 British Association for the Advancement of Science, held in Oxford. According to legend, the encounter occurred before a packed auditorium filled by anticipation of a confrontation between the eloquent Wilberforce, defending the permanence of species, and Huxley, defending evolution. Legend says that Wilberforce displayed his ignorance of Darwin’s theory and was trounced and humiliated by the acerbic Huxley. The legendary debate condenses to an aphorism: Wilberforce taunted Huxley with the question whether he was descended from the ape on his father’s side or his mother’s side, to which Huxley retorted that he would rather be descended from an ape than from an august authority who abused his trust to obfuscate the truth. The devastating reply shifted the audience from partiality to the orthodox view to up-and-coming evolutionism. This had the larger significance that, for the first time, science openly challenged religion and proclaimed the two modes of thought must go separate ways. As Hallam puts it: `The [debate] …was a landmark in the victory of scientific reason over faith and obfuscation. At least that is how Huxley & Co saw it. Were they right? Well, not exactly.’First slippage: three journalists reported the session, but none mentioned the Wilberforce ape ancestry challenge and the Huxley rejoinder. Indeed, Huxley had said in previous conference sessions that he was not ashamed to admit his pithacoid ancestry. Second slippage: the `inextinguishable laughter’ from the audience that Huxley, in correspondence, boasted that his retort produced is not reported by the journalists or others who commented on the event. These sources include Darwin’s supporters Charles Lyell and Joseph Hooker. Third slippage: the session was not billed as a debate between Huxley and Wilberforce, but as a paper on the historical conflict between science and religion by one Dr John Draper, to be followed by open discussion. The audience expected Wilberforce to speak, but not Huxley, who attended the meeting only on a last minute decision. Fourth slippage: According to a statement in correspondence shortly after the event, Huxley’s argument was not particularly effective or audible to the large audience. Wilberforce was indeed put down, but by botanist Joseph Hooker. The source? Joseph Hooker in a letter to Darwin! Fifth slippage: there is no record of what Wilberforce said, but we do have his review of the Origin that appeared shortly after the Oxford meeting. There he shows himself well acquainted with Darwin’s book. Invoking his ecclesiastical office, he expressly defended Darwin’s right to be heard. He accepted the principle of natural selection, but says that it is a well-known principle of species conservation (by eliminating the maladapted). He argued that Darwin simply recycled the opinions of his grandfather, Erasmus Darwin. Sixth slippage: Wilberforce’s comments on the session express satisfaction that he had met the challenge handsomely. Waller’s conclusion: Huxley’s boastful letter, on which the legend is based, was a `face-saving device’ of a man so immobilized by anger that he couldn’t effectively speak. So Huxley was fibbing. In particular, his contention that Wilberforce engaged in deliberate obfuscation is unfounded. Waller concludes that the audience was fairly evenly divided between the two sides, each confident in its opinion. My own investigation of this debate reached the same conclusion, but with one difference: that it occurred at all, under British Association auspices, was a landmark in the transition to public acceptance of evolution. In that sense, the legend communicates a historical truth, but dressed in the mystique of the Darwin cult.Fabulous Science a readable expedition into the exotic world of how science happens. Definitely merits a place on your wish list.

⭐This is not an ‘iconoclast’ history of science. It does not doubt that there is such a thing as scientific progress, i.e. science can and does describe and explain the natural world. It reveals truths about nature that exist independently of our perception and understanding of it.But the book radically revises how science is supposed to progress, challenging the perception that scientists are figures of Olympian detachment, of steely integrity, free of the sorts the sorts of biases and preconceptions that afflict ordinary mortals, transcending the egotism and irrationalities that blind lesser beings to the truth; that scientists work to strict inductive principles and don’t pronounce on truths about nature until all the facts are in.In fact, scientists like Pasteur jumped the gun with his germ theory, before all the evidence was in, and before the alternative theory of ‘spontaneous generation’ had been discredited. In fact, he suppressed awkward data that did not fit his theory. Arthur Eddington manipulated data from his observations of a solar eclipse in 1919 to confirm Einstein’s theory of relativity. This is not to say that germ theory or the theory of relativity is false – it is to say that confirmation for the truths of these theories came because numerous subsequent experiments confirmed them. Pasteur took a gamble and he was vindicated in the course of time – as did Eddington. In such cases, the scientists concerned were hardly the Olympian supermen of the stereotype. Both men, practitioners in fields that were cutting-edge subjects of research at the time, had much to lose, with their professional reputations on the line, and the temptation to distort data before all the facts were in was immense, given the stakes involved. It is not a case of outright dishonesty but an intrinsic limitation to the scientific method itself: truth never springs fully formed from a mass of undifferentiated facts. Theory is needed to make sense of the raw data and it is at this point that the temptation to jump the gun creeps in (one perhaps can bear this observation in mind when it comes to climate science?).Elsewhere, however, some scientists’ reputations have been the product of myth-making as opposed to proper recognition of their achievement. Joseph Lister did not necessarily practise what he preached when it came to clean hospitals. Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin in 1928, felt that the initial results of penicillin’s efficacy were too disappointing to merit further research and development. It took a research team in Oxford to do that, led by Howard Florey, Ernst Chain and Norman Heatley, now all long-forgotten, who toiled throughout the 1930s to bring enable the drug to be mass produced and clinically applied. They of course triumphed but did not reap the credit. Who has heard of them? Their reputations languish in obscurity while Fleming was exalted. The contemporary media built up Fleming’s initial discovery on the back of their triumph and he did nothing to correct the record. Such is life. One also thinks of the Rosalind Franklin who deserves to be counted with Crick and Watson as one of the discoverers of DNA but likewise did not receive the credit she deserved. Her case is not discussed in this book but would surely have merited inclusion.The book shows that we owe a lot to science, even if scientists often do not live up to their own exacting standards. The path of scientific progress is not a straight one; it can in fact progress in spite of the personal shortcomings of scientists and, sometimes, even because of them.

⭐Anybody who believes that scientists are individuals of exceptional veracity should read this book. Many of the greatest names and their supporters are to shown to have a disturbing tendency to sacrifice facts on the alter of a good foundation myth!

⭐amazingly good

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