Fabulous Science: Fact and Fiction in the History of Scientific Discovery

Front Cover
Oxford University Press, 2004 - 308 pages
The great biologist Louis Pasteur suppressed 'awkward' data because it didn't support the case he was making. John Snow, the 'first epidemiologist' was doing nothing others had not done before. Gregor Mendel, the supposed 'founder of genetics' never grasped the fundamental principles of 'Mendelian' genetics. Joseph Lister's famously clean hospital wards were actually notorious dirty. And Einstein's general relativity was only 'confirmed' in 1919 because an eminent British scientist cooked his figures. These are just some of the revelations explored in this book. Drawing on current history of science scholarship, Fabulous Science shows that many of our greatest heroes of science were less than honest about their experimental data and not above using friends in high places to help get their ideas accepted. It also reveals that the alleged revolutionaries of the history of science were often nothing of the sort. Prodigiously able they may have been, but the epithet of the 'man before his time' usually obscures vital contributions made their unsung contemporaries and the intrinsic merits of ideas they overturned. These distortions of the historical record mostly arise from our tendency
 

Contents

THE PASTEURIZATION OF SPONTANEOUS GENERATION
15
THE BATTLE OVER THE ELECTRON
33
THE ECLIPSE OF ISAAC NEWTON Arthur Eddingtons proof of general relativity
49
VERY UNSCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT
65
THE HAWTHORNE STUDIES Finding what you are looking for
79
Sins against science?
99
TELLING SCIENCE AS IT WAS
109
MYTH IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA
115
THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES BY MEANS OF USEINHERITANCE
177
A is FOR APE B is FOR BIBLE Science religion and melodrama
205
PAINTING YOURSELF INTO A CORNER Charles Best and the discovery of insulin
223
ALEXANDER FLEMINGS DIRTY DISHES
247
A DECOY OF SATAN
269
Sins against history?
284
NOTES ON SOURCES
296
INDEX
302

THE PRIEST WHO HELD THE KEY Gregor Mendel and the ratios of fact and fiction
133
WAS JOSEPH LISTER MR CLEAN?
161

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About the author (2004)

John C. Waller was born in England in 1972. He gained a 'double first' in Modern History at the University of Oxford and went on to take Masters degrees in Human Biology and the History of Science and Medicine. He completed his Ph.D. in the History and Philosophy of Science at University College London in 2001. He is now a Lecturer in the History of Medicine at the University of Melbourne, Australia.

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