I Told You So! Scientists Who Were Ridiculed, Exiled, and Imprisoned for Being Right

Science, which in an ideal world would be immune to prejudices, egos, jealousies, and politics, has fallen victim to these forces for hundreds of years, according to this enlightening history from journalist Kaplan (The Science of Monsters). Upstart researchers are often denigrated by the entrenched scientific community, he explains, recounting Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis’s discovery in the 1840s that doctors washing their hands largely eliminated cases of puerperal or childbed fever, a fatal bacterial infection that commonly affected women after childbirth. Despite years of convincing research, Semmelweis’s results were dismissed by the medical community, many of whom were unwilling to accept that they had been the direct cause of so many women’s deaths. Kaplan also relays modern examples, such as the story of biochemist Katalin Karikó, whose research into mRNA was continually rejected and underfunded, but eventually became the basis for the Covid-19 vaccine. Kaplan proposes practical solutions for removing biases, such as implementing a lottery system to allocate research funding, but at the end of the day, he astutely notes, scientists must remember that “we are all here for the sake of humanity.” This is a timely and important call for change. (Feb.)