Stories about Mistakes and Ordinary Folly in Official Science

"The inertia of the human mind and its resistance to innovation are most clearly demonstrated not, as one might expect, by the ignorant mass- which is easily swayed once its imagination is caught- but by professionals with a vested interest in tradition and in the monopoly of learning. Innovation is a twofold threat to academic mediocrities: it endangers their oracular authority, and it evokes the deeper fear that their whole, laboriously constructed intellectual edifice might collapse. The academic backwoodsmen have been the curse of genius from Aristarchus to Darwin and Freud; they stretch, a solid and hostile phalanx of pedantic mediocrities, across the centuries."

Arthur Koestler- 'The Nightwalkers'

The history of Western scientific thought and the long walk of scientific research have been drawn by great "heretics", whose theories only later were revealed as true. Those people who once were judged folly for their thesises, are those who later have changed the world, as yesterday, so today. For every great innovation, which changed afterwards our lives on this planet, it was the same. Once they were tortured, burned, or, in the best hypothesis they were excommunicated. Today, much simplier, they are not doing career, they loose their work place and chairs or the Nobel Prize nomination. But, also today there's someone who has the courage to go countercurrent.

Most probably, not all people are aware that official science and prejudice, during the centuries, concurred together forming an awful couple. "Every scientific conception starts as heresy" pointed out aright A. Huxley. However, there's a minority of human beings able to absolve their own minds from dogmatism and to go countercurrent yet to prosecute their ideas. Those persons are solitary lights illuminating the darknesses of prejudice, souls who were called heretics, while today we would rather define them eccentrics, outsiders or nonconformists. For centuries and centuries this minority fought with courage and determination against the inviolability of official science. But, being a minority does not necessary mean to be wrong.

Hereafter, you will find many examples of scientists that have been active in different fields of research, being part of our history, who were outraged, ridiculed, persecuted, boycotted and opposed by the official science of their times, the same which nowadays is honored to have had them in its ranks, clueless about the mistakes committed and maybe perpetuates in present times the same mistakes on some other man or women being part of it, often blind, but always overconfident to be the "Bringer of Truth".

"If we should count on scientist's impartiality, science, even naturalistic science, would be at all impossible"

Karl Popper - 'The Poverty of Historicism'

Aristarchus of Samos

(310-230 B.C.) Aristarchus was a Greek mathematician and astronomer who is celebrated as the exponent of a Sun-centered universe and for his pioneering attempt to determine the sizes and distances of the Sun and Moon. His theory sounded immediately as heretic. His theory wasn't disproved by scientific proves, but burked by theological argumentations. The same happened many centuries later to Galileo Galilei. Aristarchus were accused for having disturbed the goddess Estia, who resided in Earth's center and so having committed a crime against religion.

Andreas Vesalius

(1514-1564) Vesalius was a Flemish born anatomist whose dissections of the human body helped to correct misconceptions dating from ancient times. Andreas Vesalius was born December 31st, 1524 in Brussels, Belgium, then part of Holy Roman Empire. He came from a family of physicians and both his father and grandfather had served the Holy Roman Emperor. Vesalius studied medicine in Paris but was forced to leave before completing his degree when the Holy Roman Empire declared war on France. He then studied at the university of Louvain, and then moved to Padua to study his doctorate. Upon completion in 1537 he was immediately offered the Chair of Surgery and Anatomy. Surgery and Anatomy were then considered of importance in comparison to the other branches of medicine. However, Vesalius believed that surgery had to be grounded in anatomy. Unusually, he always performed dissections himself and produced anatomical charts of the blood and nervous system as a reference aid for his students. which were widely copied. In 1539 his supply of dissections material increased when a Paduan judge became interested in Vesalius' work, and made bodies of executed criminals available to him. Vesalius was now able make repeated and comparative dissections of humans. This was in marked contrast to Galen, the standard authority on anatomy who, for religious reasons, had been restricted to animals, mainly apes. Vesalius realized that Galen's and his own observations differed, and that humans do not share the same anatomy of apes. His book "The Fabric of the Human Body" published in 1543 was a comprehensive study of the human body. It contained anatomical drawings of all parts of the body and offered many new conclusions as to the way of treating disease. The book showed how muscle is built up in layers, highlighted errors in previous theories of anatomy and made, for the first time, good use of drawings to support the argument eing presented. Vesalius was anxious to ensure the accuracy of his book and personally oversaw the production of the plates that were used for his illustrations. The book was a major break through in medical history for a number of reasons. It developed the use of technical drawings and disproved theories that had been in place in Europe for many hundred years. Despite the clarity of his work, argument and presentation however, many people chose to dispute this theories at the time convinced that the works of Galen were correct.

Ambroise Paré

(1510-1590) A surgeon called "little seamstress"

Paré was born in 1510. Life around him was an unending series of small wars. Those wars were being waged with a new weapon: firearms. Shot and shrapnel had come of age, and they were making war more terrible than ever. Parè trained in Paris as a barber-surgeon. He worked in that dirty, brutal trade while it dealt with new kinds of wounds. Surgeons worked for physicians, and physicians thought gunpowder was poisonous, that gunshot wounds had to be cautherized with boiling oil. So soldiers, already horribly damaged, were then scalded with boiling oil. The siege of Turin in 1537 found a very young Paré facing too much carnage. His cauterizing oil run out, and as a stopgap he tried a cold mix of egg yolks, oil of roses, and turpetine. He accidently created two test groups. As the soldiers healed, the ones who weren't scalded recovered far more quickly. It was a moment of revelation for Paré. It suddenly hit him that the center of his job as a barber-surgeon was to ease suffering, a point normally overlooked in his work. Never mind the Latin-based medical orthodoxy of the physicians. A patient in pain could teach him what arcane theories could not. And Parè was a gifted observer. From that day on, he created a new and human concept of medicine and surgery. He wrote simply and directly about what he saw in French, not in Latin. His clear headed technics won him acceptance into medical circles. He was given the beachead he needed to make his ideas part of normal medicine. Because of his habitude to sew wounds he was ridiculed for a long period of time and mocked by other colleagues by calling him "little seamstress".

Galileo Galilei

(1564-1642) Galileo Galilei was an Italian scientist who formulated the basic law of falling bodies, which he verified by careful measurements. He constructed a telescope with which he studied lunar craters, and discovered four moons revolving around Jupiter and espoused the Copernican cause. Born in Pisa on February 15th, 1564, Galileo was the son of Vincenzo Galilei (1520-1591), a music scholar, and Giulia Ammannati (1538-1620). He studied at the University of Pisa, where he held the mathematics chair from 1589 to 1592. He was then appointed to the chair of mathematics at the University of Padua, where he remained until 1610. In the Padua years, he conducted studies and experiments in mechanics, built the thermoscope, and invented and built the geometric and military compass. In 1594, he patented a water-lifting machine. In 1609, he developed the telescope, with which he performed the observations that led him to the discovery of Jupiter's moons. In 1610, he was appointed mathematician and philosopher to the Grand Duke of Tuscany. He studied the peculiar appearances of Saturn and observed the phases of Venus. In 1611, he went to Rome, where he joined the Accademia dei Lincei and observed sunspots. In 1612, opposition arose to the Copernican theories, which Galileo supported. In 1614, from the pulpit of Santa Maria Novella, father Tommasso Caccini (1564-1648) denounced Galileo's opinions on the motion of the Earth, judging them dangerous and close to heresy. Galileo went to Rome to defend himself against these accusations. However, in 1616, Cardinal Roberto Bellarmino (1542-1621) personally handed Galileo an admonition enjoining him to neither advocate nor teach Copernican astronomy, because it was contrary to the accepted understanding of the Holy Scriptures. In 1622, Galileo wrote the 'Saggiatore' (The Assayer), which was approved and published in 1623. In 1624, he developed the first known example of the microscope. In 1630, he returned to Rome to apply for a license to print the 'Dialogo dei Massimi Sistemi' (Dialogue on the Great World Systems), published in Florence in 1632. But in October of that year, he was ordered to appear before the Holy Office in Rome. The court issued a sentence of condemnation and forced Galileo to abjure. He was confined in Siena and eventually, in December 1633, he was allowed to retire to his villa in Arcetri. In 1634, he was deprived of the support of his beloved daughter, Sister Maria Celeste (1600-1634), who died prematurely. In 1638, when he was almost totally blind, the 'Discorsi e dimostrazioni intorno a due nuove Scienze' (Discourses and demonstrations on two new Sciences) was published in Leiden. Galileo died in Arcetri on January 8th, 1642.

William Harvey

(1578-1657) William Harvey was born in England in 1578. After earning a degree at Cambridge University at age of twenty, he journeyed to Italy to study medicine at the University of Padua. Padua was the center for Western European medical instruction at that time. Harvey graduated with honors in 1602 and returned to England where he earned yet another medical degree from Cambridge University. He then settled down to begin practicing medicine. Harvey was fascinated by the way blood flood through the human body. Most people of the day believed that food was converted into blood by the liver, then was consumed as fuel by the body. Harvey knew this was untrue through his firsthand observations of human and animal dissections. In 1628 Harvey published 'An Anatomical Study of the Motion of the Heart and of the Blood in Animals' which explained how blood was pumped from the heart throughout the body, then returned to the heart and recirculated. The views this book expressed were very controversial and lost Harvey many patients, but it became the basis for all modern research on the heart and blood vessels. His dicovery of blood circulation caused the scientific community of the time to ostracize him: "affirming that blood circulates... is horrible!", worser..." it's insulting to nature!", "don't pay attention to him... he's a fool!". Only at the end of his life somebody started to take more seriously his scientific lifework.

Samuel C.F. Hahnemann

Founder of Homeopathy

"For several centuries, a whole range of causes, which I could not begin to enumerate, have led to the downgrading of that divine science, clinical medicine, to the level of wretched, money-grubbing exercise in the whitewashing of symptoms and a demeaning traffic in prescriptions, in fact, God forgive us, to a more mechanical trade in which Hippocrates is lost to sight amidst a rabble of charlatans."

(1755-1843) Samuel Hahnemann was a German physician who earned his Doctor of Medicine degree in 1779. At the time of his graduation, scientific advances were beginning to be seen in the fields of chemistry, physics, physiology and anatomy. The clinical practice of medicine, however, was rife with superstition and lack of scientific rigor. The treatments of the day, such as purgatives, bleeding, blistering plasters, herbal preparations and emetics lacked a rational basis and were more harmful then effective. Hahnemann recognized this and wrote critically of current practices in several papers on topics such as Arsenic poisoning, hygiene, dietetics and psychiatric treatment. Homeopathic had a large impact on the practice of medicine. The first homeopathic hospital opened in 1832 and homeopathic medical schools opened all over Europe. Homeopathic hospitals and practitioners often had better outcomes compared to their allopathic counterparts. These improved outcomes were undoubtedly due to harmful nature of allopathic remedies of the time compared to the non-toxic nature of homeopathic remedies. Thus the general public to tout the benefits of homeopathy and demand better treatment from all physician. He observed that a medicine administered to a healthy person produced similar symptoms to those of the illness it was intended to cure, and developed his law of 'similars', around which he built his system of homeopathy. His methods caused him to be persecuted and ferociously opposed by the official medical establishment wherever he tried to settle.

Robert Hook

Hook Microscope

(1635-1703) No portrait survives of Robert Hook. His name is somewhat obscure today, due in part to the enmity of his famous, influential, and extremely vindictive colleague, Sir Isaac Newton. Yet Hook was perhaps the single greatest experimental scientist of the seventeenth century. His interest knew no bounds, ranging from physics and astronomy, to chemistry, biology, and geology, to architecture and naval technology; he collaborated or corresponded with scientists as diverse as Christian Huygens, Antony Van Leeuwenhoek, Christopher Wren, Robert Boyle, and Isaac Newton. Among other accomplishments, he invented the universal joint, the iris diaphragm, and an early prototype of the respirator; invented the anchor escapement and the balance spring, which made more accurate clocks possible; served as Chief Surveyor and helped rebuild London after the Great Fire in 1666; worked out the correct theory of combustion; devised an equation describing elasticity that is still used today ("Hooke's Law); assisted Robert Boyle in studying the physics of gases; invented or improved meteorological instruments such as the barometer, anemometer, and hygrometer; and so on. He was the type of scientist that was then called a virtuoso -- able to contribute findings of major importance in any field of science. It is not surprising that he made important contributions to biology and to paleontology.

Charles Darwin

(1809-1882) Darwin was born in Shrewsbury on February 12th, 1809. In 1827 he started theology studies at Christ's College, Cambridge. His love to collect plants, insects, and geological specimens was noted by his botany professor John Steven Henslow. He arranged for his talented student a place on the surveying expedition of HMS Beagle to Patagonia. Despite the objections of his father, Darwin decided to leave his familiar surroundings. The voyage took five years from 1831 to 1836. Darwin returned with observations he had made in Teneriffe, the Cape Verde Islands, Brazil, the Galapagos Islands, and elsewhere. During the voyage he had contracted a tropical illness, which made him a semi-invalid for the rest of his life. By 1846 Darwin had published several works based on the discoveries of the voyage and he became secretary of the Geological Society (1838-1841). From 1842 Darwin lived at Down House, Downe. In 1839 he had married his cousin Emma Wedgwood, and when not devoting himself to scientific studies, he led the life of a country gentleman. In the 1840's Darwin worked on his observations of the origins of the species for his own use. He began to conclude, although he was deeply anxious about the direction his mind was taking, that species might share a common ancestor. Darwin's great work, 'The Origins of Species by Means of Natural Selection', was heavily attacked because it did not support the depiction of creation given in the book of Genesis. Darwin's argument that natural selection (the mechanism of evolution) worked automatically, leaving little or no room for divine guidance or design. All species, he reasoned, produce far too many offspring for them all to survive, and therefore those with favorable variations - owing to chance - are selected. At Darwin's hands evolution matured into a well-developed scientific theory, which have been a constant target of religious and or pseudo-scientific attacks. However, Darwin himself did not at first explicitly apply the evolutionary theory to human beings. He knew that his challenge to the Biblical doctrine would cause stress to his friends and family, among them his religious wife. Today although there's disagreement and uncertainty about some of the details of earth history and of Darwinian theory, there is also a very broad agreement on the overall theory. And like all good scientific theories, the theory of evolution by natural selection points the way to fruitful new areas of research on the living world of the past, the present and future.

I.P. Semmelweis

(1818-1865) Every women who has given a birth in the last century owes a huge debt of gratitude to a doctor born in 1818 in Budapest, Hungary and who died insane because the scientific world refused to accept his simple solution to a medical problem that was killing thousands of women every year. Ignaz Phillip Semmelweis was born on the 1st of July, 1818, and received his MD in 1844 in Vienna, where he was appointed to be an assistant at the Maternity Hospital. The hospital primarily served poor women or women in extreme circumstances, such as illegitimate births. Very soon, Semmelweis became distressed at the number of patients who died from puerperal infection, commonly known as childbed fever. Healthy women would come into the clinic, deliver their babies and, within few days, be dead from childbed fever. Women who were able to give birth at home rarely died of childbed fever, while the disease was rampant in maternity hospitals all across Europe. The situation was so desperate that women would beg to give birth in the streets and be admitted to the hospital after the delivery. For some unknown reason, admission after the birth led to fewer deaths. Women who were forced to enter the hospital before delivery lived in state of fear, terrified that they would not leave alive. Most doctors considered childbed fever unpreventable, but Semmelweis's tender heart was touched by the screams and moans of the dying women, and he decided to put all his energies into finding the cause and cure of childbed fever. He spent hundreds of hours autopsying the bodies of dead patients. After several months, he noticed that the dead rate in Ward One, where doctors and medical students were in charge, was around 29%, while the dead rate in Ward Two, where midwives were in charge, was only 3% (Roy Porter, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind; New York: W.W. Norton & Co., p 369). As an experiment, the midwives and doctors changed wards for awhile, and the same death rates followed each group. The final clue came when a colleague of Semmelweis, Doctor Jacob Kolletschka, received a cut during the autopsy of a women who had died of childbed fever. The cut became infected, and Doctor Koletschka died infected in 1847 of puerperal infection. Semmelweis realized that something from the dead women had infected his friend, and therefore something the medical students carried on their hands from one patient to another was causing the childbed fever. Doctors were carrying something from sick patients and dead bodies to healthy patients; men who were dedicated to healing were transmitting the disease themselves. To Semmelweis, the solution became obvious. In May 1847, he ordered all doctors, students and midwives in the hospital to wash their hands thoroughly in chlorinated water before every examination or delivery. At the time, doctors usually washed their hands briefly after a delivery, but after an autopsy or examination of a pregnant women, they would just wipe their hands off with a towel and go on the next patient. When Semmelweis ordered the student doctors to wash their hands, many of them became outraged. He had the authority, however, and under his new rule, the death rate from childbed fever dropped to below 1%. Some of the younger doctors realized that Semmelweis was right about handwashing, but the more established doctors disparaged his findings. Many deliberately disobeyed the order to wash their hands, calling it "undignified". Year after year Semmelweis provided clear proof that hand washing saved lives, and year after year he was ridiculed and criticized in scientific journals, and by leading obstetricians in Europe. He was eventually fired from his job at the hospital because of his insistence on hand washing, against the orders of his superior. In 1861, Semmelweis, published his principal work, 'The Cause, Concept and Prophylaxis of Childbed Fever', in which he carefully explained, with years of data to prove his theory, how handwashing by doctors would save thousands of lives every year. He sent copies of his book to all prominent obstetricians and medical societies he knew, but the general reaction was hostile.

"The weight of authority stood against his teachings". (Imre Zoltan, 'Semmelweis, Ignaz Phillip, Encyclopedia Britannica', 1981 e.d.)

Prominent scientists and physicians, many of whom had published their own books on childbed fever, actively ridiculed his ideas. Any doctor who supported Semmelweis's idea was in danger of losing his own job. After years of attempting to persuade other physicians to follow his ideas, and knowing that thousand of women were dying needlessly every year, the strain proved too much for Semmelweis. He was admitted to a mental hospital in Vienna in August1865, after suffering a mental breakdown, and died on August 13th, 1865, of puerperal infection, from an infected cut on his right hand. The same disease he had fought all his life finally killed him. Semmelweis died feeling defeated by the very same medical establishment which had taken the Hippocratic oath, vowing:

"The regimen I adopt shall be for the benefit of my patients... and not for their hurt..."

The people who were supposed to be dedicated to saving lives were instead more committed to preserving their own entrenched academic and political interest. Because doctors and scientists ignored the clear evidence presented to them, hundreds of thousand of women died needlessly. It took many years for doctors to become convinced of the necessity for cleanliness. Today, Semmelweis is hailed as a hero, the "Savior of Mothers". But we must never forget how long and hard he had to fight for his ideas, because they were not part of the "accepted" science of his day.

Julius Robert Mayer

(1814-1818) Julius Robert Mayer was a scientist who made great contributions to the area of physics, but the credit was given to another. Mayer was born on November 25th, 1814 in Heilbronn, Wuerttemberg, Germany. Even as a young child, Mayer showed an intense interest with various mechanical mechanisms. He was a young man who performed various experiments of the physical and chemical variety. In fact, one of his favorite hobbies was creating various types of electrical devices and air pumps. It was very obvious that he was indeed very gifted. Hence, Mayer attended Eberhard-Karls University in May of 1832. He studied medicine during his time there. In 1837, he and some of his friends were arrested for wearing the colors of a forbidden organization. The consequences for this arrest included a one year expulsion from the college and a brief period of incarceration. This diversion sent Mayer travelling to Switzerland, France, and the Dutch East Indies. Mayer drew some additional interest in mathematics and engineering from his friend Carl Baur through private tutoring, In 1841, Mayer returned to Heilbronn to practice medicine, but physics became his new passion. In June of 1841, he completed his first scientific paper entitled 'On the Quantitative and Qualitative Determination of Forces'. It was largely ignored by other professionals in the area. Then, Mayer became interested in the area of heat and its motion. He presented a value in numerical terms for the mechanical equivalent of heat. He also was the first person to describe the vital chemical process now referred to as oxidation as the primary source of energy for any living creature. Since he was not taken seriously at the time, his achievements were overlooked and his well-deserved credit was given to James Joule. Mayer almost committed suicide after he discovered this fact. He spent some time in mental institutions to recover from this and the loss of some of his children. Several of his papers were published due to the advanced nature of the physics and chemistry. He was awarded an honorary doctorate in 1859 by the philosophical faculty at the University of Tuebingen. His overlooked work was revived in 1862 by fellow physicist John Tyndall in a lecture at the London Royal Institution. In July of 1867, Mayer published 'Die Mechnik der Waerme'. This publication dealt with the mechanics of heat and its motion. In November of 1867, Mayer was awarded personal nobility (von Mayer) which is the German equivalent of a British knighthood. Julius Robert von Mayer died from tuberculosis on March 20th, 1878 in Germany. Mayer was the first person to develop the law of the conservation of energy. This is one of the most significant achievements in the history of physics because this fundamental yet necessary concept forms the backbone of modern day physics. The law of the conservation of energy basically states that it is a requirement that the total mechanical energy of a system remain constant in any isolated system of objects that interact with each other only by way of forces that are conservative. Again, Mayer did not envision relativity nor its theories, but his pioneering work helped to lay the foundation of modern physics which aided in the conception and development of relativity. Though Julius Robert von Mayer resides in relative obscurity in the area of physics, he helped to make the creation of the theory of relativity a little easier for the physicists who followed him. He also helped to define some of the fundamental principles of physics for future generations.

Louis Pasteur

(1822-1895) Louis Pasteur is the 19th -century biologist and chemist whose work with germs and microorganisms opened up whole new fields of scientific inquiry, aided industries ranging from wine to silk, and made him one of world's most celebrated scientists. Pasteur became a professor of chemistry at the University of Lille in 1854, and soon began studying fermentation in wine and beer. He became convinced that, as he put it in an 1878 paper,

"the germs of microscopic organisms abound in the surface of all objects, in the air and in water."

He determined that such microorganisms could be killed by heating liquid to 55 degrees Celsius (about 130 degrees Fahrenheit) or higher for short periods of time. This simple process became known as pasteurization, a process used today in milk and many other beverages. Pasteur then turned his attention to other aspects of microorganisms. He virtually created the science of immunology, showing that certain disease (like rabies) could be prevented by what he called vaccination: injecting animals with weakened forms of the disease. So great were Pasteur's success that an international fund was raised to create the Louis Pasteur Institute in 1888. Pasteur worked with the institute until his death, and it continues today as a center of microbiology and immunology. Pasteur was hardly attacked by Justus Liebig who declined to believe that microorganisms were implicated in the process of fermentation; while the whole scientific community refused to believe that bacteria were the cause of Zymotic disease.

In history there are many other examples of scientists who became victims of 'human ignorance and egoism', their names are: Antony Van Leeuwenhoek, Gaspare Tagliacozzi, Edward Jenner, Rene Theophile Hyacinthe Laennec, Mathias Jacob Schleiden, Theodor Schwann, Ferdinando Palasciano, Gregor Johann Mendel, Lister Joseph Lister, Carlo Forlanini, Robert Koch, Raymond Dart, and least but  not last, Nikola Tesla.

"Love, work, and knowledge are the wellsprings of our lives,

they should also govern it."

Wilhelm Reich