Product Description

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 to read the present back into the past. But in many cases, scientists owe their immortality to a combination of astonishing effrontery and their skills as self-promoters.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #60099 in Books
• Published on: 2004-03-25
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 308 pages

About the Author
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.

Customer Reviews

Truth and Fable
“Fabulous Science” changes our assumptions not only about the supposedly revolutionary discoveries of the past but also about its great controversies.
Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity, for example, was “proven” by Arthur Eddington in 1919 on evidence too shaky to convict a horse thief. Dr. Joseph Lister, the nineteenth century advocate of hygiene, lost patients in surgery because he was unaware of the importance of cleanliness in his wards. Charles Darwin followed Jean-Baptiste Lamarck in believing in the inheritance of acquired characteristic more than in simple survival of the fittest, while Gregor Mendel had no concept of “Mendelian” genetics.
The surprise is that the heroes whom John Waller depicts with such brutal realism become more admirable by being more human.
As for the controversies of the past, we find, for example, that the grand debate between theology and science owes more to the dramatisation of later historians than to any serious division among those involved.
Waller has the rare gift of being able to wear his learning lightly while imparting it easily. If the history of science has been wrapped in fable, the reality is no less wonderful than the mythologies that were created. For the scientist and the historian, this book is essential reading.

Revelations
This is a scholarly work and the information given is completely credible even though it differs from what most of us have come to believe about the scientists he covers. For each person Waller first gives the accepted story then proceeds to blow it to pieces - but always in a kindly way. We all love a good story and no doubt history is manipulated to make the best of what happened which, in reality, is often mundane.
Anyone who is interested in science should read this book - it will make one look at evidence a bit more critically in future. It is very readable and the enormous amount of work which has gone into it does not detract from the enjoyment.

simply good
There's lots one could say about this book - thoroughly researched, intellectually sound, accessible language, engaging topic...But quite simply, all it comes down to is that it's a thoroughly enjoyable read.