Fabulous Science Fact and Fiction in the History of Scientific Discovery
| Author/creator | Waller, John Author |
| Format | Electronic |
| Publication Info | New York : Oxford University Press, Incorporated |
| Description | 368 p. ill 23.400 x 015.600 cm. |
| Supplemental Content | Full text available from eBooks on EBSCOhost |
| Supplemental Content | Full text available from Ebook Central - Academic Complete |
| Subjects |
| Summary | Annotation 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 some of the revelations explored in this book. Drawing on currentHistory 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 ofscience 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 arisefrom 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. |
| Access restriction | Available only to authorized users. |
| Technical details | Mode of access: World Wide Web |
| Genre/form | Electronic books. |
| ISBN | 9780192804044 |
| ISBN | 0192804049 (Trade Cloth) Publication Cancelled |
| Standard identifier# | 9780192804044 |
| Stock number | 00020142 |
Availability
| Library | Location | Call Number | Status | Item Actions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Electronic Resources | ✔ Available |