The Pathology of Science

Abstract

Some of the material in this chapter has been excerpted (with permission of the executors of his estate) from the brilliant and no-doubt classic series “Lectures on the Pathology of Science,” presented seven years ago at the Harvard Outpatient Clinic by the late Professor Murchison C. Krumwalter, Distinguished Professor of Tropical Public Health. In his lectures, Professor Krumwalter drew analogies between the abnormal in science and his experiences in the practice of medicine. For example, he compared minor controversies in science with the daily office encounters of the general practitioner, and major controversies with genuinely life-threatening illnesses. Later in the series he discussed obvious frauds in science with the same clinical detachment afforded to inhibitants of locked wards of mental hospitals—but with less professional sympathy for the abnormal scientists.

One of the Few Universal Truths in Science: People Fight, Sometimes Dirty; Major and Minor League Controversies; Frauds—the True Pathologies of Science