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What happens when scientists are right and nobody wants to hear it? Neil deGrasse Tyson, Chuck Nice, and Gary O’Reilly explore the frustrating history of brilliant minds who were ignored, mocked, and punished for telling the truth with Matt Kaplan, science correspondent at The Economist and author of Told You So: Scientists Who Were Ridiculed for Being Right.
They start in the 1600s, with Galileo and the Church that insisted Earth was the center of the universe and trace how scientific rigor slowly, painfully emerged from institutions that weren’t always ready for it. Learn about Pierre Charles Alexandre Louis who dared to question whether leeches were actually helping patients, published data that showed they weren’t. Was the leech lobby too powerful? Discover Ignaz Semmelweis, the Hungarian doctor who figured out that doctors themselves were spreading childbed fever only to be fired, exiled, and committed to an asylum.
Not every scientist was a martyr, though. Louis Pasteur knew how to work a room, command the spotlight, and stay on the right side of politics. The contrast between Semmelweis and Pasteur raises an uncomfortable question: should scientific genius require a publicist?
The episode closes with Katalin Karikó, the mRNA pioneer who was stripped of funding, threatened with deportation, and dismissed by academia all before her work became the backbone of the COVID-19 vaccine and earned her a Nobel Prize. Matt and Neil reflect on what her story, and all these stories, reveal about science’s necessary conservatism, the dangers of anti-science sentiment, and why getting better at communicating how science actually works has never mattered more.
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Timestamps:
00:00 – Introduction: Matt Kaplan
03:12 – Science and Religious Institutions
07:18 – Holding Onto Leeches
11:51 – Deadly Childbed Fever
18:22 – The Simple Cure No One Thought of
24:44 – Louis Pasteur’s Path to Vaccines
32:39 – Why Did People Think the Stars Influenced Health?
35:41 – Galileo & Science Diplomacy
41:20 – From Fired to the Nobel Prize
46:21 – Skepticism in Science
52:38 – Democratizing Science Funding
58:32 – Resolving Anti-Science & The Conservatism of Science
01:07:05 – Our Evolving Science Climate
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Science meets pop culture on StarTalk! Astrophysicist & Hayden Planetarium director Neil deGrasse Tyson, his comic co-hosts, guest celebrities & scientists discuss astronomy, physics, and everything else about life in the universe. Keep Looking Up!
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