The Undergrowth of Science:Delusion, Self-Deception, and Human Frailty

Walter Gratzer's themes in the stories he relates in this book are collective
delusion and human folly. Science is generally seen as a process bound by rigorous
rules, which its practitioners must not transgress. Deliberate fraud occasionally
intrudes, but it is soon detected, the perpetrators cast out and the course of
discovery barely disturbed. Far more interesting are the outbreaks of self-delusion
that from time to time afflict upright and competent researchers, and then
spreadlike an epidemic or mass-hysteria through a sober and respectable scientific
community. When this happens the rules by which scientists normally govern their
working lives are suddenly suspended. Sometimes these episodes are provoked by
personal vanity, an unwillingness to acknowledge error or evencontemplate the
possibility that a hard-won success is a will o' the wisp; at other times they stem
from loyalty to a respected and trusted guru, or even from patriotic pride; and,
worst of all, they may be a consequence of a political ideology which imposes its
own interpretation on scientists' observations of the natural world. Unreason and
credulity supervene, illusory phenomena are described and measured, and theories are
developed to explain them - until suddenly, often for no singlereason, the bubble
bursts, leaving behind it a residue of acrimony, recrimination, embarrassment, and
ruined reputations.Here, then, are radiations, measured with high precision yet
existing only in the minds of those who observed them; the Russian water, which some
thought might congeal the oceans; phantom diseases that called for heroic surgery;
monkey testis implants that restored the sexual powers of ageing roues and of tired
sheep; truths about genetics and about the nature of matter, perceptible only to
Aryan scientists in the Third Reich or Marxist ideologues in the Soviet Union; and
much more. TheUndergrowth of Science explores, in terms accessible to the lay
reader, the history of such episodes, up to our own time, in all their absurdity,
tragedy, and pathos.