Dear Orly,
In this dark time when despair may easily overwhelm even the strongest of humans, here is a couple of stories from the not so remote past, which took place in the science mind you: not in politics or social life, where honesty and objectivity is not even expected. (The full article ishere).
Alex
Dr. Phillip Ignaz Semmelweis (1818-1865) was a Hungarian physician who was appointed as chief resident of the First Obstetrics Clinic of the Vienna General Hospital in 1846. At the time an alarming number of women giving birth ended up dying from what was called “puerperal fever.” Strangely enough, the mortality rates were significantly lower among women who gave birth outside of the hospital. This was one of the clues that eventually led Semmelweis to discover the cure for the disease. He wrote that the number of women dying in his clinic “made life so miserable that life seemed worthless.” What turned out to be the “cure”for puerperal fever is absolutely shocking and mind boggling to those unfamiliar with the story.
Semmelweis discovered that the occurrence of the disease could be effectively reduced to zero if Doctors would simply wash their hands with a chlorine/lime solution when they went from dissecting cadavers to delivering babies. Remember, this was well before Louis Pasteur and the development of germ theory. These findings ran against the conventional scientific wisdom that diseases spread in the form of “bad air,” also known as miasmas. His ground breaking idea that cleanliness was crucial in preventing the spread of disease ran contrary to established medical/scientific understanding.
One would have thought that the results themselves – the startling reduction in the mortality rate when his protocols were followed – would have taken the medical profession by storm. What Semmelweis could not have foreseen and what he did not count on was the arrogance and stubbornness of the medical/scientific community when faced with a paradigm shift. Not only were his findings rejected but he was ridiculed and ostracized by the members of his own profession. According to the Wikipedia entry, “some doctors were offended by the suggestion that they should wash their hands, feeling their social status as gentlemen was inconsistent with the idea that their hands could be unclean…Semmelweis was outraged by the indifference of the medical profession and began writing open and increasingly angry letters to prominent European obstetricians, at times denouncing them as irresponsible murderers.” He eventually was dismissed from his position and tragically died in an insane asylum. He was not fully vindicated until well after his death. This story should be an object lesson for those who find themselves enthralled with Scientists.

For those who would respond that in modern times such a thing could never happen, I remind you of the case of Dr. Warren, who was mentioned above. In a TIME interview in 2005 he recalled the scorn that was heaped on him for daring to challenge the conventional scientific wisdom by suggesting that bacteria caused peptic ulcers; “it was pretty savage.” He was even denied access to tissue samples with which to conduct his research.
Professor Dan Shechtman, of the Technion Institute in Israel, was also ridiculed by the entire scientific community for his discoveries regarding the nature of quasicrystals which ran contrary to the“accepted” scientific paradigms. In his own words: “For a long time it was me against world. I was a subject of ridicule…the leader of the opposition…was the two-time Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling, one of the most famous scientists in the world…for years, until his last day, he fought against  quasi-periodicity in crystals.” Pauling once said, “There is no such thing as quasicrystals, only quasi-scientists.” At one point the head of Shechtman’s research group told him to “go back and read the textbook” and asked him to leave for “bringing disgrace” on the team. In 2011, Shechtman was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his research.  Even today, the medical/scientific community suppresses the knowledge of serious medical risks associated with abortions – among them, significantly increased risks of breast cancer and miscarriages in future pregnancies – for purely political reasons. So much for the unquestioned objectivity and integrity of Scientists.