The Song Behind Today’s Review Title

Today’s review title comes from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ 1989 hit tune I Won’t Back Down. The song went to #1 on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock chart. You can hear the tune and see Tom Petty sing on the official music video on YouTube. The video features George Harrison on guitar, Jeff Lynne on bass and Ringo Starr on drums. Harrison and Lynne did perform on the album, but the drumming was by Phil Jones, who often performed with Petty and the Heartbreakers.

Matt Kaplan has been a science correspondent for The Economist for twenty years. Before that, as he tells us in the Introduction to his new book I Told You So, he studied paleontology. He even participated in fossil digs with the University of California, while pursuing a PhD. But he chose to leave the field and pursue science journalism after he was awarded a Knight Fellowship at MIT in that field and left the PhD unfinished.

As a result, Kaplan is well steeped in science, the scientific method, and writing. This book feels like it was a passion project for him, and in a good way. It feels as if it must be the culmination of all his interests, coalescing onto the page.

The topic here is scientists who had a hard time proving to their colleagues that they are right. Scientists who were “ridiculed, exiled and imprisoned for being right”, as the subtitle explains.

I love books that explain science to the layman, or that trace the history of a specific avenue of scientific discovery. This book is a bit different. It’s a critique of the practice of science by scientists who are all too human.

Like the rest of us they are prone to power trips and office politics. The incentives that guide them don't always favor good science or new discoveries. And as the book lays out, this is a tale as old as science.

Kaplan organizes this book in an unexpected way. Rather than tackling cases one by one in a historical framework, he intertwines the stories. Between his stories he often takes us to the present day. He relates conversations with scientists who feel the same pressures as their forebears. He reveals stories from active scientists who have overcome the same hurdles as scientists in his stories set a hundred or more years in the past.

By structuring the book this way Kaplan emphasizes the continuity of the problem. And it’s a problem that, as some of the stories show, can have a cost in lost human lives.

The scientific method is fact-based, based on trial and error, and based on amassing evidence to support a conclusion - a scientific theory. If later someone else uncovers evidence that disputes your conclusion, as a scientist you are meant to be open to that. Scientists should follow the truth, wherever it leads.

But scientists are also trying to build careers. They are competing for funding for their research. They are looking to build prestige by publishing papers, and having their papers cited by their peers. If their research is contradicted by some young upstart scientist, well then you can't expect them to just accept it. Right?

Alas, when careers and money are at stake sometimes people don't always do what they should do.

Which begs the question of what can be done about it? In his final chapter Kaplan provides his take on that. He describes some things that are currently being tried. Like a good scientist, he also offers a different view from another scientist.

Read it for the interesting stories, and to learn a bit about the challenges of doing science right.

RATING: Four Stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐

OVERALL COMMENTS: Science is hard work, and breakthroughs can meet with resistance. This is a well-researched, thoughtfully done book on the topic by an experienced author of science for the nonexpert. I was hooked by it almost from the start.

WHERE I GOT MY COPY: I received an advance review copy of this book through NetGalley and courtesy of the publisher, St. Martin’s Press. The book is available to the public starting today.