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A Multitude of Sins Einstein's Luck: The Truth Behind Some of the Greatest Scientific Discoveries. John Waller, xii + 308 pp. Oxford University Press, first published in the U.K. in 2002. $30.
Scientific discovery calls for a difficult balance: Intrepid advocacy of new ideas must often be tempered by the results of self-imposed trials. When should conflicting data be taken as disproof, and when should they be discarded as tainted? In the aftermath of any scientific advance, historical questions remain vexing: Who really discovered what, and how? Addressing these dilemmas should open our eyes to fuller truth. John Waller, a research fellow at the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College London, has assembled a group of cases that give rise to such questions in Einstein's Luck. In this lively and engaging book, Waller interprets the work of other historians (with due acknowledgment) for a wider circle of readers.
The first part of the book contains cases in which Waller considers that a scientist was "right for the wrong reasons"-cases characterized by "the making of very bold claims on the basis of less than comprehensive evidence." In Waller's account, Louis Pasteur was not above suppressing data that did not...