The Doctor Everyone Mocked — Until His 'Crazy' Theory Wiped Out a Killer Disease. Matt Kaplan - #547

About this episode

Matt Kaplan discusses the challenges and dysfunctions in the scientific community, highlighting historical figures and the impact of the pandemic on public trust in science.

Please join my mailing list here 👉 https://briankeating.com/list to win a meteorite 💥 Matt Kaplan is a science journalist at The Economist and a trained paleontologist. His new book I Told You So!: Scientists Who Were Ridiculed, Exiled, and Imprisoned for Being Right is a candid investigation into how science actually works — and why the engine of discovery is badly in need of a tuneup. In this conversation, we discuss why the pandemic exposed science's dirty secrets to the public, how Ignaz Semmelweis discovered handwashing saved lives and was thrown in an asylum for it, why Katalin Karikó survived where others didn't, the replication crisis and how funding models are making it worse, whether older scientists should control research dollars, why Galileo was never actually tortured, and what journalists and scientists must do differently before public trust collapses entirely. Matt Kaplan also recently discussed science communication and dysfunction on other outlets — in this conversation, we go deeper on the replication crisis, the Semmelweis story, and why the funding model is quietly corrupting the scientific process. 🔔 Subscribe for new episodes each week 🎧 Ad-free…

People in this episode

Host: Brian Keating

Guest: Matt Kaplan

Topics covered

• science communication
• replication crisis
• pandemic impact on science
• scientific funding models
• historical scientific figures
• public trust in science

Keywords

• science journalism
• scientific discovery
• handwashing
• asylum
• funding corruption
• public trust
• scientific process

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: The Economist

Books & works: I Told You So!: Scientists Who Were Ridiculed, Exiled, and Imprisoned for Being Right

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