IMO being an effective political campaigner within the "office politics" of science, in both the funding and publishing stages, is a HUGE and unignorable part of "science" in contemporary practice. The Platonic ideal of "science" is apolitical.
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what was the controversy in his case?
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the lead industry (and the gasoline industry too) sought to discredit him because his findings (that TEL fuel additives were accumulating rapidly in the environment) were very damaging findings to their business, including potentially enormous legal liabilities
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Thomas Midgely (inventor of TEL fuel additive) was actually warned about the toxicity of it, refused to believe it, campaigned that it was safe, and then he developed severe lead poisoning in just a few years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr ….
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People will often refuse to believe that something they are familiar with and have some stake in it could be bad: But that one guy has been walking around with a lead bullet inside him *for decades.*
End of conversation
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