n.
an affliction of certain Nobel Prize recipients which causes them to embrace strange or scientifically unsound ideas, usually later in life.
David Gorski, blogging at Science-Based Medicine, examines Linus Pauling’s descent into pseudoscience as part of a discussion about the lack of evidence for vitamin C as a cancer treatment.
1 comment:
An excellent article on Linus Pauling. In my view Pauling's basic problem was egomania; he claimed he'd discovered the alpha-helix when it was really the work of the black scientist Herman Branson; he tried to claim sole credit for the paper "Sickle-Cell Anemia: A Molecular Disease' when all the real work was done by Harvey Itano and Jonathan Singer
The best treatment of all of this is Anthony Serafini's LINUS PAULING: A MAN AND HIS SCIENCE, the definitive biography of Pauling
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