Synopses & Reviews
An impassioned defense of intellectual freedom and a clarion call to intellectual responsibility,
Galileo's Middle Finger is one Americans eye-opening story of life in the trenches of scientific controversy. For two decades, historian Alice Dreger has led a life of extraordinary engagement, combining activist service to victims of unethical medical research with defense of scientists whose work has outraged identity politics activists. With spirit and wit, Dreger offers in
Galileo's Middle Finger an unforgettable vision of the importance of rigorous truth seeking in today's America, where both the free press and free scholarly inquiry struggle under dire economic and political threats.
This illuminating chronicle begins with Dreger's own research into the treatment of people born intersex (once called hermaphrodites). Realization of the shocking surgical and ethical abuses conducted in the name of normalizing” intersex children's gender identities moved Dreger to become an internationally recognized patient rights activist. But even as the intersex rights movement succeeded, Dreger began to realize how some fellow progressive activists were employing lies and personal attacks to silence scientists whose data revealed uncomfortable truths about humans. In researching one such case, Dreger suddenly became the target of just these kinds of attacks.
Troubled, she decided to try to understand more to travel the country to ferret out the truth behind various controversies, to obtain a global view of the nature and costs of these battles. Galileo's Middle Finger describes Dreger's long and harrowing journeys between the two camps for which she felt equal empathy: social justice activists determined to win and researchers determined to put hard truths before comfort. Ultimately what emerges is a lesson about the intertwining of justice and of truth and a lesson of the importance of responsible scholars and journalists to our fragile democracy.
Review
Alice Dreger would win a prize for this years most gripping novel, except for one thing: her stories are true, and this isn't a novel. Instead, it's an exciting account of complicated good guys and bad guys, and the pursuit of justice.” Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs, and Steel and The World until Yesterday
Review
"A crusader in the mold of muckrackers from a century ago, Dreger doesn't try to hide her politics or her agenda. Instead she advocates for change intelligently and passionately. Highly recommended." Booklist (starred review)
Review
"Let us be grateful that there are writers like Dreger who have the wits and the guts to fight for truth." Kirkus (starred review)
Review
"[A] smart, delightful book. Galileo's Middle Finger is many things: a rant, a manifesto, a treasury of evocative new terms (sissyphobia, autogynephyllia, phall-o-meter) and an account of the author's transformation 'from an activist going after establishment scientists into an aide-de-camp to scientists who found themselves the target of activists like me' — and back again....I suspect most readers will find that [Dreger's] witnessing of these wild skirmishes provides a splendidly entertaining education in ethics, activism and science." New York Times Book Review
Review
"Dreger tells the story in her new book on scientific controversies, Galileo's Middle Finger: Heretics, Activists, and the Search for Justice in Science, an engrossing volume that is sure to undo any lingering notions that academic debate is the province of empiricists who pledge allegiance to the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth... Dreger's clear and well-paced prose makes for compelling — and depressing — reading. If you believe what you were taught about scientific method, about old ideas giving way under the sway of new evidence, you're an idealist and you probably know that already. The truth is sometimes closer to the much-repeated notion that a new idea can't truly take hold until the people who held the old idea die." Chicago Tribune
Review
"Dreger ends this powerful book by calling for her fellow academics to counter the 'stunningly lazy attitude toward precision and accuracy in many branches of academia.' In her view, chasing grants and churning out papers now take the place of quality and truth. It is a situation exacerbated by a media that can struggle when covering scientific controversies, and by strong pressures from activists with a stake in what the evidence might say. She argues, 'If you must criticize scholars whose work challenges yours, do so on the evidence, not by poisoning the land on which we all live.' There is a lot of poison in science these days. Dreger is right to demand better." Nature
Review
"Accomplishing deft journalistic storytelling, [Dreger] pursues relentlessly her thesis that neither truth nor justice can exist without the other and that empirical research is essential to democratic society. She challenges readers to recognize that the loudest voice is not necessarily right, the predominant view is not always correct, and the importance of fact-checking and defending true scholarship. A crusader in the mold of muckrakers from a century ago, Dreger doesn't try to hide her politics or her agenda. Instead she advocates for change intelligently and passionately." Library Journal (starred review)
About the Author
ALICE DREGER is a professor of clinical medical humanities and bioethics at Northwestern Universitys Feinberg School of Medicine and the author of
Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex and
One of Us: Conjoined Twins and the Future of Normal. Her work has been discussed in
The New York Times, The New Yorker, Science, and on CNN, and her op-eds have appeared in
The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and
The Wall Street Journal. She lives in Michigan.
AliceDreger.com | @AliceDreger