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Galileo's Middle Finger

Heretics, Activists, and One Scholar's Search for Justice

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
New York Times Book Review 
"[S]mart, delightful... a splendidly entertaining education in ethics, activism and science.”
Editors's Choice, New York Times Book Review

An impassioned defense of intellectual freedom and a clarion call to intellectual responsibility, Galileo’s Middle Finger is one American’s 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.
Booklist (starred 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."
Kirkus (starred review)
“Let us be grateful that there are writers like Dreger who have the wits and the guts to fight for truth.” 

Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs, and Steel and The World until Yesterday
“Alice Dreger would win a prize for this year’s 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.”

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    • Kirkus

      Starred review from January 1, 2015
      Dreger (Clinical Medical Humanities and Bioethics/Northwestern Univ.; One of Us: Conjoined Twins and the Future of Normal, 2004, etc.) passionately investigates character assassinations in academia and how "[s]cience and social justice require each other to be healthy, and both are critically important to human freedom."Among others, the author examines the case of anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon, whose blunt characterization of the Yanamomo tribe in Brazil led to accusations that he had fomented tribal violence. This was false, Dreger demonstrates, abetted by a disgraceful lack of fact-checking, personal animus and a belief in tribes as "noble savages." Following her doctoral thesis on Victorian doctors' attitudes toward hermaphrodites, Dreger's writing caught the attention of the intersex movement, which she joined to support the rights of mixed-sex individuals to self-determine their sexual identity. Similarly, she supported transsexual rights but soon became a target for uncovering the dirty dealings of three transgendered females. The women were incensed by a researcher who proposed that the sex changes of some male-to-female transsexuals were motivated by eroticism. The trio exploited social media with outrageous fabrications of the researcher's work and life. In other studies, Dreger found serious ethical issues with the research of a pediatrician who espouses the use of a potent steroid drug in certain pregnancies to forestall virilizing a female baby. The author also takes to task feminists who attacked an evolutionary psychologist for suggesting that rape, found in humans and other species, could be a way of perpetuating a male's genes. Dreger's investigations all turn on how human identity and behavior have been defined in history and why challenges to conventional wisdom are so inflammatory. That explains her homage to Galileo, whose mummified middle finger she saw in a museum in Florence. The finger points skyward to symbolize his opening the heavens to scientific investigation, she writes, while at the same time "giving the finger" in defiance of Vatican authority. Let us be grateful that there are writers like Dreger who have the wits and the guts to fight for truth.

      COPYRIGHT(2015) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

    • Library Journal

      Starred review from February 15, 2015

      Dreger (clinical medical humanities and bioethics, Feinberg Sch. of Medicine, Northwestern Univ.; One of Us: Conjoined Twins and the Future of Normal), who has one foot firmly planted in academia and other in social activism, makes the case that an assault is taking place on academic and intellectual freedom. Her research unearthed dozens of beleaguered academics whose work has been attacked by fellow peers or identity groups with a different point of view. At times, these persecuted researchers have had their careers threatened or sidelined, their work misrepresented by selective reporting, and their email boxes and voice mails inundated with hate messages and threats. As Dreger tells her story and those of other researchers, she asks important ethical questions about informed consent, medical research, and feuds within scholarly bodies. Accomplishing deft journalistic storytelling, the author 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. VERDICT 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 for those interested in academic freedom, controversial issues in academia, and intersex and gender issues.--Beth Dalton, Littleton, CO

      Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • Booklist

      February 1, 2015
      Raised by conservative Catholic parents, Dreger (One of Us, 2004) rejects the church that persecuted Galileo both as champion of evidence-based science and as forerunner of rights-endowing democracy. But in two decades as a bioethicist committed to progressive causes, she has encountered unexpected conflict between the political and scientific branches of Galileo's legacy. The author indeed takes readers into the dangerous no-man's land separating warriors for political enlightenment from tough-minded researchers reporting unwelcome empirical findings about human identity, especially sexually identity. Seasoned by her own combat on behalf of intersex individuals, Dreger understands that those attacking women and sexual minorities have often (mis)used science. But she fears the consequences when political crusadersincluding her alliesreject empirical science and slander those who do it. In a disarmingly candid narrative, she chronicles her political-scientific struggles dealing with passion-laden issues such as transgender rights, rape, child sexual abuse, and prenatal fetal experimentation. Readers see repeatedly the high costs when Galileo's scientific epigones clash with his political heirs. A sobering report from a hotly contested cultural battlefield.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)

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