This one started out good, with the promise of being a deep dive into the history of how medicine has misunderstood and mistreated the trans population and what can and should be done to change that. But at some point it took a left turn into a sort of tell-all about a particular activist who went off the rails and spread all sorts of slander and libel about a couple of researchers, including the author. It got weird. And while the scandal was sort of interesting, it felt more like it belonged elsewhere. *shrug* ( )

Ethics in science. What a concept. Factual research is ........ helpful.

I very much wish the majority of my fellow citizens would read this book. ( )

Kind of an odd book. Learned a lot of interesting stuff. She tries to be fair to those she criticizes but I'm not always convinced. I mostly liked her writing but periodically there would be a clumsy cliche that bugged me ("Hello!"). But the basic issue she talks about is really important: what happens when a quest for truth collides with a quest for justice. ( )

There are two major aspects of this book, one which I abhor and the other which is valuable and important, making for a decidedly mixed bag.

On the one hand -- as the title intimates -- the author is completely taken in by simplistic, pop history of Galileo, one of the forerunners of the Enlightenment, as a bold truth-seeker and uncompromising man of science, spitting in the face of the stifling and oppressive powers of dogmatism and authoritarianism. Modern science and democracy, as twin daughters of the Enlightenment, freeing us from millenia of tradition and religion, which were opposed to these principles of free-inquiry and investigation. There is hardly a more painfully erroneous cliche that exists, yet Dreger buys into it fully.

This aspect of the book is the set-up and framework, not so much the true subject matter, but its farcical simplicity, not to mention falsity, spoils much of what is good about the book. And it keeps reappearing throughout, as she uses the "Galilean personality" to classify certain persons in her story and appeals to the basic paradigm of enlightened science vs. dogma.

And her flights of ecstasy on the subject of "enlightenment" verge on self-parody; the sort of thing you'd find in the most oblivious, unreflective reddit atheist. One of the more glaring examples are when she declares:

Religiously speaking, the pope had the power to stop Galileo from achieving salvation; he could excommunicate him, mark him as a bad soul forevermore. But I suspect that, in his heart and through his telescopes, Galileo had already achieved the kind of salvation that matters to the seeker. He had achieved a philosophy that had truly liberated him, and then also us, his enlightened descendents. The pope might claim to gatekeep for God, but in truth, even the pope couldn't stop Galileo from climbing into the heavens to pull down facts and bring them back to earth.

Oy vey. She is truly euphoric in this moment, enlightened by her own intelligence.

Her inchoate political theorizing fares no better. In democracy she sees the scientific principle of peer-review extend to the political realm, and sees that as the sine qua non of a most-likely-to-be-just political order. And yet, as she herself finds out later in the book, "peer-review" only works to the extent you have honest, self-critical, truth-seeking people using it. And when you don't, "peer-review" becomes a meaningless stamp of authority. The same goes for democracy, but even worse. While she sees how peer-review is abused, she doesn't reflect on what this could mean for her trust in democracy. Many minds working in concert, even under the guise of critical review, is no prescription for anything in particular; it gives rise to atrocity as often as it gives rise to discovery.

Now, the good parts of the book are the various episodes in Dreger's professional life where certain unthinking dogmas of the leftist establishment are questioned by scientific findings, and said establishment -- supposedly the openminded and science-loving -- reacts aggressively against them, as they don't fit into the PC narrative.

There's the instance of transgender activists opposing the science that there is a definitive type of male-to-female transsexual who decides to transition based on erotic fantasy of becoming female. This in opposition to the transgender community's preferred simplistic narrative of 'female brains trapped in male bodies.'

There's the anthropological research of Napoleon Chagnon, showing the Yanomamo tribe -- largely untouched by western influence -- to be violent, women-stealing, environmentally careless, and having serious drug addiction problems. In opposition to the liberal myth of the noble savage, at one with nature.

There is also the general opposition by liberals to sociobiology in general -- as in the person E.O. Wilson, for instance -- for giving sociobiological explanations of things like rape and genocide, which is construed as excusing such things.

This material is excellent for exposing a blinkered opposition to unpalatable science among the supposed stalwarts of science themselves: the liberal academic establishment.

When Dreger attempts to articulate her larger point, though, it is unconvincing. She states multiple times that one of her big takeaways is that "social justice", while important and critical, must take a backseat to bold truth-seeking (visa vis "science"). That we mustn't subordinate the truth to our desire to seek justice, and thus advocate for "justice" on the basis of a some falsehood.

This is what she sees many in the academic establishment doing when, for instance, they worry that certain un-PC scientific findings might hurt historically oppressed people (transgender, people of color etc.) While she wants to maintain her absolute desire for justice, and make sure that truth isn't sacrificed for it.

But does she really? At least one admission in the book highly calls this into question.

In her vigorous defense of Chagnon against his critics, she points out one instance where he sacrificed truth for the sake of justice (even though he normally went after 'truth' at all costs):

when [Chagnon] found out that the data he had collected on Yanomamo infanticide might be used by the Venezuelan government against them, he had essentially withdrawn the data. Like Bailey, like Palmer, like so many others, this was a scientist out for the truth, but never at the cost of justice.

Which raises two crucial points. First, is essentially hiding data that exposes infanticide actually in service of justice? One would think exposing such a heinous crime would be the just thing to do. Which in turn brings up the question of just what is justice. Dreger assumes it is essentially "enlightened liberalism" -- the conclusion of which here is, apparently, protect indigenous peoples from outside forces, even if they are committing infanticide. So much the worse for "enlightened liberalism", then.

The second issue it raises is that Chagnon is explicitly violating what she has described as her own modus operandi here: seek truth first, fearlessly and virtually at all costs, and do justice while you're doing it. Here, Chagnon subordinated truth to (an extremely dubious notion of) justice, and Dreger lauds him for it.

At times the narrative gets bogged down in details obviously important to the author, especially near the end of the book where she documents the ins and outs of the various factions fighting about the use of dexamethasone on fetuses. In addition to my fundamental ideological opposition to the book, this detracted a lot from it, though it's still very instructive as to the fact that secular, liberal institutions, in the sciences, journalism, and the academy, are as vulnerable to groupthink, dogmatism, authoritarianism, and personally attacking those who threaten their preferred narratives as anyone. But I already knew that. ( )

this provocative and refreshing book presents the very important problem of politically progressive activists challenging and even bullying scientists whose findings are unwelcome. Dreger is the perfect author since she has a background as an activist (fighting for rights of intersex infants and their families) and also as a critic of activists who bullied a scientist who found that some trans women were motivated by sexual arousal at the idea of themselves as women, not because they feel "trapped in the wrong body." Dreger has a delightful prose style, as well. This important and difficult read would be a great book club selection, ( )