The Doctor Everyone Mocked — Until His 'Crazy' Theory Wiped Out a Killer Disease. Matt Kaplan - #547

Into the Impossible With Brian Keating

Brian Keating

Physics, Natural Sciences, Science

4.7 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 29 March 2026

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Please join my mailing list here 👉 https://briankeating.com/list to win a meteorite 💥 Matt Kaplan is a science journalist at The Economist and a trained paleontologist. His new book I Told You So!: Scientists Who Were Ridiculed, Exiled, and Imprisoned for Being Right is a candid investigation into how science actually works — and why the engine of discovery is badly in need of a tuneup. In this conversation, we discuss why the pandemic exposed science's dirty secrets to the public, how Ignaz Semmelweis discovered handwashing saved lives and was thrown in an asylum for it, why Katalin Karikó survived where others didn't, the replication crisis and how funding models are making it worse, whether older scientists should control research dollars, why Galileo was never actually tortured, and what journalists and scientists must do differently before public trust collapses entirely. Matt Kaplan also recently discussed science communication and dysfunction on other outlets — in this conversation, we go deeper on the replication crisis, the Semmelweis story, and why the funding model is quietly corrupting the scientific process. 🔔 Subscribe for new episodes each week 🎧 Ad-free episodes on Patreon: patreon.com/drbriankeating INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE — where Nobel Prize winners, physicists, and bold thinkers explore the biggest questions in science. Key Takeaways 00:00 Why the pandemic was science's most damaging moment of exposure 03:30 The scientific-industrial press complex — and who's really to blame 06:50 How science journalism fails the public 85% of the time 10:00 Ignaz Semmelweis: the man who proved handwashing saves lives and was destroyed for it 20:10 Why infection rates dropped from 21% to zero — and nobody listened 24:30 What Katalin Karikó had that Semmelweis didn't: shelter 28:00 The replication crisis — why nobody is funding the most important work in science 33:00 How funding models force scientists to run experiments they've already won 40:30 Should older scientists control research dollars? A Nobel laureate weighs in 43:45 Why Galileo was never tortured — and why the myth won't die 47:00 The rhinoceros tooth: a paleontologist's lesson in confirmation bias ➡️ Follow Matt Kaplan 🌐 Website: https://www.somuchsciencesolittletime.com/about 📚 I Told You So! Scientists Who Were Ridiculed, Exiled, and Imprisoned for Being Right: https://www.amazon.com/Told-You-Scientists-Ridiculed-Imprisoned/dp/1250372275 ✍️ Email: mattkaplan@economist.com Join this channel to get access to perks like monthly Office Hours: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join 📚 Get my books: Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/03ezQFu Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/hi50U9U Losing the Nobel Prize: http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (audiobook): https://a.co/d/iZPi9Un Follow me to ask questions of my guests: 🏄‍♂️ Twitter: https://twitter.com/DrBrianKeating 🔔 Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1 📝 Mailing list: http://briankeating.com/list ✍️ Blog: https://briankeating.com/blog 🎙️ Audio-only: https://briankeating.com/podcast #physics #science #sciencejournalism #MattKaplan #briankeating #intotheimpossible Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	One in 10 mothers died after giving birth. One doctor figured out why. And then they destroyed him for it.
0:07.9	Roughly, one woman in 10 would get a disease called preparal fever. And once they got it, they died.
0:15.9	He got all of the other doctors to sign on to this. And the infection rate went from 21% to zero.
0:22.2	And he would say this in front of powerful people like the director of the hospital.
0:25.6	And when he said, no, your hands are dirty. They said, sir, we are gentlemen, all of us.
0:30.4	Our hands cannot be dirty. And for all of that, he got thrown in an insane asylum after being
0:35.8	exiled to Hungary by his peers, and he died there.
0:38.8	The more the pressure goes up, the more likely a scientist who has built a career on a certain
0:45.3	paradigm, the more they will defend that paradigm vigorously, even if the evidence is staring
0:51.7	them in the face that some upstart newbie to the field
0:55.2	might be right. 85% of the time science journalists do not do a good job of talking about
1:01.7	how science works. This is instrumental to the problem with modern science.
1:07.2	You speak to your ethics and you speak candidly about how sometimes there's pressure because you have to report the facts, but you also are embedded and maybe you know too much. So talk about your proposal to embed journalists with scientific teams and what reaction do you expect that might have?
1:24.6	So you've got to be talking about how science actually operates, right? A lot of the
1:29.3	friction that we face with science in the general public today stems from the pandemic. It was almost
1:36.8	like walking into a dressing room and seeing science naked, right? It was like people had not really seen how science operates because, frankly, 85% of the
1:50.9	time science journalists in most papers do not do a good job of talking about how science
1:57.8	works.
1:59.1	And now suddenly, the whole world is paying a lot of attention to science and how it works,
2:04.0	and they're aghast when they see scientists shocking, disagreeing with each other,
2:10.5	or scientists not sharing information with one another as they should.
2:15.9	Or scientists, wait for it, being wrong.
	...

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