Pushkin

In the second half of the 20th century, a group of scientists became obsessed with an obscure family of viruses.

There weren't many people in the obscure virus club. They all knew each other.

The rest of the world rolled its eyes at them.

Read the letter.

Okay.

Dear Bob, I regret that your paper on the T-cell retrovirus is not acceptable for publication in the Journal of Virology.

Exhibit A in the Archives of the Obscure Virus Club, a rejection letter.

I completely agree with reviewer number one. There's little point in perpetuating this controversy about the presumed viral nature of this material.

Not, thank you very much. This is fascinating, but you're not quite there yet. Just, no.

I hope you understand we can only accept definitive data to resolve this question.

Therefore, I have no alternative but to reject this paper outright.

I'm advised you we cannot consider the present manuscript in any form.

In any form? If you were in the obscure virus club, you got this a lot. It didn't stop them.

Thank God.

My name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to Revisionist History, my podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood.

This is the final episode of season four. A season of Jesuits and lawyers and gangsters and disputatious musicians.

Iconoclasts and skeptics. And I want to finish with the story of the Obscure Virus Club, maybe the biggest band of Iconoclasts of all.

This is a bedtime story for this season of Revisionist History. And as with any story, you have to wait till the very end to understand what it's all about.

The Obscure Virus Club had adjunct members, honorary members, hangers on. But I want to focus on the three people at its core.

Ludwig Gross, Howard Temen, Robert Gallo.

Bob Gallo is the only one still alive, 82 years old, still at the office every day. He has pictures of his old compatriots on his walls.

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