Name: Galileo's Middle Finger
ISBN: 9781594206085

Alice Domurat Dreger

An advocate for victims of unethical research who also defends the rights of scientists to pursue challenging research into human identities defends intellectual freedom, in this thought-provoking volume told though the ordeals of modern scientists who have been attacked for exploring controversial ideas.

Heretics, Activists, and the Search for Justice in Science

Galileo's Middle Finger

Bryan Alexander

Galileo's Middle Finger is a fascinating, passionate, utterly engaging, and very odd book. 

To explain: Dreger's subject is not Galileo, but a series of stories about contemporary scientific controversies. These cover a range of fields, from pediatrics to sexuality, criminology and anthropology... which does stretch the definition of "science." The three big topics are intersex treatment, Napoleon Chagnon's anthropological studies, and transgender psychology. That might sound abstract, but Dreger writes of them like a detective hot on the trail of mysteries.

She also has other writerly tools in play. First, she offers the idea of a "Galilean personality" to characterize some of the scientists. This is a type of researcher who obsessively pursues what they find, damning the consequences, and running into social problems as a result that they have a hard time handling. The other is featuring Dreger herself as a character, and that's where the book becomes strange. 

Galileo's Middle Finger is really at least one half autobiography. Told in the first person, Dreger is on stage throughout. We learn about her schooling, parents, husband, career, tv habits, moods, politics, and hope in every chapter. Which is fun, at least for me, since I find the author a very engaging person. But it makes the book something other than what it appears to be, which is a work of history of science. The result is a hybrid: autobiography, history, and politics.

Politics are tricky in this book. Dreger proudly describes herself as liberal, as a feminist, as an advocate for sexual and gender minorities. She criticizes medical doctors for acting unjustly to preserve stereotypical gender roles (195). At the same time also calls herself politically incorrect, opposes postmodernism (259), and doubts her feminism. Galileo's begins by mentioning the author's parents, who were both pro-life and (otherwise) politically progressive, if not radical. Similarly Dreger will call out a range of opponents or people making mistakes: "Power plays as morality plays, whether by popes or feminists, are just that - plays." (138; italics in original) At times she find institutions protecting themselves from simple defensiveness, as when the American Anthropological Association acted cruelly and dishonestly (in her view) "to save anthropology" from an attack (177). So on the one hand the book feels like a good example of the richness and variety of lived political experience.

On the other hand... I wonder if Galileo's tracks to the right. Its emphasis on evidence leads it to criticize the left: "Good scholarship had to put the search for truth first and the quest for social justice second." (136) Its trans politics are sharply attacked by some (trans activists and other progressives) and upheld by others. Here's an example of the debate. I know her call to slow down gender affirmation procedures for children (266) had won opposition. (Personally, I have a hard time assessing this particular point, because of the large amount of psych research involved, not to mention the politics and ferocity of debate.) One way she defends Chagnon is to find him criticized for being too white and stereotypically masculine (175).

Her conclusions about the future don't fit easily into political categories. Dreger is critical of the internet as a whole for enabling character assassination. She sees journalism and academia as each declining, and so sees the kind of problems Galileo's identifies as increasing. She calls on us to resist politics and postmodernism in order to pursue evidence and data.

A fascinating and compelling book. Recommended.

Galileo's Middle Finger Heretics, Activists, and the Search for Justice in Science

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