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I don't think this sort of thing is rare, or a reflection of the time period he lived in or his status as an extreme outlier in historical influence. Many scie

I don't think this sort of thing is rare, or a reflection of the time period he lived in or his status as an extreme outlier in historical influence. Many scientists spend a portion of their time in oddball or fruitless pursuits and sometimes it takes them over, particularly as they get older. Linus Pauling and Vitamin C is one thing that comes to mind. There was some scientist whose name I can't remember, was asked how he could be occupied by crazy ideas or obsessions and he said that these ideas came to him in exactly the same way as his deep scientific insights.

msandford 6y ago
Suggesting that Linus Pauling was wrong about vitamin C is an interesting choice. In my opinion he's looking more and more prescient. https://nypost.com/2020/03/24/new-york-hospitals-treating-coronavirus-patients-with-vitamin-c/ https://nypost.com/2020/03/24/new-york-hospitals-treating-co... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5996765/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5996765/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3937164/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3937164/ Just because someone looks silly to their contemporaries doesn't mean they're wrong. Look at Semmelweis. He figured out germs well before Pasteur. Doctors didn't accept it because they didn't like the implications: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis Sagan says it best. https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/85171-one-of-the-saddest-lessons-of-history-is-this-if https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/85171-one-of-the-saddest-le...
- perl4ever 6y ago
  I wasn't stating that he was "wrong", I was suggesting that regardless of whether you can find any merit to any of his opinions, it was kind of an odd, dubious obsession that people don't uniformly respect unlike other accomplishments he had.

msandford 6y ago

Suggesting that Linus Pauling was wrong about vitamin C is an interesting choice. In my opinion he's looking more and more prescient. https://nypost.com/2020/03/24/new-york-hospitals-treating-coronavirus-patients-with-vitamin-c/ https://nypost.com/2020/03/24/new-york-hospitals-treating-co... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5996765/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5996765/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3937164/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3937164/ Just because someone looks silly to their contemporaries doesn't mean they're wrong. Look at Semmelweis. He figured out germs well before Pasteur. Doctors didn't accept it because they didn't like the implications: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis Sagan says it best. https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/85171-one-of-the-saddest-lessons-of-history-is-this-if https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/85171-one-of-the-saddest-le...

perl4ever 6y ago
I wasn't stating that he was "wrong", I was suggesting that regardless of whether you can find any merit to any of his opinions, it was kind of an odd, dubious obsession that people don't uniformly respect unlike other accomplishments he had.