The Semmelweis Reflex

I have always found it odd that people refer that they “believe in science”, and thus what scientists say is some sort of truth, as the word of gods interpreted by some High Priests. This is really not what science should be about; one should be constantly critical and sceptic about the assertions of any scientist. This is not to say that one should reject them; it is not the same as saying, for instance, that one should say climate change is not real because scientists say it is real. But it is to maintain a healthy distance to the details: in terms of climate change, different scientists have differing causal models and prescriptions, and it is important to discuss them constantly based on the different scientist's findings and studies.
Because let us face it; there are often as many views as there are scientists, and science is not a democracy. Just because a majority of scientists share a view, it is not necessarily the “correct” view. Science is closely linked to the power-knowledge discourse that Michel Foucault talked about, and scientists are (unfortunately) humans, whose scientific views are intrinsically linked to the structures of power, beliefs and values that are preponderant in the context.
I recently learnt the story of Ignaz Semmelweis (1818-1865). Mr. Semmelweiz was Hungarian a Doctor at Vienna general Hospital (this was during the Austro-Hungarian empire), where he became concerned about the high mortality rate of young mothers in one of the two maternity clinics in the hospital (they died from a disease called puerperal fever, a bacterial infection following childbirth). In fact, one of the clinics had such a bad reputation that pregnant women would beg not to be interned there, with some preferring to give births in the street, where the death rate was even lower than the clinic.
While the problem had been noted by doctors, and led to numerous theories, it became an obsession for Mr. Semmelweis, who started comparing the two clinics. The only difference between the two was that one was attended by midwives, and the other (the one with the higher deathrates) was attended by medical students.
In 1847 a medical friend of Mr. Semmelweis, Jakob Kolletschka, died of a fever after the had been accidentally poked by a scalpel during a post-mortem examination. As the death was similar to that of young mothers, Mr. Semmelweis developed the theory that a “cadaverous material” was at fault for the deaths. This was before the theory of germs had been developed or accepted, but Mr. Semmelweis was onto something, and he theorised that cleanliness, washing hands, could combat this. He immediately introduced hand washing and disinfecting equipment with chlorine, and the results were immediate: deaths fell by 90%!
One might have thought that the empirical results spoke for themselves. Despite the results (and the practice) being spread to other hospitals in Europe, there was no general acceptance that the deaths were due to uncleanliness. In fact, Semmelweis was harassed and ridiculed by his colleagues in Vienna. It did not help that he was Hungarian at a time when Hungarian national movements were stirring), and in 1849 he was dismissed from the clinic, and he returned to Budapest.
In Budapest, Semmelweis was hired at a small clinic which suffered a high level of deaths as well, and he virtually eliminated them there as well. But even there, his colleagues did not accept his views, and other doctors refused to follow Semmelweis' advice. Despite the fact that positive results were being found in hospitals all over Europe that adopted hand-washing and disinfecting with chlorine, the theory was still rejected by medical experts all over the continent, who insisted that the results were due to other causes.
Semmelweis was increasingly ridiculed and marginalised by the European medical establishment, and it began to affect him more and more. He wrote letters (lashing out at his critics), promoting his view, and even published a book in 1861 which was largely rejected and received very negative reviews.
The rejection led to depression and increasing mental instability. He drank and became more and more aggressive, unable to talk about anything else but about the childbearing fever. His family became desperate by his mental instability and in 1865 they forced him into a mental institution, or as it was called back then, “an insane asylum”. He fought the guards who took him in, and received a severe beating.
Mr. Semmelweis died only two weeks after he had been interned. Only his family attended his funeral and his death was not published among the medical profession. Despite this, over the next 20 years his practices were slowly adopted by young doctors, as the results were undeniable, probably saving thousands of lives. But it was only until Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) provided a theoretical explanation for germs that the practice became accepted practice.
By then Ignaz Semmelweis had been largely forgotten, but has since been rehabilitated, giving name to hospitals, universities, and even a planet. His struggle has also been widely chronicled in literature, films and dramas, and even giving name to a metaphor, “Semmelweis reflex”, which denotes the rejection of new evidence because of established paradigms....
I feel that the Semmelweis reflect is alive and well today, and perhaps is even reinforced by the failed understanding that science is something you “believe” rather than something you must always be criticizing, re-evaluating and discussing.

Scientist are anything but High Priests.