…students sometimes comment that because of the enormous amount of current knowledge they have to absorb, they have no time to read about the history of their field. But a knowledge of the historical development of a subject is often essential for a full understanding of its present-day situation. Hans Krebs, 1981
Okay, so let’s talk about history. This will be a new feature in Uncertainty Principles, something I hope to do every few weeks.
As those who have read my books know, I fell down a rabbit hole when I started researching the history of nutrition dogma back in the late 1990s. Beginning with a a series of investigations for the journal Science, I asked, in effect, the simple questions that every journalist and researcher should ask of propositions that are taken as articles of faith: why do we believe they’re true? On what evidence are they based?
This is why articles in the medical literature or serious non-fiction books include notes and references. That allows the reader to answer those questions. My profession evolved from investigative journalist into historian of medical science because of this process of following the references/citations back in time. I was looking for the point at which speculative propositions transformed from hypotheses to dogma. I wanted to know whether the evidence justified the transformation. I had no idea how far back in time I had to go. As it turned out, it’s quite a journey.
