An energetic work of popular science about various scientists who have had to fight for their revolutionary ideas to be accepted—from Darwin to Pasteur to modern day Nobel Prize winners.

The Contrarians is a critical history of the scientific community, past and present, as Matt Kaplan shows how scientific breakthroughs often occur in spite of, rather than because of, the scientific community. Alternating between the past and the present, the book is anchored by the story of Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis, who helped discover germ theory by realizing Puerperal fever—a devastating infection that most often strikes women who have recently given birth—was spread by doctors not washing their hands. Semmelweis was met with overwhelming hostility by those offended at the notion that doctors were at fault. Semmelweis as a prime example of the inefficiency of scientific progress—how hard the scientific community fights new ideas and new research, even when the facts are staring them in the face.

In snappy, accessible prose, Kaplan presents the cases of Galileo being threatened with torture, Charles Darwin facing social ostracism, and more recently, Katalin Karikó losing her job and her funding on the brink of discovering uses of mRNA – a discovery that would directly lead to the fast creation of a vaccine for Covid-19, and to a Nobel Prize for Karikó. With decades of first-hand reporting under his belt as the lead science reporter for the Economist, Kaplan makes the argument that science is hampered by the community’s resistance to younger scientists and new ideas—making it exceptionally difficult or outright impossible for critically important findings to gain recognition.

Employing persuasive examples spanning history, The Contrarians makes a compelling argument that the scientific community can work faster and better, if only it is open to change.