Alice Dreger.
Galileo's Middle Finger: heretics, activists, and one scholar's search for justice.
Penguin. 2015
Galileo’s Middle Finger is historian Alice Dreger’s eye-opening story of life in the trenches of scientific controversy.
Dreger’s chronicle begins with her own research into the treatment of people born intersex (once called hermaphrodites).
Realization of the shocking surgical and ethical abuses conducted in the name of “normalizing” intersex children’s gender identities
moved Dreger to become an internationally recognized patient rights activist.
But even as the intersex rights movement succeeded, Dreger began to realize how some fellow activists were using lies and personal attacks
to silence scientists whose data revealed uncomfortable truths about humans.
In researching one such case, Dreger suddenly became the target of just these kinds of attacks.
Troubled, she decided to try to understand more—to travel the country and seek a global view of the nature and costs of these damaging battles. Galileo’s Middle Finger describes Dreger’s long and harrowing journeys between the two camps for which she felt equal empathy: social justice activists determined to win and researchers determined to put hard truths before comfort. What emerges is a lesson about the intertwining of justice and truth—and about the importance of responsible scholars and journalists to our fragile democracy.