Maciej Cegłowski has written an article named Scott and Scurvy, which has already been discussed on LW as an example of the "messiness" of science in practice. Cegłowski follows the story of how a working cure for scurvy was found and then lost to an incorrect theory in the face of new data, which is quite the case study for theories of how science works.
I was fascinated by the story, dug into the primary sources, found that there is a second, more optimistic half to it, and wrote it up. The tale of Scott and Scurvy culminates with the scurvy-accelerated demise of Robert Falcon Scott in 1912, which makes for a pessimistic outlook, but look around: scurvy is not a problem anymore. Why?
I think that people of LW might find this interesting.
Maciej Cegłowski has written an article named Scott and Scurvy, which has already been discussed on LW as an example of the "messiness" of science in practice. Cegłowski follows the story of how a working cure for scurvy was found and then lost to an incorrect theory in the face of new data, which is quite the case study for theories of how science works.
I was fascinated by the story, dug into the primary sources, found that there is a second, more optimistic half to it, and wrote it up. The tale of Scott and Scurvy culminates with the scurvy-accelerated demise of Robert Falcon Scott in 1912, which makes for a pessimistic outlook, but look around: scurvy is not a problem anymore. Why?
I think that people of LW might find this interesting.