Mistakes of commission:
1. Frontal lobotomies.
2. Eric Kandel. If you think he deserved it, read Explorers of the Black Box.
Mistakes of omission:
1. The scientists who discovered that smoking causes lung cancer.
2. The scientists who discovered that folate deficiency causes birth defects.
Several years ago, at a big Thanksgiving dinner in an Oakland loft, I told the woman sitting next to me, a genetic counselor, what a travesty the Biology prizes were. The discovery that smoking causes lung cancer had improved the lives of millions of people, I said; the discovery of so-called oncogenes hadn't improved the life of even one person. She replied that she was the sister of one of the oncogene discoverers.
The next day I learned she complained I had been rude!








