Olivia: What if the people fighting for justice are the ones burying the truth? We're often told to trust the underdog, to stand with the activists. But what happens when their noble cause is built on a foundation of lies? Jackson: That’s a deeply uncomfortable question. It feels wrong to even ask it. The whole point of activism is to challenge powerful systems that distort the truth, not to become one of them. Olivia: And that uncomfortable, messy, and absolutely critical space is exactly where historian and bioethicist Alice Dreger lives. Today we’re diving into her 2015 book, Galileo's Middle Finger: Heretics, Activists, and One Scholar's Search for Justice. Jackson: This book made some serious waves. It was a New York Times Editor’s Choice, but it's also been called polarizing by readers. And Dreger isn't just some armchair academic; she has a Ph.D. in the History and Philosophy of Science and was a professor at Northwestern's medical school. But the key is, she was also a frontline activist herself, which is what makes her perspective so unique and, frankly, so explosive. Olivia: Exactly. She was in the trenches. And her story is a powerful lesson in what happens when your search for justice leads you to a truth you never wanted to find.

Olivia: To really get why this book is so potent, you have to start with Alice Dreger as the hero of the story. Because she was one. In the mid-1990s, she was a young academic researching the history of intersex individuals—people born with anatomies that don't fit typical definitions of male or female. Jackson: And what did she find in her research? Olivia: She uncovered a medical nightmare. For decades, the standard practice was for doctors to perform immediate, aggressive "normalizing" surgeries on intersex infants. If a baby was born with a phallus that was deemed "too small" for a boy but "too large" for a girl, surgeons would often amputate or reduce it to create a "more normal" looking clitoris. They would construct vaginas, remove internal testes—all without the person's consent, obviously, and often without even telling the parents the full truth. Jackson: That’s horrifying. They were essentially performing cosmetic surgery on infants to fit a social norm. Olivia: Precisely. And the results were catastrophic. Many of these individuals grew up with chronic pain, loss of sexual sensation, and deep psychological trauma from the secrecy and shame. Dreger's historical research gave a powerful voice to this injustice. She teamed up with activists like Bo Laurent, the founder of the Intersex Society of North America, or ISNA. Together, they took on the medical establishment. Jackson: So she's a true social justice warrior. She's using her academic work to fight for the rights of a marginalized group against a powerful medical system. I'm completely on her side. Olivia: Everyone was. She was testifying before government committees, appearing on news programs, and was instrumental in changing the standard of care. She was, by all accounts, a hero fighting for justice. Which is why what happened next was so shattering for her and for many of her allies. Jackson: Okay, I'm bracing myself. What happened? Olivia: In 2003, a Northwestern psychology professor named J. Michael Bailey published a book called The Man Who Would Be Queen. It explored the science of male-to-female transsexualism. And it was immediately met with a firestorm of outrage from a group of prominent transgender activists. Jackson: Hold on. A scientist writes a book about transgender identity, and activists attack him. Isn't that just... activists holding science accountable? We see that all the time. Olivia: That's what Dreger thought, too. At first, she stayed out of it. She was a staunch ally of the trans community. But the attacks got so vicious and the accusations so extreme that her journalistic instincts kicked in. The activists, led by three powerful trans women, accused Bailey of all sorts of serious crimes: sleeping with his research subjects, making up data, and violating their rights. They launched a massive online campaign to destroy his career. Jackson: Wow. Those are heavy accusations. Did they have proof? Olivia: That’s the question Dreger asked. And when she started digging, she found the opposite. The campaign was built on a web of distortions and outright lies. For instance, the activists posted pictures of Bailey's young children online, with their eyes blacked out, and added sexually suggestive, mocking captions. One of the lead activists, Andrea James, even emailed Dreger, calling her son a "precious womb turd" and threatened to ruin her career for daring to investigate. Jackson: Wait, what? That's not activism. That's targeted harassment. That's just cruel. Why would they do that? What was in Bailey's book that was so threatening? Olivia: It came down to one core scientific theory he presented, developed by another researcher named Ray Blanchard. Blanchard’s taxonomy proposed that there were two primary types of male-to-female transsexuals. The first are "homosexual transsexuals"—essentially, very feminine gay men who transition to live as women and are attracted to men. This idea wasn't very controversial. Jackson: Okay, so what was the second type? That must be the one that caused the explosion. Olivia: It was. Blanchard called it "autogynephilia." The term describes men who are erotically aroused by the thought or image of themselves as a woman. For them, the transition itself is driven by this specific erotic profile. They are typically attracted to women, and in a sense, they transition to become the woman they desire. Bailey summarized it bluntly: "Those who love men become women to attract them. Those who love women become the women they love." Jackson: I can see why that would be controversial. It challenges the mainstream narrative that transgender identity is solely about having a 'female brain in a male body' and has nothing to do with sexuality or eroticism. Olivia: Exactly. The activists felt this theory sexualized their identity, reduced it to a fetish, and undermined their fight for civil rights. They wanted a simple, clean story: "We were born this way." Bailey's book presented a more complex, and to them, a politically dangerous reality. But here’s the stunning twist Dreger uncovered: she found evidence that the very activists leading the charge against Bailey had, in their own past writings, admitted to being autogynephilic themselves. Jackson: You're kidding me. So they were attacking a theory that actually described their own experiences? Olivia: Yes. Dreger found a letter from Andrea James, the main antagonist, praising Blanchard's work years earlier and admitting her own autogynephilia. She found that another critic, Deirdre McCloskey, had written in her own memoir about her erotic desire for transformation. It was a profound betrayal of the principles of honest debate. They weren't attacking Bailey because his science was wrong; they were attacking him because the truth he was presenting was inconvenient for their political cause. For Dreger, this was a moment of crisis. The very tactics of misinformation and personal destruction she fought against in the medical establishment were being used by her own side.

Jackson: Okay, so that one case is a shocking story of activism gone wrong. It's a betrayal, for sure. But is it just an isolated incident? A case of a few bad apples? Or is this a bigger problem? Olivia: That's the million-dollar question Dreger asks. And her answer, after years of investigation, is a resounding 'yes.' The Bailey case wasn't the end of her journey; it was the rabbit hole. It led her to discover a much larger, more alarming pattern of what happens to scientists who become modern-day heretics. Jackson: Heretics? That's a strong word. You mean scientists who challenge the established dogma of the day? Olivia: Precisely. And no case illustrates this better than the story of the anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon. Chagnon spent decades living with and studying the Yanomamö people in the Amazon. His research portrayed them as a complex society, but also a violent one, which he famously called "the fierce people." This contradicted the prevailing "noble savage" narrative that many anthropologists preferred—the idea of indigenous peoples living in perfect, peaceful harmony. Jackson: So he published data that didn't fit the preferred political narrative of his field. I'm starting to see a pattern here. Olivia: You are. In 2000, a journalist named Patrick Tierney published a book called Darkness in El Dorado, which was essentially a character assassination of Chagnon. It accused him and his colleague, a famous geneticist named James Neel, of the most horrific crimes imaginable: starting a deadly measles epidemic on purpose to study its effects, manipulating data to make the Yanomamö look violent, and all sorts of other unethical behavior. Jackson: My gosh. And what was the reaction? Olivia: It was an academic mobbing. The American Anthropological Association, the main professional body, immediately piled on. They convened a special task force and essentially put Chagnon on trial, largely accepting Tierney's claims at face value. Chagnon's career was destroyed. He was ostracized, his reputation in tatters. He basically went into a self-imposed house arrest. Jackson: But were Tierney's accusations true? Olivia: Not even close. Over the next decade, other scholars, including Dreger, meticulously dismantled Tierney's book. They found it was riddled with fabrications, false citations, and deliberate misrepresentations. One of the AAA's own task force members admitted in a private email that they all knew the book was "just a piece of sleaze," but they felt they had to condemn Chagnon anyway to protect the reputation of anthropology from the bad press. Jackson: That is an unbelievable institutional failure. They sacrificed a man's career and the truth to save face. They knew the evidence was fraudulent, but they went along with the persecution anyway. Olivia: It's a perfect modern-day example of what the book's title is all about. Galileo was persecuted by the Church because his evidence—that the Earth revolved around the Sun—threatened its dogma. Chagnon was persecuted by his own academic tribe because his evidence threatened their political and ideological dogma. Dreger visits Florence and sees Galileo's actual, preserved middle finger in a museum. For her, it becomes this powerful talisman, a symbol of defiance against anyone—be it the Church, activists, or academic committees—who tries to silence evidence in the name of a higher "truth." Jackson: So the book is arguing that this isn't just about left-wing activists. It's about a human tendency, a rot that can set in anywhere, where loyalty to the group and its beliefs becomes more important than loyalty to the facts. Olivia: Exactly. Dreger explores this in other areas too, like the controversy over prenatal dexamethasone, a steroid given to pregnant women to prevent intersex traits in their daughters. She and her colleagues found that the lead researcher, Dr. Maria New, was promoting it as safe while simultaneously telling the NIH its long-term effects were unknown. It was a huge ethical breach, but because Dr. New was a celebrated figure, the system protected her. In every case, the story is the same: evidence takes a backseat to power, politics, and reputation.

Jackson: So where does this leave us? It feels like a pretty bleak picture. If both activists and institutions can be corrupted by politics and dogma, how can science and social justice ever actually work together? It seems like they're destined to be in conflict. Olivia: It's a bleak picture, but Dreger doesn't end on a note of despair. Her ultimate point is that science and social justice are not enemies; they are, in fact, critically interdependent. They need each other to be healthy. You can't have a sustainable system of justice that's built on lies. And you can't have a free and open system of scientific inquiry if the society it exists in is unjust and oppressive. Jackson: So the pursuit of evidence isn't just a scientific value, it's a moral one. Olivia: It's the core moral imperative. Dreger argues that this is fundamentally an American ideal, rooted in the Enlightenment values of the Founding Fathers. She tells this beautiful little story about how the Declaration of Independence was first read publicly in Philadelphia from a platform that had been built for an astronomical observatory. The symbolism is profound: the quest for political freedom and the quest for scientific truth were born together, on the same stage. Jackson: That gives me chills. The idea that freedom of person and freedom of thought are two sides of the same coin. That you can't have one without the other. Olivia: And that's the final, powerful takeaway of the book. In a world of mobs and misinformation, the most courageous and ethical thing you can do is to insist on seeing the evidence for yourself. Dreger closes with a thought that has really stuck with me. She says, reflecting on Galileo's struggle, that sometimes the best you can do—the most you can do—is point to the sky, turn to the person next to you, and ask, “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” Jackson: That's a powerful thought to end on. It puts the responsibility back on all of us to look at the evidence for ourselves and have the courage to speak up, even when it's uncomfortable. We'd love to hear what you think. Does the pursuit of truth sometimes have to take a backseat to protecting vulnerable groups? Or is truth the ultimate protection? Find us on our socials and let's discuss. Olivia: This is Aibrary, signing off.