This event features Matt Kaplan, science correspondent for The Economist and author of I Told You So! Scientists Who Were Ridiculed, Exiled and Imprisoned… For Being Right. Kaplan will explore how scientific discovery has often been shaped or hindered by social and political forces. He’ll share stories to illuminate why groundbreaking thinkers from the Victorian to the COVID eras have been dismissed and asks the question, "How can we make the scientific ecosystem better?” 

Event Details 
📅 March 9, 2026 
⏰ 4:30 PM 
📍 Frank Porter Graham Student Union 
🎓 Counts as a Campus Life Experience (CLE) credit 
🖊️ Reception & Book signing to follow 

Kaplan will offer insight into: 

• Why many of science’s most persistent problems are centuries old 

• How cultural and political dynamics shape scientific progress 

• What students and researchers can do to build a stronger scientific future 

• Stories of scientists whose ideas were initially dismissed but ultimately changed the world 

This promises to be an engaging and energizing event for our campus community across scientific disciplines.

Broken Beakers and Brilliant Minds: Fixing The Machinery of Science 

From the energy crisis and feeding eight billion people to defeating cancer and coping with climate change, humanity faces some rather large challenges today. To tackle them, we need science running like a well-oiled machine. Unfortunately, it has more often resembled a clunky old engine: loud, temperamental and prone to breaking down at the worst possible moment. 

It is tempting to blame recent funding cuts for science’s current woes, but focusing only on money rather misses the point. Many of science’s biggest problems have been around for years, sometimes centuries. Scientists have long been criticized, sidelined or attacked for having ideas that were too new, too inconvenient or simply too correct for the people in power at the time. Even truly unscientific behaviors, like character assassination and fraud, are not modern inventions… though they do seem to have enjoyed a recent renaissance. 

The good news is that longstanding problems are not the same as unsolvable ones. Join Matt Kaplan, science correspondent at The Economist and author of I Told You So! Scientists Who Were Ridiculed, Exiled and Imprisoned… For Being Right, for a spirited and insightful talk on the history of these endemic issues and what we can do to finally consign them to the scientific scrap heap.