NOBODY EXPECTS THE SCIENTIFIC INQUISITION:

Nobel Misfire?: Raymond Damadian gets snubbed (Ronald Bailey, 10/09/03, Reason)

Did the Nobel committee overlook the first inventor of MRI? I bring this question up because I had thought that the idea that MRI could be used to image living tissue was first conceived by American physician Raymond Damadian. I formed this impression when, back in the mid-1980s I reviewed A Machine Called Indomitable by New York Times reporter Sonny Kleinfield, which was the story of how Damadian created the first MRI machine. A cursory Google search fairly clearly identifies Damadian as the first inventor of MRI scanning. In fact, Damadian's first MRI machine, Indomitable, is displayed at the National Inventors Hall of Fame in Akron, Ohio, on loan from the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.

Damadian supporters are running a full page ad in today's Washington Post urging people to contact the Nobel committee to "express their outrage" at excluding Damadian. Why did the committee not cite Damadian's work when it awarded this prize? I have no inside information, but I wonder if the committee was swayed by the fact that Damadian, although a brilliant inventor, is apparently a creation science nut. In ironic contrast, Lauterbur's current research is on the chemical origins of life.

We've often defended the right of religious faiths to punish heresy and, for those who have placed their faith in Darwinism and an entirely materialistic origin of the Universe, Mr. Damadian, with his belief that Creation required an intervening intelligence, is surely a heretic.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 12, 2003 6:45 PM