The only thing mid-20th-century scientists disliked more than being wrong was being told they were wrong by a woman.
"As a scientist I dislike that someone might be hurt by my work.
After grumbles from (mainly Wellcome) scientists who disliked the new firm's insistence that all research needed clear commercial applications, a lot of the dreamier types were persuaded to quit.
General Groves was a difficult boss who disliked scientists in general and Oppie in particular, wrote two veterans of the project, Dr. Hans Bethe of Cornell University and Dr. Robert Christy of Caltech, in a remembrance in the current issue of Physics Today.
Cognitive scientists have also found that people dislike losing something much more than they like gaining the same amount.
Another reason to dislike these trends is that young scientists and institutions that choose not to play this game are at a distinct disadvantage.
Nothing in the correspondence suggested any kind of scientific impropriety; at most, we learned — I know this will shock you — that scientists are human beings, who occasionally say snide things about people they dislike.
