Gayle Greene on NPR's TED Radio Hour
Gayle Greene, author of the biography The Woman Who Knew Too Much: Alice Stewart and the Secrets of Radiation, and Margaret Heffernan, a CEO and author who had recently presented a TED talk on the importance of conflict to progress, joined TED Radio Hour host Guy Raz to discuss scientist Alice Stewart's process of discovery.
In the 1950s, Stewart noticed an improbable pattern in childhood cancer. While poverty is often correlated with disease, in this case, it was most often children from affluent families who were being diagnosed. Stewart's research began with a questionnaire given to the mothers of these children. "She had a feeling" says Greene, "that the mothers might remember something that the doctors didn't know about." The questionnaire was broad, with questions about diet, lifestyle, and occupation. One of the questions was, "Had you had an obstetric x-ray while pregnant?"
"And nobody had ever asked that question?" asks Raz.
"No, no. It's like this answer, this result, just cracked open an entire edifice of claims that were made about radiation," Greene said.
"As the forms started to come back," said Heffernan, "one thing jumped out with just fantastic statistical clarity, of a kind that most scientists only dream of. And that was, that by a difference of three-to-one—the kids who had died of cancer had had mothers who had been x-rayed when they were pregnant."
In promoting a change in medical practices, Stewart partnered with statistician George Neal. Neal, a recluse, and polar opposite to Stewart, became something of a foil, determined to find what was wrong with her findings—in order to fully verify them.
"It was only by not being able to prove that she was wrong," Heffernan explained, "that George could give Alice the confidence she needed to know that she was right."
"She said it was like playing with a better tennis partner," said Greene. "You should always try to find a better tennis partner."
You can get in on the full conversation on value of conflict in progress here. And for more on Alice Stewart, be sure to read Gayle Greene's The Woman Who Knew Too Much.
