Challenge And Controversy Quotes & Sayings

On May 14th, 1796, Jenner scratched the arm of a boy named James Phipps, introducing into his skin a droplet of cowpox pus that he had scraped from a blister on the hand of Sarah Nelmes, a dairy worker. He called this pus "the Vaccine Virus" - the word vaccine is derived from the Latin word for cow. The boy developed a single pustule on his arm, and it healed rapidly. A few months later, Jenner scratched the boy's arm with lethal infective pus that he had taken from a smallpox patient - today, this is called a challenge trial. The boy did not come down with smallpox. Edward Jenner had discovered and named vaccination - the practice of infecting a person with a mild or harmless virus in order to strengthen his or her immunity to a similar disease-causing virus. "It now becomes too manifest to admit of controversy, that the annihilation of the Small Pox, the most dreadful scourge of the human species, must be the final result of this practice," Jenner wrote in 1801. — Richard Preston

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. — Martin Luther King Jr.

The summary of Lambert and Lillenfelt's "Bloodstains" in Scientific American Mind in the October 12, 2007 The Informed Reader passes along many of these authors' strong opinions on complex and controversial topics without informing the readership that the authors' perspective is extreme, polarized, and vulnerable to challenge at many crucial points.
It is clear that false memories can be implanted in about 25% of subjects, when those memories concern issues in the normal and expectable range of experience. However, about 75% of subjects resist such efforts, and efforts to implant memories of abuse or offensive medical procedures are almost universally rejected. Therefore a wholesale attack against therapies that explore patients' memories is unwarranted. "Recovered Memory Therapy" is not a school of treatment. It is a slur used to mischaracterize approaches offensive to the authors' perspectives, designed to evoke an emotional bias against those to whom the slur is applied. — Richard P. Kluft

On some positions, Cowardice asks the question, "Is it safe?" Expediency asks the question, "Is it politic?" And Vanity comes along and asks the question, "Is it popular?" But Conscience asks the question, "Is it right?" ... The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of convenience, but where he stands in moments of challenge, moments of great crisis and controversy. — Martin Luther King Jr.