Hunch

An examination of scientific controversies in which challenging the accepted position led to great intellectual rewards

The word “hunch” has many definitions in the Oxford English Dictionary; this book’s title references this one: “A premonition or intuitive feeling that something . . . may be the case.” Such premonitions are often dismissed by those in academia and the institutional scientific community. Author Claudio Vita-Finzi, on the other hand, demonstrates why these intuitions are essential in fostering originality in scientific research, whether it concerns predicting tsunamis, the possible benefits of soil erosion, or the study of the eleven-year solar cycle. Hunch offers a compelling case about the fragility of received wisdom, and the rewards of following one’s intuition.

Vita-Finzi showcases ten case studies in geology and astronomy where the accepted scientific position on a given topic was open to challenge. In some of these studies lives were at stake, as with the management of the Vajont dam whose overflow killed 2,000 people down valley, or the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, where expensive global monitoring failed to prevent some 200,000 deaths in Indonesia alone. Other studies are primarily scientific, such as the nature of the craters on the planet Venus, the location of major earthquakes in peninsular India, or the processes responsible for the heating of the sun’s surface. Each controversy, and the matter at stake, is presented with enough detailed explanation to appeal to interested readers from both outside and inside the scientific community.