No one denies that Damadian conducted pioneering work in the field of MRI. He was the first, in 1977, to use the technology to visualize the organs of a live human subject—after practicing on rat livers and a kosher turkey. (The human volunteer was Damadian’s colleague, Larry Minkoff; Damadian himself had a bit more body fat than little Indomitable could penetrate.) Furthermore, Damadian’s central patent on the technology, awarded in 1974, was affirmed by the Supreme Court in 1997. In that dispute, Damadian and the company he founded, Melville, New York-based FONAR Corporation, won more than $128 million in patent infringement penalties from MRI goliath General Electric.
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But it is difficult not to at least consider another explanation: that scientists on the assembly or in other positions of influence could not abide Damadian’s staunch support for "creationist science." Damadian is a firm believer in a literal translation of the Bible: he has no doubt that the earth was created by God during a six-day stretch about 6,000 years ago. Damadian has also served as a technical adviser to the Institute for Creation Research, which rejects the standard model of evolution."The non-biblical account would have us believe that all life originated from a single common ancestor—a slime mold—and give or take a billion years, we’re expected to believe that the descendants of this slime mold climbed out of the ocean and stood up and started giving lectures," Damadian says. "Do the math on that. The sheer statistics of that violate any sense of reality."
I understand. To be honest it read as if wealth was at least part of the point. But my reply applies regardless.
I work every day with a man who does 8 hours of less-than-challenging customer service/data entry work for not very much money. An observer of this mindset would judge him as using little gray matter, and miss the truth.
He's a PhD, author of several books (one or two on this subject) and now a novel, a poet, and recently turned down an offer from Harvard because his mother is terminally ill... and he wants to be with his parents in their twilight years.
Whether measuring wallets or not, one should be careful not to judge a book by it's cover.