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Walter R. Dowdle
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American virologist a public health expert, instrumental in developing the Global Polio Laboratory Network.
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Science Quotes by Walter R. Dowdle (2 quotes)
Alexander Langmuir was quoted in the early 1960s instructing incoming Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) officers that the only need for the laboratory in an outbreak investigation was to “prove their conclusions were right.” (2011)
— Walter R. Dowdle
As given in epigraph to Chap. 9, in Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, The CDC Field Epidemiology Manual (2018), 188. A footnoted reference explains: “Langmuir’s point was not to denigrate the laboratory but to emphasize the power of an investigation based on a solid clinical case definition and established field epidemiologic principles,” in Walter R. Dowdle (corresponding author), Leonard W. Mayer, Karen K. Steinberg, Neelam D. Ghiya and Tanja Popovic (co-authors), 'CDC Laboratory Contributions to Public Health', Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Supplements (7 Oct 2011), 60, 27.
What Pasteur and Langmuir believed—and what history has shown—is that both epidemiologists and laboratory scientists can make independent discoveries that have significant scientific impact, but collaboration across these disciplines has a synergistic effect, yielding public health data that are stronger than either discipline can provide alone
— Walter R. Dowdle
These words are not quoted directly from Walter R. Dowdle, but are a paraphrase of an explanation of an epigraph attributed to him: [“Alexander Langmuir was quoted in the early 1960s instructing incoming Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) officers that the only need for the laboratory in an outbreak investigation was to ‘prove their conclusions were right.’— Walter R. Dowdle (2011)”], to Chap. 9, M. Shannon Keckler, Reynolds M. Salerno, and Michael W. Shaw, 'Optimizing Epidemiology–Laboratory Collaborations' in Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, The CDC Field Epidemiology Manual (2018), 188. These authors paraphrased and expanded on a footnoted reference for which Dowdle was the corresponding author: “Langmuir’s point was not to denigrate the laboratory but to emphasize the power of an investigation based on a solid clinical case definition and established field epidemiologic principles,” in Walter R. Dowdle, Leonard W. Mayer, Karen K. Steinberg, Neelam D. Ghiya and Tanja Popovic (co-authors), 'CDC Laboratory Contributions to Public Health', Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Supplements (7 Oct 2011), 60, 27. [This epigraph was complemented by another: “Sans laboratoires les savants sont des soldats sans armes.”. Without laboratories men of science are soldiers without arms. — Louis Pasteur (1923).]
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
