The Witness was one of those Whistler, Mysterious Traveler, Phantom Stranger kinds of guys who wandered around in the shadows and watched other people's sins. This may have been written by Stan Lee and once again the art has a familiar look but...
The essential story here — for noble reasons, a researcher sacrifices self and quashes results, leaving everyone to think him a failure — is not implausible; but, while the mainstream of a field of scientific study does sometimes bully a heterodox scientist, they do so when there are apparent social implications in his or her work. Here, Sheldon's work had profound social implications, but they wouldn't have been apparent to the mainstream.
The essential story here — for noble reasons, a researcher sacrifices self and quashes results, leaving everyone to think him a failure — is not implausible; but, while the mainstream of a field of scientific study does sometimes bully a heterodox scientist, they do so when there are apparent social implications in his or her work. Here, Sheldon's work had profound social implications, but they wouldn't have been apparent to the mainstream.
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