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Loading... When Science Goes Wrongby Simon Levay
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. An enlightening, if somewhat uneven, look at twelve cases in which scientists have either failed radically or engaged in gross misconduct. LeVay does a respectable job covering the various disciplines and manners in which catastrophic failure can occur, though the overall cohesion of the book suffers from the constraints imposed by the drastic differences in circumstance of the individual stories. His attempts to tie them all together fall a bit flat given the difficulties inherent in trying to draw one lesson or moral from incidents whose root cause ranges from unforeseeable mishap to blind hope to blind negligence to deliberate fraud. (  ) sacredwombat | Dec 1, 2009 |  When Science Goes Wrong could more properly be titled When Scientists Go Wrong. Simon LeVay relates twelve stories where scientists royally screwed up. One ignored his own safety: a vulcanologist enters a volcano crater just before it erupts. Some ignored subject safety and ethics: a doctor conducts unauthorized experiments on the brain, speech pathologists try to induce stuttering, gene therapists ignore their own experimental protocols. Some are likely mistakes: a nuclear reactor goes critical, mislabeled bottles result in a drug being labeled as unsafe, a mission to Mars crashes, a dam collapses, a mistaken forecast leaves Englad unprepared for bad weather. Some are outright fraud: a nuclear chemist fakes data to indicate discovery of elements, forensic scientists convict the wrong person. One is both evil and accidental: anthrax for Soviet biological weapons is accidentally released. (Full review at my blog) (  ) KingRat | May 13, 2009 | Review by Jason Lush Really should have been called "When Humans with College Educations To Really Stupid Things", but I guess that wouldn't be sensational enough. When Science Goes Wrong is informative and engaging, but I believe it may have been rushed to press to capitalize on some event. The book covers twelve events in recent history in which seemingly smart people committed decidedly careless or outright stupid deeds, always at the cost of others. Each of the twelve stories are factual and informative, but every one of them is jam-packed with worthless fluff and personal anecdotes that distract from the point. My advice is read the first three and last three pages of each chapter and you'll get all the relevant information you need. ( ) Michele_lee | Feb 27, 2009 | Fun overview of some of science's mishaps of the 20th Century. My personal favorite was the guy with hair growing in his brain. ( ) Jthierer | Jan 29, 2009 |  no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0452289327, Paperback)Brilliant scientific successes have helped shape our world, and are always celebrated. However, for every victory, there are no doubt numerous little-known blunders. Neuroscientist Simon LeVay brings together a collection of fascinating, yet shocking, stories of failure from recent scientific history in When Science Goes Wrong. From the fields of forensics and microbiology to nuclear physics and meteorology, in When Science Goes Wrong LeVay shares twelve true essays illustrating a variety of ways in which the scientific process can go awry. Failures, disasters and other negative outcomes of science can result not only from bad luck, but from causes including failure to follow appropriate procedures and heed warnings, ethical breaches, quick pressure to obtain results, and even fraud. Often, as LeVay notes, the greatest opportunity for notable mishaps occurs when science serves human ends. LeVay shares these examples: To counteract the onslaught of Parkinson-s disease, a patient undergoes cutting-edge brain surgery using fetal transplants, and is later found to have hair and cartilage growing inside his brain. In 1999, NASA-s Mars Climate Orbiter spacecraft is lost due to an error in calculation, only months after the agency adopts a policy of -Faster, Better, Cheaper.- Britain-s Bracknell weather forecasting team predicts two possible outcomes for a potentially violent system, but is pressured into releasing a -milder- forecast. The BBC-s top weatherman reports there is -no hurricane-, while later the storm hits, devastating southeast England. Ignoring signals of an imminent eruption, scientists decide to lead a party to hike into the crater of a dormant volcano in Columbia, causing injury and death. When Science Goes Wrong provides a compelling glimpse into human ambition in scientific pursuit.(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:03 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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