I Think You’ll Find It’s a Bit More Complicated Than That
by Ben Goldacre. Published by Fourth Estate www.4thestate.co.uk

Everybody lies said Dr House. Dr Ben Goldacre certainly wouldn’t agree with him. You won’t find a single lie in ‘I Think You’ll Find It’s a Bit More Complicated Than That’, a collection (mostly) of Goldacre’s Guardian columns. You will find misinformation, obfuscation, backpedaling, ass-covering, stonewalling, creative interpretation of results and really quite a lot of cherry picking of data. But no lies. Absolutely not. No siree bob. On an interesting, but I assure you, wholly unrelated note, you will find a short section on the litigious nature of alternative medicine practitioners.

“I Think You’ll Find…” is broken down into several themed sections – academia, government, journalism, quacks, irrationality etc. While some columns follow on from one another they can, for the most part, be read individually. This makes a big book approachable for those with internet-addled attention spans and – since it’s excellent for dipping, – a great bathroom read.

Through 100+ sorry tales of bamboozling fraudsters, egotistical politicians and careless journalists, Goldacre’s central theme remains the same – the lack (or abuse) of evidence-based reasoning in public life. He rails against everything from politicians ignoring drug programme evidence in favor of personal prejudices to (allegedly) dubious alternative health claims to bicycle helmet legislation. Using the example of public health where evidence-based treatments and practices only recently (we’re taking 1970’s not 1870’s) replaced ‘expert opinion’ to the great benefit of patients, Goldacre suggest that perhaps finding out what works best in any field would be a good idea before ploughing ahead with expensive and potentially damaging policies. In chapter after chapter, Goldacre does his best to de-mystify statistics and give us an understanding of what’s actually going on in scientific trails and surveys, how they can be read and mis-read – accidentally or maliciously. Apart from one paragraph on page 130 I’m still baffled by, he does a good job. In fact, the chapter on ‘Building Evidence into Education’ where the benefits and limitations of randomized trials are explained is so clear and incisive it should be mandatory reading for everybody who influences any public policy.

Goldacre has been accused of having something against journalists in particular and I must admit to having some divided loyalties here. Yes, the public good is important. Yes people make life choices based on what they read. Yes journalists and editors have a responsibility. But the truth is that, with some exceptional exceptions, the average jobbing journalist is not so much a campaigner for truth and justice as a stoker – forever throwing stories onto the endless stream of pages that need the same daily feeding regardless of what’s actually happened in the world. Their training is in how to find an angle and tell a story, not understanding statics. For example: put together one study finding no weight loss benefit to exercise and another showing exercisers eat more to compensate and ‘Ta Da!’ – you have your ‘man-bites-dog’ science story; ‘Exercise Makes You Fat’. Of course the first study was the only one out of 43 trials that showed the no benefit result and only 15% of the people in the second study ate more. That doesn’t make a good story though and stories are what sells newspapers (as well as magazines, websites and TV shows). Even supposedly reputable sources can’t always be trusted and it’s heartwarming to read about a class of school kids taking apart the ‘science’ in a Panorama episode.

So what’s the takeaway here? Don’t believe journalists? No. Never trust politicians? Again no. Superstition doesn’t work? Actually, sometimes it does. The one simple takeaway point here is that it’s always a bit more complicated than that and there isn’t a simple takeaway point.

Well that and always check the source.

How to Create a Mind
The secret of human thought revealed
by Ray Kurzweil. Published by Duckworth Overlook www.ducknet.co.uk

Count to a trillion. That may take a while so in the meantime let me tell you about LOAR and Ray Kurzweil’s argument that it will help us reverse engineer the brain and build intelligent machines within a couple of decades.

In ‘How to Make a Mind’, Kurzweil – futurist extraordinaire, de-facto prophet of the Singularity and computer entrepreneur – weaves together brain research, advances in computing and breakthroughs in software. His central tenet is ‘LOAR’ – the Law of Accelerating Returns. One way you’re probably already familiar with LOAR is in the shape of Moore’s Law – the 18 month doubling of computing power that’s held since the ‘60’s. In fact, claims Kurzweil, information technology price/performance has been on an exponential upward curve since the mechanization of the US Census in 1890 and the curve has held steady through every boom, bust and war. No sooner has a ceiling been suggested than some left-field technology bursts right through it.

There are a lot of graphs here trending up to the right on everything from processor speed to complexity of brain simulation. Of course it’s easy to plot existing data, extend it and ride that dotted curve to any future you want. My inner curmudgeon can’t help but add “past performance is no guarantee of future growth”. My inner curmudgeon isn’t alone and technological luminaries such as Paul Allen (co-founder of Microsoft) have disparaged Kurzweil’s views. Kurzweil dismisses these arguments as ‘criticism from incredulity’ and with a 90% plus hit rate for his technological prediction over the last 13 years, he may not be the man to bet against.

As he points out, people closest to the issues are often not the best to ask for predictions. If your day job is face to face with a problem tree then you can’t see the whole forest. Engineers struggling to make micron sized integrated circuits 30 years ago couldn’t imagine the nanometer sizes chips of today. The human genome project took 7 years to sequence the first 1% of the work but trumped critics by taking only another 7 for the remaining 99 % thanks to exponential growth in information technology.

Kurzweil leans heavily on his own work in voice recognition (with a little product placement thrown in) and though interesting in it’s own right, it is – along with the early chapters on pattern recognition in the neocortex – perhaps too exhaustive for the casual reader. An expanded chapter on other researcher’s work in brain simulation might have made for a better overview. There are extensive notes and links though so interested parties can explore further on their own.

Many notable figures have expressed reservations about intelligent machines and while Kurzweil doesn’t specifically address these issues, he does seem to suggest that while we can put consciousness in the machine we may prefer to put the machine in the consciousness. Computing power that forty years ago filled a building now fits in your pocket. In another twenty five it will fit in your blood cells and your mind will expand into the cloud. Personally I’m not sure this last part would be a good idea. I don’t trust the cloud with my email never mind my mind. Who wants a ‘buffering’ message when you’re trying to remember where your keys are?

Did you get to a trillion yet? If you’d counted exponentially you would have got there before you knew it. Before we know it we may have consciousness in our machines. As Kurzweil point out, consciousness is a continuum not an either/or proposition and it will probably start out small. Let’s hope we recognize it in time and not find ourselves in the dock in 30 years facing an AI prosecutor charging us with murder for turning our computers off tonight.

Gut
The inside story of our body’s most underrated organ
by Giulia Enders.
Published by Scribe Publications www.scribepublications.co.uk

This is the fable of three brothers (I can just see the animated short now). They all start off as tiny tubes but rapidly grow and branch into complex players in the body. The first grows into the circulatory system (the heart) and gets all the love stories. The second grows into the nervous system (brain) and solves your problems. The third grows into the gut and no one ever talks about him again. Well, maybe not no one but he’s more the subject of crude jokes than polite conversation. ‘Gut’ by microbiology researcher Giulia Enders wants to end that ghettoisation and bring your best gut forward (sorry). If you’ve ever raised children or know anyone who’s raised children, you’re probably familiar with the ‘Everybody Poops’ book (and Family Guy’s Catholic guilt equivalent ‘Nobody Poops But You’). ‘Gut’ is ‘Everybody Poops’ for grown-ups.

You probably don’t think you need a book like this. After all, you’ve been managing perfectly well on you own for years. Or have you? Are you sitting comfortably? If you are reading this in the bathroom, probably not. Countries that use Western-style porcelain thrones have the highest rate of constipation and haemorrhoids due to the fact that a sitting position is not optimum for intestinal movement and requires us to place extra pressure on our various tubes and valves to overcome resistance. Worry not, Enders has a quick guide (with cute illustration – among many – provided by her sister Jill) to show you how to fix your poor pooping position.

Enders charming prose (translated from the German, so kudos to the translator) makes you look at the processes of your digestive system in a whole new light. She describe the unconscious muscle movements involved in breaking wind as ‘delicate and complex as those of a ballerina’ and vomiting as a ‘tour de force performance’ requiring complex interaction between many players. So next time you’ve had a ‘protein spill’ (Disneyland code) remember to follow it with a ‘Ta-da!’ and a little bow.

The process of eating and excreting and everything in between is not the whole of this book though that is a far more fascinating and clever story that I had assumed (things I learned: you have three tonsils, the reason your stomach is shaped like that, you excrete blood every day – and it’s a good thing). The second half deals with your microbiome – the 100 trillion bacteria that live in your intestine

“It maybe that…” and “probably” are phrases that show up a lot in ‘Gut’. The science of the gut has really only gotten stared over the last couple of years – the “wobbly milk teeth and short pants” stage as Enders puts it – as new diagnostic and research tools are only now revealing the hitherto unsuspected massive complexity of our bacterial buddies.

It turns out that you house an entire – and unique – ecosystem. Those trillions of bacteria aren’t just passive freeloaders but vital workers earning their keep. They digest food for you that you couldn’t otherwise break down, their distribution decides how effective your medications are, whether you’ll suffer from side-effects and whether you’ll grow fat or thin on the same diet (yes, you can have ‘chubbie’ bacteria!). The vast nervous system of the gut is second only to the brain in complexity and has direct connections to it. We don’t know what most of it does yet but ‘gut feeling’ may turn out to be a literal rather than figurative expression. Of course, not everybody is on board this new bacteria train but their objections have the whiff (again, sorry) of early germ theory deniers while this new bacterial paradigm the has the potential to make as great an impact.

Frankly I can’t believe I’ve been operating one of these things for years without instructions. ‘Gut’ is part cutting edge science, part DIY guide, part owners manual and definitely a recommended bathroom read.

Frankenstein’s Cat
Cuddling up to Biotech’s brave new beasts
by Emily Anthes. Published by Oneworld www.oneworld-publications.com

Remember that episode of the Big Bang where Sheldon created glow-in-the-dark goldfish? Real mad-scientist stuff right? Em, no. Though exaggerated for TV, glow-in-the-dark-goldfish are a real thing. They’re called Glofish and have been sold by Yorktown Technologies through US pet shops since 2004 (except in California – hence Sheldon’s DIY fish).

Animal bioscience isn’t as flashy or immediate as phones or drones but it’s been here a while and it’s growing fast in capability and complexity. In ‘Frankenstein’s Cat’, Emily Anthes kicks our chairs and gets us to sit up straight and pay attention.

With a sliver of sea anemone DNA, GloFish were the world’s first transgenetic pet. They won’t be the last. Fancy a non-allergenic cat or a dog that loves only you? If you have the money, you might even consider getting a clone of your favorite furry companion when they pass on. Cloned farm animals are old hat but cats and duplicate dogs have proved less popular and a lot harder as epigenetic variability (or how the proteins DNA codes for are expressed) means that just copying the DNA isn’t enough – as people gored by the evil-tempered clones of passive bulls will attest.

Cloning prize animals is already a bit passé and ‘pharming’ – tweaking an animal’s genes to turn them into pharmaceutical factories is where it’s at. Squeezing a drug for a rare clotting condition from the teat of a goat sounds like something from a near-future SF novel but ‘Atryn’ was approved by the FDA back in 2006.

Living sensors are another field that is growing fast. From collecting deep ocean data to minesweeping, our furry friends have been recruited into ever more varied roles. Spy organizations have always been interested in bugs but now their bugs are, well, bugs. Cyborg bluebottles with listening devices powered by the beat of their own wings are flying off the drawing boards (sorry, couldn’t resist that one) into bunkers and boardrooms. You don’t need to be DARPA to remotely control animals either. DIY cockroach control kits are available on the Internet. For only a few dollars – and a strong stomach – you can build your own cyber-roach. Will kids hack their pets like you hacked your Sinclair Spectrum or is there, somewhere between ants and apes, a ‘Disney effect’ where animals are too cute to control?

We already use animals by the millions for food and science. Adding a new reproitor of skills – whether it’s robo-pets or organ replacement farms – will condemn millions more to being utility objects. If, with the best will in the world, we engineer animals to feel no pain in factory farms will that just rationalize even worse conditions? The moral dilemmas aren’t explored in much detail but maybe we should be making up our own minds where we stand or, at least, realizing, that there is a stand to be made.

Maybe we can use the same bioengineering to help animals survive in the dangerous new environment they find themselves in – the one with us in it.

Cloning can bring back rare – or extinct – animals. Extending the life and reproductive span of endangered species could mean the difference between extinction and survival. We can restore the sight of Red Setters and fix some of the other physiological handicaps breeders have foisted onto generations of dogs. We can put artificial tales on Dolphins and bionic legs on thoroughbreds and more. Anthes’ last chapter is an optimistic panacea where all the bioscience benefits we want for ourselves – all that fitter, stronger, smarter stuff – we share with our furry friends, elevating them along with us to a better, more harmonious world.

Maybe. Or maybe I’m just cynical enough to think we’ll need to bioengineer a better human being first.

The Future of the Mind
The scientific quest to understand, enhance and empower the mind
by Michio Kaku. Published by Penguin Group www.penguin.com

“The brain” said Woody Allen, “is my second favourite organ.”. If he’d know then what we know now he’d probably have rated it higher. As Michio Kaku points out, we’ve learned more about the brain and how it operates in the first 15 years of the 21st century than in the whole of the 20th and with “The Future of the Mind”, he has rounded up all the current research on the brain/mind in one useful, if slightly verbose, place.

Kaku is something of a rockstar science journalist – front man for several TV science documentaries, go-to talking head for science news sound bites and bestselling author. As such, he gets to talk to a lot of folk the average science writer usually can’t such as DARPA (who have all the coolest – and most dangerous -toys) and gets tours of the MIT media Laboratory. The brain science here is as up to date and as straight from the horse’s mouth as you can get in printed book form.

You won’t find much ‘soft science’ here. Kaku is a physicist and when he says science it’s not ‘psychological experiment’ science, it’s ‘stick electrodes in it’ science. Kaku takes just 60 pages to solve the riddle of human consciousness (at least to his own satisfaction) and introduces a three level scale which frankly sounds somewhat simplistic and will likely annoy the bejeezus out of most psychologists and philosophers (so; useful for something then).

Things pick up a lot though when it comes to the folk Kaku interviews, such as Dr. Miguel Nicolelis of Duke University. Dr. Nicolelis envisions total immersion entertainment (think; holodecks), a ‘brain internet’ and collective consciousness. It all sounds pretty crazy but before dismissing it as a flight of fancy you might want to remember Juliano Pinto, the paraplegic man who used a mind controlled exoskeleton to kick the first ball at the Brazil World Cup. He might have looked like a steampunk Iron Man but the brain/machine interface that made it possible was some of Dr. Nicolelis’ work. He’s not just airily speculating about the future, he’s sitting in a lab building it one circuit at a time.

Controlling an exoskeleton with your brainwaves might sound cutting edge but it’s pretty pedestrian compared to what’s going on elsewhere in brain research. We have robots learning to walk by reading the minds of treadmilling monkeys half a world away. There are mice with recorded and downloaded memories – knowledge literally at the flip of a switch. A robot with the beginning of self-awareness (and that’s just a moral minefield right there). We have induced religious visions from magnetic fields (ditto), videotaping dreams, brain to brain thought transfer and, well, a bunch of projects who’s sole purpose would seem to be to land the outlandish and make the outré ordinary.

On the one hand, a lot of it sounds like the science fiction that Kaku incessantly quotes. Hopelessly optimistic researchers talking up harebrained ideas for grant committiees with practical applications forever decades away. But on the other hand… On the other hand there’s the sneaking sensation that we’re getting a look in on the mind-science equivalent of the invention of the transistor. And just like that work at Bell labs in the 40’s, what we have here is clunky, awkward, Rube Goldberg science, some unknown quantity of which might – in anywhere from a decade to never – utterly transform the human experience.

The SF future, it would seem, is barreling down the tracks faster and more unevenly than anticipated. Not the comfortable ‘carry-on-as-normal’ but with robot butlers and spaceships future though. It’s the complex, difficult, uneasy future that challenges what it means to be human.

You might not be able to stop that freight train of future running you over but with this book you’ll at least have some idea of the cargo.

The Beginning of Infinity
Explanations that Transform the World
by David Deutsch. Published by Pelican Books www.penguin.com

Imagine giant War Llamas galloping across the Home Counties – if only some ancient Andean trader had thought to export Llamas to Central America. Or imaging wagon trains of mammoths pushing East through the Black Forrest – if only early North American peoples had domesticate instead of hunting their megafauna. Or, slightly closer to home, imagine the Spartans (those noble, shirtless and ridiculously abbed warriors of the movies) hadn’t brought Athens’ experiment with science and democracy to a pointy end?

In ‘The Beginning of Infinity’, David Deutsch wants to convince you that history’s failures are really down to two things: a lack of imaginative solutions and, more importantly, a lack of belief that solutions are possible at all. For Deutsch, history is essentially a history of ideas – a millennial long contest between pessimistic status quo versus occasional bouts of optimism where people come to believe progress is both possible and desirable.

Humans, he says, have always faced problems – from how to deal with that saber-tooth tiger to how to grow enough to eat to what to do about rising sea levels. Problems are inevitable. But, the optimistic Deutsch argues, problems are also solvable. That the solutions will themselves produce other problems that require solving is also inevitable. In that sense progress is unsustainable, it will always require human ingenuity to maintain it. But tricky as this is and wrong as it sometimes goes, the alternative is a static society and static societies always fail in the face of a dynamic Universe. Our only hope for unlimited progress (the ‘Infinity’ of the title) Deutsch argues, is an unstable, unsustainable, dynamic society supported by creative solutions.

Deutsch is a genuinely brilliant man though possibly a bit arrogant for some – in places it’s a little bit like being lectured at by the physics equivalent of Dr Gregory House. The reader will spend half their time awed by his intellectual grasp and half muttering to themselves at his obtuseness.

He can dismiss Attenborough, Engels and Jared Diamond in a couple of pages but waffles for chapters about star trek transporter problems or Socratic exposition. He also rambles. The narrative veers between George Washington’s first Presidential veto, animal intelligence (not a fan), the evolution of anti-rational memes, objective beauty and various other -often seemingly unconnected – topics. The points are well worth getting to but the path is sometimes tortuous. Fortunately he provides a paragraph-length summary at the end of each chapter if you get a little lost.

Being a physicist, Deutsch spends quite a bit of time on physics. He dives into the nitty gritty of quantum theory and actually manages to make at least some aspects of wave/particle duality comprehensible. This is no mean feat and I could recommend the book on this chapter alone. He tackles parallel worlds with the Mach-Zehnder inferometer – a literal, tabletop physics version of the ‘communicating with the other side’ trope that’s far more spooky for being real.

All of these detours though, lead – more or less – back to his central theme. Ultimately, Deutsch argues, there are no systems that can prevent disasters, guarantee good policies or scientific truths. We can only judge systems by how good they are at correcting mistakes – removing bad policies, leaders or theories and recovering from disasters. With the right systems that foster creativity and criticism we can solve problems, we can progress and we can do so indefinitely.

Imagine some Andean trader had exported Llamas. Imagine Athens’ golden age had endured. What then? Deutsch has his own answer: “if any of those earlier experiments in optimism had succeeded, our species would be exploring the stars by now and you and I would be immortal”.

Imagine that.

How to Win Every Argument
The use and abuse of logic
by Madsen Pirie. Published by Bloomsbury www.bloomsbury.com

“In the hands of the wrong person, this is more of a weapon than a book and it was written with that wrong person in mind”.

‘How to Win Every Argument’ is virtually the antithesis of ‘How Not to be Wrong’. It might as well be subtitled ‘how to be wrong and get away with it’ as Mr Pirie lists the many linguistic and logical flaws commonly to be found in arguments, outlines a brief history of their use and then show us, via examples, how best to take advantage of them.

Do you have to drum up support for a premise as thin as the heels of last year’s socks? Do you have a promise to weasel out of? A corner to escape? This is the book for you. Oh, some lily-livered readers may find offence in Mr Pirie’s bombastic and roundly opinionated prose but such offence simply shows that you sir, are not the caliber of man to wield this work to its greatest effect.

An ideal present for committee members, cult leaders and snake-oil salesmen of every stripe, it will be especially appreciated by those attempting to slither up the greasy pole of local politics.

Careful study will show you how to load your words so heavily you will need the help of two strong men to carry your argument and in no time you will be an unstoppable oration machine.

Unless, of course, your opponent has also read it.

How Not to be Wrong
The hidden maths of everyday life
by Jordan Ellenberg. Published by Penguin www.penguin.com

Make a million dollars on the lottery! In “How Not to be Wrong” professor of mathematics, Jordan Ellenberg tells us how. It worked for Voltaire in the 18^th Century and it worked for MIT student James Harvey in the Massachusetts Lottery. I’ll get back to that.

For a book about mathematics, Ellenberg keeps actual maths pretty much out of the picture. There is a smattering of sums and occasional equations but solving them is not mandatory and you will not have to show your work. If you have an inclination towards puzzles though you may find yourself reaching for pencil and paper on occasion such as working out the chance of your neighbor being a terrorist (why let the NSA have all the fun?). Ellenbers’s ‘pay no attention to the maths behind the curtain’ style deals more with the ‘why’ of mathematics than the textbook nitty gritty of ‘how’ and explores the uses (where to armor your planes) and abuses (top 1% of earners are responsible for 131% of earnings) of numbers as well as the eccentric cast of mathematical innovators, their philosophies, fashions and occasionally vicious in-fighting.

If you’re a maths teacher, just go buy the book. Your students will love you for it, or, at least, hate your class less. For the rest of us; we may not use all the tricks and traps of mathematics but in the age of ‘big data’ we do need to know when they’re used against us.

As for those Lottery wins? They’re genuine, but alas, the method isn’t applicable to the Lottery on this side of the pond. At least I don’t think it is.

Hmmm… Where’s that pencil…?

At the Edge of Uncertainty
11 discoveries taking science by surprise
by Michael Brooks. Published by Profile Books www.profilebooks.com

“What a wonderful world” said Louis Armstrong. Boy, he didn’t know the half of it!

Quick – fake a heart attack. You clutched at the chest and complained about your breathing right? Well, half right – the male half that is. Heart attacks in women often manifest as abdominal pain and nausea instead. This is only one of the many differences in gender responses to illness, pain and medication now being uncovered by researchers. It’s one of 11 areas Michael Brooks lists in ‘The Edge of Uncertainty’ where whole new vistas of ignorance are opening up in domains where, often, we thought we knew it all already.

Brooks takes us on a lightening tour of these new frontiers stopping briefly at animal/human chimeras, robins in eye patches, the personality of spiders and how Audrey Hepburn’s family history contributes to the exoneration of Jean Lamarck. Even the seat of our consciousness is coming apart under scrutiny and Descartes’ “I think therefore I am” is looking hopelessly naive if not downright illusory. And don’t get me started on that Quantum stuff! We thought it was all safely tucked away in big machines under Switzerland and here is comes flying through the trees to slap us right in the nose. Literally. Without quantum effects leaves couldn’t photosynthesise and we wouldn’t have a sense of smell.

It is a wonderful world. Often disquieting, complex, even dangerous but just stuffed full of wonder and we’re standing right at the edge.

Take a step.

The Secret Anarchy of Science (also published as Free Radicals)
by Michael Brooks. Published by Profile Books www.profilebooks.com

The character of Walter Bishop in TV’s ‘Fringe’ was a wonderfully played mad scientist. Alternately kindly, callus, inquisitive and ruthless. A man who’s mind connected to everyday reality the way a skipping stone connects to water, he was addicted to a variety of psychotropic substances, talked to cows and did his best work while on recreational hallucinogens. Not at all like the real, conscientious, white-coated purveyors of distilled truth we know professional scientists to be.

However, if we are to believe Michael Brooks, it would seem that scientists, even the greats (perhaps especially the greats), have a lot more in common with Walter Bishop than the ‘monks of our time’ image many would like to project. OK, maybe not the talking to cows part, but everything else.

I mean, it’s almost understandable that scientists would quaff down slurries of bacteria, infect themselves with parasitic worms and engage in a little light DIY heart surgery to test their theories (incidentally, unless you have a strong stomach, this chapter does not make good after-dinner reading… or before-dinner reading come to that) but who would expect that;

Real doctors would deliberately leave syphilis untreated in 400 men to see how it progressed?
Answer: the US public health service from 1932 to 1972.
Great men would fudge the figures to support their theories then wield their reputation like a cudgel to silence opposition?
A: Einstein, Galileo, Newton and a long (long) list of other notable names.
Major scientific advances would come from dreams, mystic visions or LSD?
A: Einstein (again) Girolamo Cardano, Tesla, Francis Crick.

Brooks presents us with a parade of household names of the great and the good – and sometimes the undeservedly obscure – past and present. Sciences’ ‘secret anarchists’ who’s stories often read more like some biblical prophet than rational men of careful hypothesis and measurement. There’s another biblical parallel to be drawn too. Often these secret anarchist will struggle through the scientific wilderness for years while orthodoxy ignores or silences their revelations before returning in triumph to establish a new orthodoxy.

Usually that means a fight.

That the ‘scientific method’ is more honoured in the breach than the observance is not itself a new concept. Brooks quotes Carl Sagan who wrote of ‘the roiling see of jealousies, ambition, backbiting, suppression of dissent and absurd conceits’ in scientific fields. Something Sagan was familiar with as his first wife, Lynn Margullis, was one of the greatest pugilists.

Her work was on endsoymibiosis – the symbiotic relationship bacteria play in our cells. It wasn’t an original idea but unlike earlier researchers, she didn’t give up after the first 15 rejections of her research paper. She fought – and fought dirty in the eyes of the scientific establishment by writing a book– until she was proven right. Richard Dawkins referred to her work as “the greatest achievement of 20^th century evolutionary biology”.

In fairness to the naysayers, Brooks does point out that the scientific underdog is not necessarily truth’s struggling champion. With the gift of hindsight, we can see that Margulis’ work was unfairly dismissed and her refusal to follow the rules justified. But later she supported Donald Williamson’s theory that caterpillars and butterflies are separate species that somehow merged and contended that HIV does not cause AIDS. How much credence would you have given her ‘crazy’ ideas? More importantly, if you controlled the purse strings, how much money would you have given her research?

So here are our scientists as Brooks entertainingly and insightfully presents them; heirs of the Enlightenment, brilliant and bull-headed, petty and patrician in equal measure. More human and fallible than they would like you (or funding committees) to think but perhaps more engaging and engageable for that.