A mostly entertaining rogues’ gallery of scientists gone bad.
Thinking of submitting to experimental surgery? This book might give you pause.
“What makes mad scientists mad isn’t their lack of logic or reason or scientific acumen,” observes popular science writer Kean. “It’s that they do science too well, to the exclusion of their humanity.” Cleopatra, the Greco-Egyptian queen with whom the author begins his narrative, wasn’t exactly mad and wasn’t exactly a scientist, though she did experiment on prisoners and handmaids to discover which poisons were most efficacious and investigate when a fetus’s sex could be first determined in the womb. The story comes from Plutarch, who wasn’t a fan, so it may be suspect. Kean is on surer footing with his later, brightly told anecdotes of a host of scientists and para-scientists who merrily crossed the ethical line in the quest for glory and sometimes wealth. One was William Dampier, who had preternatural gifts for navigation and reading the weather and who gave us “the first meteorologically detailed account of a hurricane,” yet he funded his research through buccaneering. Kean then looks into modern “biopiracy,” which implicates the Asian trade in endangered animals for their supposed medical powers, and then the slave trade, with which early scientific research in Africa was thoroughly implicated. The surgery of the title comes with the invention and immediate abuse of the lobotomy, but before we get to that rather gruesome subject, we spend time in the hands of medical murderers, body snatchers, and merchants in the cadaver trade—which is beset by constant shortages that inspire “digging up buried bodies again or swiping them from funeral pyres and selling them on the ‘red market.’ ” Unabomber Ted Kaczynski makes an appearance, having been broken by a sadistic psychological experiment while at Harvard, as does Annie Dookhan, the felonious forensic scientist whose inventions led Massachusetts to overturn more than 21,500 convictions, “the largest such action in U.S. history.”
A mostly entertaining rogues’ gallery of scientists gone bad.Pub Date: July 13, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-316-49650-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2021
Solid data and reasoned conjecture strike a harmonious balance in a new SETI.
A jocular title does not even hint at the real wonders of this cook’s tour of alien life.
Astrophysicist Frank, author of Light of the Stars and The Constant Fire, has been obsessed with the idea of extraterrestrial life since childhood. After years of dreaming about exploring the cosmos for signs of intelligent life, he and other scientists are on the threshold of a new era of unprecedented discovery in the field of astrobiology. He details not only recent revelations in the detection of exoplanets, but also the search for technosignatures, indicators of technologically advanced species on worlds light years distant. These are not merely elements of science fiction. They are realities now within human reach thanks to the continuing development of ultra-powerful telescopes and to the sea change in a scientific culture that once scoffed at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). Frank’s enthusiasm is contagious, occasionally over-exuberant, and there is plenty of hard science in this survey, which the author presents with economy and accessibility. The book brims with fascinating facts and speculations, from the particulars of astrobiology to Dyson spheres. Frank’s cosmic tour makes stops at such milestones as the Fermi Paradox and the Drake Equation, showing how these 1950s advances continue to inform our thinking about the possibility of technological civilizations. The author also recounts the origins and current manifestations of the UFO craze and how the advancement of actual science has been impeded by 70 years of pop culture images that haunt our collective expectations. Frank advises we look for alien life where it most likely exists: deep space. He also stresses the key point that we have only begun to peer into the universe with instruments capable of breakthrough discoveries, a useful riposte to critics of the effort. Throughout, Frank champions the importance of demanding standards of evidence: “They are, literally, why science works.”
Solid data and reasoned conjecture strike a harmonious balance in a new SETI.Pub Date: Nov. 21, 2023
ISBN: 9780063279735
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A solid foundational education in a handful of lively scientific topics.
Two science podcasters answer their mail.
In this illustrated follow-up to We Have No Idea: A Guide to the Unknown Universe (2017), Cham, a cartoonist and former research associate and instructor at Caltech, and Whiteson, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California, Irvine, explain the basic science behind subjects that seem to preoccupy the listeners of their podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe. Most of the questions involve physics or astrophysics and take the form of, is such-and-such possible?—e.g., teleportation, alien visitors, building a warp drive, entering a black hole). The authors emphasize that they are answering as scientists, not engineers. “A physicist will say something is possible if they don’t know of a law of physics that prevents it.” Thus, a spaceship traveling fast enough to reach the nearest star in a reasonable amount of time is not forbidden by the laws of physics, but building one is inconceivable. Similarly, wormholes and time travel are “not known to be impossible”—as are many other scenarios. Some distressing events are guaranteed. An asteroid will strike the Earth, the sun will explode, and the human race will become extinct, but studies reveal that none are immediate threats. Sadly, making Mars as habitable as Earth is possible but only with improbably futuristic technology. For those who suspect that we are living in a computer simulation, the authors describe what clues to look for. Readers may worry that the authors step beyond their expertise when they include chapters on the existence of an afterlife or the question of free will. Sticking closely to hard science, they deliver a lucid overview of brain function and the debate over the existence of alternate universes that is unlikely to provoke controversy. The authors’ work fits neatly into the recently burgeoning market of breezy pop-science books full of jokes, asides, and cartoons that serve as introductions to concepts that require much further study to fully understand.
A solid foundational education in a handful of lively scientific topics.Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-18931-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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