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Not What It Says On The Tin
14 Mar 2005
Scientific Blunders - Robert Youngson - Robinson 1998
*
The old saw of not judging a book by its cover is particularly true of this one. The subtitle - "a brief history of how wrong scientists can sometimes be" and the blurb on the back might lead one to assume that it will be an anti-science (and probably pro-religion) rant. This isn't in fact the case - Youngson is quite respectful of science, and actually wrote the book in order to facilitate public understanding. Sadly, the way that he has chosen and organised his material means that he has not achieved his aim.
For a start, many of the stories he tells aren't scientific blunders at all. For example, the famous debate between "Soapy Sam" Wilberforce and Thomas Huxley at the Oxford Natural History Museum, whilst legendary in the folklore of science, has nothing to do with Wilberforce blundering scientifically. It's more to do with a gratuitous insult meeting an effective riposte. Likewise, the capsule biography of the pathologically shy Henry Cavendish, whilst interesting in itself, has no place in this book. There's a whole section on technological failures such as the Challenger disaster and Chernobyl which were engineering blunders, not scientific ones. Even where the story he tells does feature a genuine scientific blunder, it is not always nailed properly. For example, he tells the tale of Alan Turing and his prosecution for homosexuality and subsequent suicide. The scientific blunder here is the mad idea that homosexuality is caused by an excess of testosterone and could be countered by oestrogen injections, but Youngson does not explain from where this theory came or who was responsible for the inhuman "treatment" regime.
And it's not as if there aren't plenty of genuine scientific blunders that Youngson could have covered but doesn't. The "memory molecules" blunder that Steven Rose covers in "The Making of Memory", for example, or the Minamata Bay incident where a failure to appreciate the cumulative toxic effects of methyl mercury led to the deaths of several hundred people. Or the BSE scandal, where absence of scientific evidence was taken by politicians as scientific evidence of absence.
Youngson's other major blunder is the way in which he has grouped the stories in his book, which is by subject. Why? Surely it would have been better to have stuck with a traditional chronological ordering? Showing how the nature of the blunders in science has changed over the centuries would at least have given the book an overarching narrative. Or he could have grouped them by the type of mistake - frauds, failure to apply basic scientific procedures, vague definitions of terms, misunderstandings of ideas by people outside the field, deliberate or unconscious bias in the interpretation of results and so on.
What's so frustrating about all this is that a book about scientific mistakes is a very good idea. It would emphasise the fact that like everyone else, scientists are human and fallible, and would illustrate the ways in which the theory and practice of science have evolved. Instead, Youngson has gathered some mostly well-worn tales and loosely organised them around his theme without any real attempt at analysis. In doing so, he has prevented anyone else from having a go.
So why did Youngson write this book if he wasn't basically interested in the subject? There is a section on scientific philosophy at the end which, perhaps, gives some clue. To give him his due, he namechecks Karl Popper and rightly describes his seminal contribution to the the distinction of science from pseudo-science. In the final section, however, he describes "the greatest scientific blunder". Which is? Well, he never actually says, and it's hard to tell because it's particularly badly written. But what I think he's saying is that because science is rooted in empirical observations and logic, it can have nothing to say about "matters that transcend human experience" (whatever they may be) and that therefore scientists who attack religion and religious experience as irrational are incorrect (why he didn't just come straight out and say "Oi, Dawkins, you're wrong" I'm not quite sure). So the book does end with a sort of pro-religious rant, albeit in a particularly weaselly form. Whatever. If he hoped to make a contribution to the debate between science and religion he has failed, and this mess of a book does the understanding of science no great favours either.
Scientific Blunders - Robert Youngson - Robinson 1998
*
The old saw of not judging a book by its cover is particularly true of this one. The subtitle - "a brief history of how wrong scientists can sometimes be" and the blurb on the back might lead one to assume that it will be an anti-science (and probably pro-religion) rant. This isn't in fact the case - Youngson is quite respectful of science, and actually wrote the book in order to facilitate public understanding. Sadly, the way that he has chosen and organised his material means that he has not achieved his aim.
For a start, many of the stories he tells aren't scientific blunders at all. For example, the famous debate between "Soapy Sam" Wilberforce and Thomas Huxley at the Oxford Natural History Museum, whilst legendary in the folklore of science, has nothing to do with Wilberforce blundering scientifically. It's more to do with a gratuitous insult meeting an effective riposte. Likewise, the capsule biography of the pathologically shy Henry Cavendish, whilst interesting in itself, has no place in this book. There's a whole section on technological failures such as the Challenger disaster and Chernobyl which were engineering blunders, not scientific ones. Even where the story he tells does feature a genuine scientific blunder, it is not always nailed properly. For example, he tells the tale of Alan Turing and his prosecution for homosexuality and subsequent suicide. The scientific blunder here is the mad idea that homosexuality is caused by an excess of testosterone and could be countered by oestrogen injections, but Youngson does not explain from where this theory came or who was responsible for the inhuman "treatment" regime.
And it's not as if there aren't plenty of genuine scientific blunders that Youngson could have covered but doesn't. The "memory molecules" blunder that Steven Rose covers in "The Making of Memory", for example, or the Minamata Bay incident where a failure to appreciate the cumulative toxic effects of methyl mercury led to the deaths of several hundred people. Or the BSE scandal, where absence of scientific evidence was taken by politicians as scientific evidence of absence.
Youngson's other major blunder is the way in which he has grouped the stories in his book, which is by subject. Why? Surely it would have been better to have stuck with a traditional chronological ordering? Showing how the nature of the blunders in science has changed over the centuries would at least have given the book an overarching narrative. Or he could have grouped them by the type of mistake - frauds, failure to apply basic scientific procedures, vague definitions of terms, misunderstandings of ideas by people outside the field, deliberate or unconscious bias in the interpretation of results and so on.
What's so frustrating about all this is that a book about scientific mistakes is a very good idea. It would emphasise the fact that like everyone else, scientists are human and fallible, and would illustrate the ways in which the theory and practice of science have evolved. Instead, Youngson has gathered some mostly well-worn tales and loosely organised them around his theme without any real attempt at analysis. In doing so, he has prevented anyone else from having a go.
So why did Youngson write this book if he wasn't basically interested in the subject? There is a section on scientific philosophy at the end which, perhaps, gives some clue. To give him his due, he namechecks Karl Popper and rightly describes his seminal contribution to the the distinction of science from pseudo-science. In the final section, however, he describes "the greatest scientific blunder". Which is? Well, he never actually says, and it's hard to tell because it's particularly badly written. But what I think he's saying is that because science is rooted in empirical observations and logic, it can have nothing to say about "matters that transcend human experience" (whatever they may be) and that therefore scientists who attack religion and religious experience as irrational are incorrect (why he didn't just come straight out and say "Oi, Dawkins, you're wrong" I'm not quite sure). So the book does end with a sort of pro-religious rant, albeit in a particularly weaselly form. Whatever. If he hoped to make a contribution to the debate between science and religion he has failed, and this mess of a book does the understanding of science no great favours either.