Good science, dull people
937265
My dominating thought after the first few pages: does Jurjeviks have a movie contract yet? This book is made for Hollywood: there will be amazing special effects, spectacular violence and exotic scenery with the obligatory, and conventional, sex scenes between two mismatched superstars: ""She touched his hairless chest and he touched her back, heart racing. She smiled, enjoying the effect she was having, and his effect on her." etc. etc. Typical of the impoverished emotional tone of the novel throughout.

 The cast of characters at the Arctic station is suitably diverse: many nationalities with various sexual and political proclivities...mostly liberal, including an Inuit lover for Dr. Hanley. The obligatory condemnation of America for fouling the Arctic environment is not missing (though not pervasive), The Russians  now form a post-modern, ambiguous element:  two good guys, one left-over Secret Police type.

 The denouement seems a bit overdone: drawn out and so almost anti-climactic. Handley's "sentencing" of Director Mackenzie did not ring true to her otherwise compassionate character.

 But you really can overlook all this for the original plotting and the exciting (and, I think, accurate) Arctic science and research/detective work. This is more a novel of suspense and technology than of people. I was reminded constantly of Michael Crichton's Andromeda Strain from 35 years ago.  In sum, the Trudeau Vector is a fun read and I learned a lot.
877502
Author does a good job explaining the misconceptions, many of which are common, and what is wrong with them.  The text is a bit wordy, but you can plow through the reading in pretty short order.

The depressing part is that there are people out there who are REALLY dumb, and they desperately want everyone else to be as dumb as they are.  There appear to be a lot of them too, from the creationists blathering that the Earth is only 6,000 years old to the grade school science dropouts claiming we never went to the moon.  I actually researched all the Apollo Hoax claims years ago when I first became interested in Astronomy.  If I had thought of the authors argument about the Russian scientists admitting we went it would have saved me a lot of research.  Then again, the research taught me that a lot of people know nothing about science.

The book was good enough for me to order 5 new copies to give out as Christmas presents this year.  If people with a clue tried as hard to spread information as the clueless people try to spread disinformation, the world would be a far better place.
1283790
Professor Stenger has written a book that states at the outset what all science books say implicitly--there is no god.  He goes through some talk about Planck and gravitational constants, but he doesn't manage to make those chapters very interesting.

The book becomes interesting when he stops talking about physics and reminds us about the fact that Moses never existed, no recognizable Jesus ever existed, and the Bible is a bunch of myths invented by Bronze age geriatrics with heat stroke.

Yes, the cosmological evidence is strongly in favor of an atheist world view.  Stenger rehashes a lot of territory that is familiar to atheists, but it's still nice to have a physicist use his expertise to show god as a highly unlikely entity created by those who didn't know where thunder and lightning come from.
3871912
The worst part about "Sex, Science & Profits" is its tabloid title because the content of the book is serious, intelligent, and focused.  The book examines Francis Bacon's thesis that government-funded science leads to technology leads to wealth creation, and contrasts it with Adam Smith's explanation that markets and competition create technology which leads to both science and wealth creation.  The book's author Terence Kealey overwhelmingly believes that Adam Smith is correct, and despairs at the fact that vested interests and general stupidity have made Francis Bacon's thesis the mainstream belief in the Western world today, limiting both the progress and advancement of science and technology.

The book is essentially a tirade written a scientist angry and annoyed at the status quo of too much government interference in science:  parents, government-subsidized research, and government-funded science.  Terence Kealey believes that markets evolve organically, and when they're permitted to evolve organically then technology will do so as well.  Companies that do not invest in research and development will be out-innovated by companies that do, and every company - no matter how small - must invest in research and development in order to have scientists that can understand and communicate in an "invisible college" of scientists.  That's why patents are self-defeating:  science requires constant communication and co-operation, and if anyone tries to hoard information then that would have negative repercussions for the advancement of science as a whole as well as for that individual.  Companies themselves can decide what the proper amount of funding for research is based on its needs, and government subsidies to encourage corporate research are either ineffective or counter-productive.  Most pernicious of all is government-funded science which "crowds out" everything else:  the best scientists working with the most resources but without proper motivation, incentives, and feedback loops to ensure that their research is efficient and purposeful.

I'm always suspicious of neat arguments, and Terence Kealey's arguments seemed too neat to be true.  Nevertheless, he does raise interesting questions and concerns about science today.
582420
If you are interested in learning about the science of human longevity, as I was, you will be disappointed in this book. If you are more interested in reading about some colorful characters, the travels of the author, and his meditations on the history (including the poetry and mythology) of the human desire to be immortal, then maybe you will like this book.

I finally gave up on this book in the chapter where he drags his colorful scientist, Aubrey de Grey, back to Ravenna where he had one of his best ideas. The author wants to make a connection between the ancient history of human thoughts on mortality and de Grey's new insight. The idea involves a new way to completely cure cancer. A fascinating approach, and I would have loved to learn more about it. Sadly, the author describes the science behind the idea only briefly before devoting pages to their walk around Ravenna. He prattles on at great length, describing the Basilica of San Vitale, discussing Dante's Divine Comedy, alluding to Yeats poem "Sailing to Byzantium", etc, etc. He also describes how bored and impatient de Grey becomes. The scientist doesn't care about the history. He cares that we're really figuring it out now. And so do I!
3879300
I was prepared to be somewhat bored by this lengthy compendium on the Nazi scientists, but found myself fascinated.  John Cornwell has presented here two very important moral problems for a practicing scientist in just about any discipline, namely who owns the results of the scientific enterprise and to what uses should scientific discoveries be employed?  Scientists still to a large degree work at the direction and with the financial support of the state or industry, or both. We hope that at least most of these activities are in the interests of society, but sometimes they are not, and in many cases we do not always know for sure. In Nazi Germany most scientists did not ask questions about the uses of scientific work at all, or they supported the activities of the government. The few that did raise questions were usually those oppressed by the regime (mostly Jews and dissidents).  Even so there were clear examples of resistance.  Albert Einstein had long recognized the dangers in militarism and had renounced German citizenship before Hitler rose to power. Heinrich Wieland stayed in Germany, helped Jewish scientists, and refused to use the Hitler salute. Max Born and Max von Laue generally worked against the Nazis.  However these were more than matched by the complacent collaborators like Heisenberg, von Braun, Lorenz, von Weiz&auml;cker and others, as well as by the enthusiastic supporter of Nazism, including some Nobel Laureates like Lenard.

Some scientists then fell back on the "scientific discovery is neutral and we are not to blame for uses to which others put it." Some modern scientists still believe this today. However,  the neutrality of science concept is unfortunately not easily defended in the light of such outrages as the prison camp experimentation of a Mengele.  While I in principal favor free access to scientific knowledge, it is a responsibility of scientists, I think, to point out dangers and to oppose unethical methodology and uses of scientific research.  There are grave dangers in allowing  the system to run free with a technology that could destroy many innocent lives (weapons of mass destruction) or might even render the planet unlivable (as we seem to be slowly doing even without such weapons!)

This book is a wake up call and I think Cornwell can be forgiven if he is a bit "preachy" on the subject.  Researchers need to understand the issues so that they are not lured into the same Faustian bargain made by most German scientists during the Hitler era. Scientists cannot remain aloof and pretend that nothing they do has any effect on the lives of people living on this planet.  To do so would show them up as naive elitists who care for nothing but their own prestige.  I thank whatever powers be that a few in Germany had the courage to speak up, but they were, alas, too few! Let us hope that future historians will not be able to say that about us!
4877085
I recently watched a programme about parents who are trying, without success, to make their children geniuses. They do one of two things. They either take sperm from great scientists and hope that genius is easily inherited (which it isn't) or they bomabard their young children with information that is taught in school in the hope that they will learn it all and be a genius on the level of Newton and Einstein. They fail miserably so the programme concludes that "Genius is beyond science" (occasionally they get their child into university earlier than most people but that is ultimately superficial). It is clear that these people do not even understand what genius is:
Genius is what creates something brilliant and original
By "brilliant and original" I mean ideas such as Newton's Laws of Motion, Einstein's Theory of Relativity etc. These are not achieved by everyone except the rare geniuses because our natural ability to think on our own is squelched. As Einstein said of Faraday's dynamo "Faraday never went to school, and therefore preserved the rare gift of thinking freely".
This book is about restoring that gift. Dr Win Wenger discusses "Image Streaming", to restore our lost access to our subconscious. Much more is discussed as well. This could change the face of the planet, and bring back the Golden Age experienced in Ancient Athens.
4622523
The reader may find it depressing to discover that (some) supposed cosmologists are as confused as (some) supposed medical experts and some climate scientists. We suspect politicians, but the uninitiated tend to have faith in science and hence scientists and in the concept of a supposed consensus.  Alas, the author easily makes the case, based on scientific method, that the "experts" who have invested effort, ego, and money (including taxpayer money ) to establish the Big Bang "theory" will continue defending their theory (and dismissing skeptics) even as their egregious position becomes obvious to the lay reader.

The new guys on this block (now mostly old heroes) are the folks who long ago recognized from the empirical data that  the redshift was not applicable to galactic activity (and paid dearly for it) and that gravity plays a lessor role on the galactic scale than electricity and magnetism, and that plasma science holds the answer to the numerous dilemmas introduced by the Big Bang theory.
3234147
Scientists can be lousy communicators.  As a scientist, this is not news to me.  The welcome news is that there are well-worn strategies from other disciplines for how to do a better job, and Randy Olson has outlined them in his primer for those in need of better communication skills.  Some scientists and science communicators may not welcome the entire critique contained in the book, feeling that they are already effective.  Olson's own experiences would seem to suggest that effective communicators are few and far between.  Most scientists will find the advice hard to swallow, but I think that reaction only makes the argument more compelling.

The title is particularly apt; I had to remind myself not to be such a scientist even while evaluating the book.  I wasn't offended at the advice, but the main thesis seemed to suggest that the being good at the endeavor of science wasn't good enough.  "Yikes," I thought, "I need to be a skilled communicator too?!"  Communicating outside of the peer group/specialty is not really part of the scientist make-up (personal experience and Myers-Briggs personality type testing confirm this).  Moreover, it is definitely (as Randy points out) not part of the training we get in becoming professional biologists.  It's hard enough to get the degree and a job.

The book also did a good job of getting me to argue with myself (again, such a scientist).  In the section: The Power of Jack Black, Olson compared the efficacy of and response to gloomy vs. wacky PSAs.  A station programmer picked Olson's wacky one over others, including a more serious one on ocean conservation, because he said that viewers didn't want to see "...such a dark and gloomy message on their TVs."  All I could think of was the anti-pollution "crying Indian" PSA of my youth, which still haunts me to this day.  That seemed gloomy AND effective.  Wasn't that a flaw in the argument?  Then again, that PSA relied on stark visual imagery, instead of hammering you with bleak statistics and facts.  Point, Hollywood.

This book is a must read for scientists.  Even if they don't personally enact the advice proffered by Olson, they should know where they stand in a world of competing communication.  He is not making this up; he has lived the advice he is giving out. And, if we can't do it all, we may all need to get publicists and hire P.R. firms.
2527593
I did really enjoy this book. The concept itself is rather fascinating. I've read tid bits of information throughout the years on the mysteries of the moon (which there are many), about it being artificially made, it being hollow, and it's entire existence not fitting into any neat package, so when I came across an entire book on the subject I was thrilled. As I got into the book though, I realized that most of the theories aren't backed up by current scientific evidence, or NASA documents, or classified Govt documents. The majority of their theories are based upon mainly 18th and 19th astronomers beliefs, and lets face it, these guys, although very intelligent for the times, lacked technology to really have a clear idea on the subject. There are stories from these astronomers claiming to have seen large birds flying across the face of the moon through a telescope that couldn't have been any better than the one I received as a Christmas gift from the local mall circa 1990. A lot of it is merely conjecture on the part of open minded, independent astronomers who knew little about space and still thought Mars would attack some day. So it was a little disappointing in that regard. Also, the book ended very abruptly. It felt like it was missing a few final chapters or something. The authors whole argument goes largely unresolved. I would recommend reading it because it is interesting, just don't expect to have your mind blown.
3447581
I enjoyed the subject and was fascinated on how he tied information theory into such a wide variety of areas of science.

However, I found his writing style condescending. It might be good for someone without a scientific or technical background, but if you have already read a lot about information and complexity, you find his coverage a little "light". [I just have an BS in electrical engineering]

I found his lengthy analogies and mental experiments distracting and imprecise. They got in the way of truly understanding the science. But, others might find them fun.
2841047
It would be very interesting reading material for a philosophy of science course. The scientific world view has become a bit of a religion, and contrary to the precepts of logical positivism, normal scientists have difficulty accepting experimental evidence regarding psychic phenomena because it does not fit in with their world view. If I understood correctly, Radin argues that the majority of the scientific community embraces Newtonian materialism and prefers to relegate quantum mechanics to the sub-atomic realm. The evidence presented in the book suggests that such a division is arbitrary and does not conform to reality. The author quotes Einstein as referring to "spooky action at a distance", because even he had difficulty accepting the implications. The observer effect and other parts of quantum mechanics theory really seem to operate in the big macro world. It was fascinating to read about some of the experiments where computerized random number generaters stopped producing random numbers under influence of human consciousness. Those parts of the book are fun to read.

I didn't give the book 5 stars because there was quite a bit of philosophy of science in it. Radin is a scientist, and the book might be best for scientists. I'm not a scientist, but I studied philosopy of science so I thought that it was very good. Even revolutionary. But parts of it might be unattractive to some readers.

A lot of the material in the book is also covered in Lynne McTaggart's books (The Intention Experiment etc.) and she's a journalist rather than a scientist, so her approach to writing is easier to digest.
4867210
While the concept was a fairly fascinating bit of imaginative cognition done by Mr. Carlson, after the first sequence of the book I found myself skipping whole paragraphs in an attempt to locate the meaningful (or at least interesting) information amidst the blather which occupied the pages. There seemed to me, to be an excessive amount of prattling on without truly saying very much.
I had no problems entertaining the idea of solar influences on the modern human brain. Whether or not it is scientifically sound makes no difference in science fiction. For this story, it is science fact. I did however have a difficult time bringing myself to believe that recessive genes such as blond hair and blue eyes would act as dominant genes and provide the lead female (who is a geneticist and should know better than to think this way) with multiple children whose appearance mirrors her own. Especially in light of the fact that there seemed to be only one other recessivly colored character in the entire book and he was mearly an addition of convenience to the leading male and whose role in the story was wholly unnecessary.
After concluding the book I feel that it would have been much more fascinating either as a short science fiction work which focuses on the science and disregards story line or character development, or if Mr. Carlson had focused his efforts on creating full characters living within a storyline worth following. I strongly believe that his efforts could have been put to much more effective use if they had not been divided as unequally as they were.
1727948
Mr. Tyson has a nice speaking voice and manner, but he is certainly no replacement for Carl Sagan.  The topics covered are arranged very poorly, and he jumps from astronomy to physics to biology to anthropology and to history in a most disconcerting way.  Most viewers would, I'm sure, much prefer a more linear approach, as in The History of the World in Two Hours.  Tyson's presentation is at about a 10th grade level, give or take.  He doesn't hide his Leftist political views, making it clear that he believes in anthropogenic global warming, even though the data has been fudged and there has been no warming for 17 years!  His comparison of the Earth's situation with that of Venus amounts to almost scientific malpractice; he is oblivious to the carbon cycle and the negative feedback loop involving CO2:  the more CO2, the more food, the more plants, the more animals, the less CO2.  In addition, he spouts the usual "modern physics" nonsense of the nuclear theory of the atom, the illogic of Quantum Mechanics, and the absurdity of the Big Bang, black holes, and worm holes.  All in all, I cannot recommend this work.  You would be better off reading the Random House Encyclopedia, with all of its illustrations (if not videos), and which is very, very nicely organized, then slogging through this series of videos.
3542979
I was looking forward to reading how I might contribute to scientific literacy. I have a Ph. D. in science and work in industry and academia (teaching chemistry). While I have worked to increase science literacy with my own students, I try to look for ways to interact more with the public, etc. and thought this book might help to provide some thoughts on how to make this quest happen. I was sorely disappointed.

The authors make it seem as though scientists don't care about what the public thinks. They make broad sweeping claims on how things are based on one or two isolated examples (e.g., Obama administration is great because they did one thing in x vs. Republicans are bad because they didn't do y). I think the lack of communication between scientists and society is that there are few bridges. It's not that the public or scientists are apathetic to scientific literacy, it's that everyone is so busy with their own day-to-day operations that it's difficult to bridge the gap and without specific communications methodologies laid out before either, the time to find the path is limited. People only have so much time and if a laid out path is not straightforward, most often us humans don't take it.

I think what would help is if we had more 'business analysts'. These are folks whose profession is in the area of software design. They understand the science and understand how software needs to be designed. What if we had people who could use this same approach and interpret what the scientists do to the public and look for ways to take the message to the general public? We need more bridgers in society and especially working with politicians.
90062
This book conveys well most of the information (available up through 2008/2009) about astrophysics that one can obtain by reading popular science magazines such as New Scientist and Scientific American.  Mr. Panek accurately describes the physical processes occurring in the universe as they are presently understood.  The book begins very well; the writing is strong and highly engaging.  About midway through, however, it shifts to a more conversational tone, anecdotes pile up and cliches creep in, too much emphasis is placed on personalities.  The reader will notice a cut-and-paste feel in later chapters.  The author describes several linear relationships and the significance of new data indicating that these relationships remain linear or begin to curve --- but he doesn't provide any drawings or graphs, which would have appealed to and been understood by many readers.  Graphs, charts, tables ... they are regularly used in Time, Business Week and the daily newspaper ... educators lament the fact that students have no facility or acquaintance with them.  And here we have a 320-page book about the leading edge of science composed entirely of prose, not a single graph, table or mathematical formula.  At least show us some of Einstein's equations and where he felt he needed to insert his "fudge factor" lambda; surely this would be as interesting to most readers as writing a "1" followed by 500 zeros!

Those who grew up on science fiction in the 1950s and 1960s will remember the overpowering sense of awe and excitement a teenager got from the work of writers like Arthur C. Clarke.  Today, most of those books seem pretty cheesy, while the developments over the past thirty years in astrophysics, effectively communicated in books like this one and others linked to it on amazon, are breathtaking.  I'd wager that events and discoveries over the next thirty years will be much more so.  But still, needed:  a few good new science fiction writers ... .
1654241
Everybody loves to learn about secrets, dark projects and the exciting things that went on during the age of nuclear tests and strange and promising science experiments. We get quite a bit of that in The Jasons, but Finkbeiner somehow manages to write about this subject so dryly that the fun of reading it is soon leached out. She focuses on things she finds to be of interest with great detail and serious attempts of storytelling like with the Trinity Test and subsequent development of the thermonuclear device, the Argus Shot, the ultra low frequency antennae for communications with submarines and attacks on the Jasons by rabid activists during the Vietnam War. But when the topic comes to something she obviously finds less exciting, the book begins to drag on and takes the form of a college essay on a topic the author really couldn't care less about but has to have finished by the end of the week.

The result of these abbreviated and dry patches is the loss of detail or useful information about the projects the Jasons were undertaking. For example, there is a lot that remains to be said about Wither Jason. Why was Jason undertaking climate studies? Why were there requestors in need of knowing if the climate was changing and how? Who were these requestors? Were there any military application to climate studies? The military has attempted to seed clouds to control hurricanes and tropical storms. Yet Finkbeiner makes no mention of these experiments or try to find out if Jason had anything to do with this whether it was encouraging the experiments or doing lemon detection studies that they're so famous for.

There are a lot of quotes interwoven throughout the narrative, so much so that in some places the book begins to take on the feeling of a 250 page article rather than... well... a book. It becomes hard to know who's telling the story, her or the quoted Jason and it's easy to loose track who is talking about what. Overall this is an interesting work, but be ready to sift through a lot of dry reading to get to the interesting parts and be aware that some things which may seem like fertile grounds for more exploration are never really discussed in any depth.