Ebook Pandora Lab Seven Stories of Science Gone Wrong edition by Paul A Offit Professional Technical eBooks

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What happens when ideas presented as science lead us in the wrong direction? 

History is filled with brilliant ideas that gave rise to disaster, and this book explores the most fascinating—and significant—missteps from opium's heyday as the pain reliever of choice to recognition of opioids as a major cause of death in the U.S.; from the rise of trans fats as the golden ingredient for tastier, cheaper food to the heart disease epidemic that followed; and from the cries to ban DDT for the sake of the environment to an epidemic-level rise in world malaria.

These are today's sins of science—as deplorable as mistaken past ideas about advocating racial purity or using lobotomies as a cure for mental illness. These unwitting errors add up to seven lessons both cautionary and profound, narrated by renowned author and speaker Paul A. Offit. Offit uses these lessons to investigate how we can separate good science from bad, using some of today's most controversial creations—e-cigarettes, GMOs, drug treatments for ADHD—as case studies. For every "Aha!" moment that should have been an "Oh no," this book is an engrossing account of how science has been misused disastrously—and how we can learn to use its power for good.

Ebook Pandora Lab Seven Stories of Science Gone Wrong edition by Paul A Offit Professional Technical eBooks

"The seven stories are about:

1. Opium and opioids (“God’s Own Medicine”)
2. Oleomargarine and trans fats (“The Great Margarine Mistake”)
3. Nitrogen fertilizers and ammonium nitrate. (“Blood from Air”)
4. Eugenics (“America’s Master Race”)
5. Lobotomies (“Turning the Mind Inside Out”)
6. Rachel Carson and DDT (“The Mosquito Liberation Front”)
7. Linus Pauling and vitamin C; Peter Duesberg and AIDs; Luc Montagnier and the antibiotic “cure” for autism (“Nobel Prize Disease”)

Additionally there is an eighth chapter entitled “Learning from the Past” which is about the MMR vaccine and autism, e-cigarettes, Bisphenol A, cancer screening, and GMOs.

One of the themes in the book is the hubris of some very famous scientists who won Nobel prizes and then went on to do and/or promote some very bad science mainly because they could not admit they were wrong. But the real villain in these pages is not the science itself; it is instead the failure of people in the political arena, in the media and even in the medical and scientific journals to weigh the evidence properly thereby lending support to the bad science. Dr. Offit indicts the Environmental Protection Agency (p. 188); Time Magazine, Newsweek, the New York Times (p. 145); the Journal of the American Medical Association, the American Journal of Public Health, the New England Journal of Medicine (p. 124) and others (see page 226). Naturally these mistakes from prestigious organizations are reflective of earlier more ignorant times. Today most are much more thorough before passing judgement. However Offit warns near the end of the book that new mistakes by currently prestigious institutions will be made.

Offit, who is a doctor of medicine and a professor of pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania as well as the author of more than 160 papers in medical and scientific journals, writes in a clear and readable style that is packed with concrete detail and facts, especially historical facts, some of which are appalling and horrific.

Here are some tidbits reflective of Offit’s engaging style:

“Francis Galton, Charles Davenport, Harry Laughlin, Madison Grant, and Adolf Hitler all shared several features: All were, by their definition, Nordic; all believed that Nordics should procreate freely while non-Nordics should be prevented from procreating; and all were childless.” (p. 122)

Today’s view of lobotomies includes the comical: the “Frontal Lobotomy” is a drink made with amaretto, Chambord and pineapple juice; a joke, “I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy” (from Tom Waits); and a T-shirt with a picture of George W. Bush and the words, “Ask me about my lobotomy.”

In regard to Rachel Carson and her imagined Eden-like world before pesticides, Offit quotes William Cronin: “It is not hard to reach the conclusion that the only way human beings can hope to live naturally on earth is to follow the hunter-gatherers back into a wilderness Eden and abandon virtually everything that civilization has given us.” (p. 186)

Writing about Linus Pauling and other august scientists who couldn’t bring themselves to admit they were wrong, Offit offers: “When anybody contradicted Einstein, he thought it over, and if he found he was wrong, he was delighted, because he felt he had escaped from an error.” (p. 197-198)

The essence of Offit’s argument in this book is this quote from page 212: “…all scientists—no matter how accomplished or well known—should have unassailable data to support their claims, not just a compelling personality, an impressive shelf of awards, or a poetic writing style.”

--Dennis Littrell, author of “Hard Science and the Unknowable”"

Product details File Size 4287 KB Print Length 277 pages Publisher National Geographic; 1 edition (April 4, 2017) Publication Date April 4, 2017 Language English ASIN B01FBZXSNO

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Pandora Lab Seven Stories of Science Gone Wrong edition by Paul A Offit Professional Technical eBooks Reviews :

Pandora Lab Seven Stories of Science Gone Wrong edition by Paul A Offit Professional Technical eBooks Reviews

• The seven stories are about
  
  1. Opium and opioids (“God’s Own Medicine”)
  2. Oleomargarine and trans fats (“The Great Margarine Mistake”)
  3. Nitrogen fertilizers and ammonium nitrate. (“Blood from Air”)
  4. Eugenics (“America’s Master Race”)
  5. Lobotomies (“Turning the Mind Inside Out”)
  6. Rachel Carson and DDT (“The Mosquito Liberation Front”)
  7. Linus Pauling and vitamin C; Peter Duesberg and AIDs; Luc Montagnier and the antibiotic “cure” for autism (“Nobel Prize Disease”)
  
  Additionally there is an eighth chapter entitled “Learning from the Past” which is about the MMR vaccine and autism, e-cigarettes, Bisphenol A, cancer screening, and GMOs.
  
  One of the themes in the book is the hubris of some very famous scientists who won Nobel prizes and then went on to do and/or promote some very bad science mainly because they could not admit they were wrong. But the real villain in these pages is not the science itself; it is instead the failure of people in the political arena, in the media and even in the medical and scientific journals to weigh the evidence properly thereby lending support to the bad science. Dr. Offit indicts the Environmental Protection Agency (p. 188); Time Magazine, Newsweek, the New York Times (p. 145); the Journal of the American Medical Association, the American Journal of Public Health, the New England Journal of Medicine (p. 124) and others (see page 226). Naturally these mistakes from prestigious organizations are reflective of earlier more ignorant times. Today most are much more thorough before passing judgement. However Offit warns near the end of the book that new mistakes by currently prestigious institutions will be made.
  
  Offit, who is a doctor of medicine and a professor of pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania as well as the author of more than 160 papers in medical and scientific journals, writes in a clear and readable style that is packed with concrete detail and facts, especially historical facts, some of which are appalling and horrific.
  
  Here are some tidbits reflective of Offit’s engaging style
  
  “Francis Galton, Charles Davenport, Harry Laughlin, Madison Grant, and Adolf Hitler all shared several features All were, by their definition, Nordic; all believed that Nordics should procreate freely while non-Nordics should be prevented from procreating; and all were childless.” (p. 122)
  
  Today’s view of lobotomies includes the comical the “Frontal Lobotomy” is a drink made with amaretto, Chambord and pineapple juice; a joke, “I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy” (from Tom Waits); and a T-shirt with a picture of George W. Bush and the words, “Ask me about my lobotomy.”
  
  In regard to Rachel Carson and her imagined Eden-like world before pesticides, Offit quotes William Cronin “It is not hard to reach the conclusion that the only way human beings can hope to live naturally on earth is to follow the hunter-gatherers back into a wilderness Eden and abandon virtually everything that civilization has given us.” (p. 186)
  
  Writing about Linus Pauling and other august scientists who couldn’t bring themselves to admit they were wrong, Offit offers “When anybody contradicted Einstein, he thought it over, and if he found he was wrong, he was delighted, because he felt he had escaped from an error.” (p. 197-198)
  
  The essence of Offit’s argument in this book is this quote from page 212 “…all scientists—no matter how accomplished or well known—should have unassailable data to support their claims, not just a compelling personality, an impressive shelf of awards, or a poetic writing style.”
  
  --Dennis Littrell, author of “Hard Science and the Unknowable”
• Pasteurization, antiseptics, gunpowder, paper, the screw, vaccines, the theory of evolution, the double-helix of DNA. "What are the most important things science has done for humanity" is a pretty common trope in popular science writing. Scientism is fun and pedagogical, despite the predictable hyperbole; we can't help but marvel at innovations and the science that has made them possible, even if we tend to ignore the failures that accrue along the way. But take that question, turn it on its head, and open the door to uneasiness, rancor and disappointment "What are the worst things science has ever accomplished" is a thorny question to ask it demands a type of self-awareness that rarely rises to the occasion.
  
  Paul Offit's answer to the question is somber, constructive, and close enough to provoke a little fear for what we are capable of doing to one another in the name of war, uncertainty, ideology, incompetence, ego and hope. Each of the seven fables of Pandora's Lab draws on a deep psychological feature, flaw, of human nature.
  
  The first fable shows how greed plus aversion to pain fed of each other to turn opium, that herb Sumerians called "the plant of joy", into the deadly OxyContin -a drug that draws more deaths than car accidents in the US. Offit's description of how the painkiller epidemic came to be is enraging, as it forced into alignment the worst incentives from the medical profession, pharmaceutical industry, media and regulatory agencies. The second fable adds advocacy to the mix, showing how health activism facilitated the introduction of deadly partially hydrogenated vegetable oils (trans fats) into world diet due to some well-intentioned policy that, trying to eliminate one evil, invited a worse one in. The next fable draws on the unintended consequences of new technologies, showing how synthetic fertilizers made possible the demographic explosion of world population during the XX century, but at the hefty price of environmental degradation and its inventor's dwellings into the origins of chemical warfare.
  
  Of all the fables in Pandora's Lab, perhaps because it resonates to current sentiments in developed countries towards migration, none is more gripping than the history of eugenics -an ideological virus that took hold of some of the brightest minds in biology, statistics and law, and through the zealotry of people like Madison Grant, lent the base for forced sterilization in the US and the horrors perpetrated by the Third Reich. Bad science can turn a political cause into an unfathomable weapon, or as Offit puts it beware the zeitgeist.
  
  The next three fables show how desperation for medical treatments can lead to unspeakable things being perpetrated on the weakest among us, as shown by Walter Freeman's indiscriminate applications of transorbital lobotomy, and how the radical application of the cautionary principle on DDT hampered the fight against malaria. The last fable speaks about the dangers of authority disguised as science, retelling how brilliant scientists like Linus Pauling, Peter Duesberg and Luc Montagnier lost their way and recurred to conspiracy theories to back their theories when evidence went the other way.
  
  In the epilogue, Offit writes "Although we hold on to the hope of a better life through science, we need to approach all scientific advances cautiously and with eyes wide open" (p. 241). All fables point to the disastrous outcomes that follow the coincidence of greed and need. The dangers of listening to the loudspeaker of ignorant activism. How the political environment that sees a new technology being born, matters. How our hope for easy solutions to complex problems is almost always misguided. Why we can't rid ourselves from the parroquialism us-vs-them. And, worse of all, how our deference to authority can turn science into the weapon of the whimsical.
  
  Hopefully now we’ve learned the lessons.
• I have been reading Dr. Offit's books for years. For one thing, I'm one of the few remaining 'Rubella' babies left from the 1950's and 1960's in the US. I also went to medical school and worked on HIV encephalitis and Alzheimer's. My opinion about the idiocy of people who refuse to get vaccines is probably the same as Dr. Offit's opinion. And my exposure to research and teaching in the field of pathophysiology and physiology, have just simply whetted my appetite for good books such as Pandora's Lab.
  
  This book is about failures. Research or ideas that have led to catastrophes. I'm not sure I look at some of Offit's choices about which failures to publish in exactly the same way, but the book does inspire a lot of critical thinking skills, which is what a good book along this line should endeavor to do. I actually would have wished that other stories could have and would have been included. I thought it was very interesting about anti-oxidants, because I just read another journal article that demonstrates that many of these so-called antioxidants are causing cancer...and Offit wrote about this prior to current work in the area.
  
  Of course, my own feelings about Andrew Wakefield who did the absolute worse study (and was paid to do it from insurance companies and parents of autistic children) remains my choice for the top BOOBY prize for managing to kill more children world-wide than any other man in existence.
  
  This book is a good demonstration that not all science is good, or used for good. It also demonstrates that people need to choose wisely, and do their own research for jumping into medications or applications before they've been proven useful or at least not dangerous!