Book Review: Mad Science

Theodore Gray’s articles was one of the few reasons that I read Popular Science.  His articles about chemistry contained both the educational information and zany antics that you see in Mythbusters.  Mad Science collects fifty five of his Popular Science articles into a hardcover book.

Madness never looked so good

The cover features the author holding a flame in a fireproof glove.  I can not think of a better way to represent the contents of the book .  The photography throughout the book gives it a flair not seen in other chemistry books.  The results of the experiments are shown in page wide layouts with a plethora of colors on every page.

Do Not Try This At Home

The book differentiates it from other science books in that a lot of the experiments are more dangerous than what you see on Mythbusters.  The first experiment involves Theodore Gray salting popcorn using freshly made salt.  And by freshly I mean he blows pure chlorine gas into a bowl of liquid sodium.   Chlorine was at one point used for chemical warfare and  sodium viciously reacts with any moisture. Do I need to say anymore? Of course there are experiments that are relatively safe to perform.  These experiments range from determining whether or not a metal contains to titanium to gilding.  Experiments that are really dangerous are marked with skull and crossbones while safer experiments do not.

The Writing Seals The Deal

Theodore Gray explains the science behind each experiment in a manner that anyone can explain  He also includes in historical anecdotes relating to the experiment on hand. For example an experiment demonstrating the characteristic of flames in pure oxygen mentions the Apollo 1 disaster and the fact that the Saturn V rockets used it as an oxidizer.  Humor is not absent from the book.  The author jokes about ice cream recipes found in chemical engineering magazine and even dresses up like a cowboy.

Salon vs. Huffington Post: Comment Insanity

I have been reading the comments from the recent article by Salon about the horrible medical advice the Huffington Post allows on their website.  The comments run the gamut from supportive of the article to claiming that the medical industry is out to kill you.   Some of them are also disturbingly wrong about how science actually works.  So here is scientists skeptical look at the top five fallacies posted:

1.) Doctors Kill People Too!!!!!

The first comment nets us a logical fallacy in the form of an ad hominen.  The fact that doctors make mistakes seemingly invalidates Doctor Parikh’s that the promotion of crackpot medicine is dangerous. The first problem is that people can be critical of more than one thing.  The second problem is that it does not invalidate any of Doctor Parikh’s arguments.  Evidence is evidence.  It should be evaluated on its own merits. 

2.) West Vs. North Vs. South Vs. East Vs. Up Vs. Down

So apparently randomly trying stuff until it works is a good idea according to greenmamba.  Why does these people always ignore the fact that practices like bloodletting also fell out of favor because it did not work?  Sure drugs like aspirin were discovered from willow bark but it still ignores the fact that toxic substances were also prescribed like Antimony. Zicam is another homeopathic drug that caused harm to people because its efficacy and safety was not tested even after lawsuits.

3.)Anecdotes Abound

Anecdotes can prove anything.  If you were to believe anecdotes can prove long distance healing, all doctors are inept, homeopathy can work for animals, prayer can cure disease, and that you can build a perpetual motion machine.  I am not going to go into details about any particular anecdote because they are equally fallacious.   The problem is that there always multiple explanations as to what can happen.  If you do not utilize proper controls then you have no idea what is happening.  Take the case of a person who takes a homeopathic drug to cure a cancer which is then “cured”.  The reality is that you have no idea what happened.  The cancer could have gone into spontaneous remission,it could have been a misdiagnosis, or homeopathy could have worked defining the laws of physics and chemistry. 

4.) Declining Death Rates

Sharpski points out that death rates were all ready declining when vaccines were created.  That the practices of general health care, sanitation, and a bunch of mumbo jumbo were on the way to eliminating the disease.  The problem is that this argument is ignoring the treatment of diseases.  As someone aptly pointed out the death rates from Polio dropped because of better technology and treatments of people with the disease. Doctors now had the ability to force air into the lungs of people whose chest muscles were paralyzed. Even if you survived the deformities would not be a walk in the park mainly because you might lose the ability to walk.  Geee…. That really sounds like fun.

5.) What Is Science?

And the sad fact is that multiple people have no clue what science is just like GYFort.  He is right that scientists seek information but there is one thing that he neglects to mention.  Scientists know it is easy to fall prey to biases and we try and account for them.  Otherwise it is the equivalent of throwing darts at a dartboard.  You have no idea if what you are doing works,is just random chance, or something else.  In fact this is apparently where the controversy involving Theron Randolph comes in.  He researched a medical condition he called multiple chemical sensitivity.  The problem is that the sensitivity disappears when people are exposed to chemicals in double blind studies which ironically also turns this into a case of fallacy number three. Science is not perfect but it is the best thing we have. 

Picture of the Week: Jellyfish

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Book Reviews

One of the features that I am planning on is to review science books. I am not particularly fond of wasting my money of books that I will not enjoy which means that you will rarely find a completely negative review. This fact does not mean that the books are perfect but in general the positive aspects outshine the negative. I all ready have a list of books and magazines that I am planning on reviewing. Some of the books that I am planning on doing are:

• Make Magazine (More of a book than a magazine)
• Mad Science By Theodore Gray
• Makers By Bob Parks
• The Great Equations By Robert P. Crease

Picture of the Week: Boston Museum of Science

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