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Nine Crazy Ideas in Science: A Few Might Even Be True, by Robert Ehrlich
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AIDS is not caused by HIV. Coal and oil are not fossil fuels. Radiation exposure is good for you. Distributing more guns reduces crime. These ideas make headlines, but most educated people scoff at them. Yet some of science's most important concepts-from gravity to evolution-have surfaced from the pool of crazy ideas. In fact, a good part of science is distinguishing between useful crazy ideas and those that are just plain nutty. In this book, a well-known physicist with an affinity for odd ideas applies his open mind to nine controversial propositions on topical subjects. Some, it turns out, are considerably lower on the cuckoo scale than others.
Robert Ehrlich evaluates, for the general reader or student, nine seemingly far-out propositions culled from physics, biology, and social science. In the process, he demonstrates in easy-to-understand terms how to weigh an argument, judge someone's use of statistics, identify underlying assumptions, and ferret out secret agendas. His conclusions are sometimes surprising. For instance, he finds that while HIV does cause AIDS and the universe almost certainly started with a big bang, our solar system could have two suns, faster-than-light particles might exist, and time travel can't be ruled out as mere science fiction.
Anyone interested in unorthodox ideas will get a kick out of this book. And, as a fun way of learning how to think like a scientist, it has enormous educational value. Of course, only time will tell whether any of these nine ideas will be the next continental drift--the now orthodox account of the Earth's geology that was for years just a crazy idea.
- Sales Rank: #1566982 in Books
- Brand: Brand: Princeton University Press
- Published on: 2002-09-23
- Released on: 2002-09-23
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.50" h x .58" w x 5.50" l, .69 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 256 pages
- Used Book in Good Condition
Most helpful customer reviews
27 of 28 people found the following review helpful.
Interesting, but overly technical in parts
By Dennis Littrell
Do more guns result in less crime? (Or is it the other way around?) Is AIDS caused by HIV? Is sun exposure beneficial? Are low doses of nuclear radiation beneficial? Does the sun have an unseen companion star, the so-called Nemesis hypothesis? Do oil, gas and coal have abiogenetic origins? Is time travel possible? Do faster than light particles exist? Is the Big Bang a cosmologist's fiction?
These are the nine "crazy" ideas George Mason University Professor of Physics Robert Ehrlich examines. He rates the level of craziness of each idea by assigning zero to three "cuckoos." (A fourth cuckoo, meaning "certainly false" is not used.) Some of his conclusions might be surprising. For example, he likes the idea that oil, coal and gas have abiogenetic origins, a view I like as well, but one that goes against the conventional wisdom. He considers the idea that there was no Big Bang as "crazy"(a three cuckoo idea) as the idea that AIDS is not caused by HIV.
This certainly is a great idea for a book. Unfortunately I think Ehrlich spends too much time on the fine points of statistical analysis, especially in the first four chapters, and not enough on the crazy ideas themselves. For example on the possibility that low doses of radiation might be beneficial (Chapter 5) he gives us eleven graphs representing the data from various sources. The graphs require a significant involvement and effort on the part of the reader to appreciate, as does the accompanying analysis. If you are not familiar with statistical terms and ideas, this will be slow going.
At other times, Ehrlich seems unaware of what the reader would like to know. For example, on page 86 he mentions a "group of female workers" who "ingested radium while painting watch dials...when they put the small brushes in their mouths...to keep them pointed." He goes on to note that the radiation they received was "localized" and therefore "a number of them survived doses that on a whole-body basis would surely have been fatal." However he doesn't say how many women were involved or even give a ballpark figure. He doesn't say how those who did not die suffered. He only shows a graph giving a percentage of workers who had tumors.
In one case, I think that Ehrlich got lost in the data and failed to note the obvious. In the chapter on the possible benefits of sun exposure, he notes that the instance of coronary heart disease is less among people spending more rather than less time in the sun. He concludes that the idea is not crazy (zero cuckoos). I won't argue with that, but I suspect that the lower rates of coronary heart disease by those with more sun exposure is better understood as a result of those same people getting more exercise. Just being out in the sun implies getting more exercise that staying indoors. This is a factor that Ehrlich does not mention. He talks about gardeners being out in the sun more than non-gardeners, but seems unaware that gardening is good exercise!
I am also troubled by any analysis of causation based purely on statistical models. If the instance of lung cancer is twelve times higher among smokers than non-smokers, surely smoking is implicated. However, as in the analysis of violent crime stats in areas with more guns versus areas with fewer (from Chapter Two), the differences are in the order of small percentages. Putting aside statistical measurements of error, the fact is, as Ehrlich rightfully notes, there are so many other factors that are unaccounted for in such data that any conclusion must be taken with the proverbial grain of salt.
Ehrlich admits he has "a strong affinity" (p. 11) for one of the ideas, namely that particles exist that travel faster than the speed of light. But I also think he has other biases that he may not be aware of. His enthusiasm for the possibility of time travel to the past allows him to gloss over and downplay some of the problems. For example on page 171 he notes that "we can say for sure" that "backward time travel that allowed you to kill grandpa is impossible," but he fails to note that this same logic forbids the time traveler from doing anything at all, period. The very physical presence of the time traveler would change something even if it's only at a microscopic level, even if it resulted only in microbial paradoxes! Also, chaos theory's "butterfly effect" might flap its mighty wings, disturbing future events in incalculable ways.
When Ehrlich goes easy on the stats and concentrates on imparting information and explaining in denotative language, he does very well. There is a lot of worthwhile and interesting information here for the general reader. I learned, for example, that the orbit of a planet around a binary star is only stable if the planet is at a great distance from the orbiting stars, or if one of the stars is at a great distance from the planet orbiting the other star (p. 102). Also the reason the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary is referred to as the "K-T" boundary and not the "C-T" is that "C" is already used for the Cambrian period (p. 104).
The latter chapters, especially the one on faster than light particles, were a little too technical for me. I had the sense that Ehrlich was addressing his colleagues rather than the general reader.
This is an interesting book with some controversial conclusions that will be of interest to many people, marred by not being as readable or as accessible as it might have been.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
Good, but flawed.
By Gus the Goldfish
As difficult as a book like this is too science-y, this is the main problem of the book, and it gets progressively worse with each chapter. Not to say that I didn't like the book, I really did, but it was at its strongest when Ehrlich is applying his formidable abilities to more common-place topics than astrophysics.
The analysis in last three chapters (involving time-travel, faster than light particles, and the big bang) was difficult to understand, and I went to one of the top engineering schools in the country. Ok, ok, I failed out, but I'm more likely to understand all of that than the layman.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
Nut cracker
By Harry Eagar
Sometimes, not often, crazy scientific theories turn out to be right. Alfred Wegener's 1912 theory of continental drift is one famous example.
Of the nine current crazy theories analyzed by physicist Robert Ehrlich, he judges three to be strong candidates -- he awards them zero "cuckoos."
It would spoil the fun to say which three, but the nine are: more guns mean less crime; AIDS is not caused by HIV; sun exposure is beneficial; low doses of nuclear radiation are beneficial; the solar system has two suns; oil, coal, and gas have abiogenic origins; time travel is possible; faster-than-light particles exist; and there was no Big Bang.
Ehrlich, a writer of gratifying clarity, says he tries to distinguish between crazy theories and nutty ones. The nutty ones are either unscientific (because they are untestable) or violate basic physical laws that are very firmly confirmed, like conservation of energy.
It may not matter much, in daily life, whether the Universe started in a Big Bang or not, but some of the crazy theories have obvious everyday implications, like the one that says sunshine is good for you.
We are bombarded constantly with "scientific" ideas that are not supposed to be crazy but may, in fact, be bogus. The techniques Ehrlich uses to examine these nine far-out ideas are meant to be guides to "how you can sort out the more promising ideas without having to rely on the opinions of experts," equally useful in judging mainstream claims.
In perhaps the only bland statement in the book, he says, "in such areas as the environment and human health, the political biases of proposers may play a large role in how honestly they deal with a controversial idea." No kidding.
A great many of the conundrums presented by these nine crazy ideas concern making sense of statistics, and misrepresented or misunderstood statistics are probably the biggest source of confusion in hot-topic science issues, from global warming to threats to health.
"The human mind has a wonderful ability to see regularities in numerical data, even when none really exist," writes Ehrlich, a professor at George Mason University whose other popularizing books include "Why Toast Lands Jelly-side Down" and "Turning the World Inside Out and 174 Other Simple Physics Demonstrations."
Although "the great majority of strange ideas that are testable are simply wrong," Ehrlich says, "a few might even be true."
There are enough out there that he says he is considering a sequel, "More Crazy Ideas in Science That Might Be True," and he's looking for nominations. (He did write a sequel, "8 Preposterous Propositions," see my review.)
It's a bold physicist who solicits theories -- most have more crank letters than they want -- but Ehrlich's e-mail is rehrlich@gmu.edu.
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