“Richard Dawkins” – Alan Grafen & Mark Ridley (ed)

This is a hommage to Dawkins, split into 25 essays in 7 parts, most focussing on the impact The Selfish Gene has had on the authors and their respective fields. For someone like me, who shamefully still hasn’t read the Selfish Gene, it further persuades to finally get around to it.

Steven Pinker’s contribution, as expected, is clear and interesting and concerned with language, as he deals with some of the confusion Dawkins’ use of the word “selfish” has caused – if human brains, effectively lumps of neural tissue, have conscious experiences like wanting and feeling, “there is no principled reason to avoid attributing states of knowing and wanting to other hunks of matter“. Genes “know” things through the sequence of their DNA, “try” by creating extended phenotypes whose effect is a differential ability to survive and reproduce, leading to feedback loops into the next generation of the gene. Pinker argues that a major achievement of The Selfish Gene was to allow the application of mentalistic terms to biology, which in turn has exerted a positive influence on the study of consciousness, where concepts like wanting and thinking can be dealt with as manifestations of abstract phenomena.

Selfish, of course, does not need to imply ruthlessness or the lack of collaboration, as genes often achieve their imperative by building organisms programmed to commit selfless acts and get along with their relatives and neighbours. We must remember, as Pinker notes, that “the motives of the gene are entirely different from the motive of the person“.

As the last chapter of The Selfish Gene deals with memes, the phrase coined by Dawkins describing cultural replicators, so do some of the essays in this collection. Robert Aunger notes that no significant body of empirical research has developed out of the excitement sparked by the meme theory. The problem seems to be that memes can be used to explain everything, and therefore explain nothing.

One of my favourite essays was that by Martin Daly and Margo Wilson, which discusses the effect of The Selfish Gene on the research of family relations. They identify in-laws as a “cross-culturally ubiquitous source of marital conflict”, discuss why full siblings may cooperate more than half siblings and why people more often comment on an infant’s resemblance to its father than its mother.

As this review presents only a small sample of a sample of fields influenced by Richard Dawkins’ writings, and as nearly every essay in this collection comments on his readability and style, The Selfish Gene and The Extended Phenotype, should probably be required reading for anyone professing an interest in the biological sciences.

“Biohazard” – Ken Alibek

“Biohazard” walks the line between popular science and terrifying cold war politics: it is a blood-curdling account of the Soviet Union’s bioweapons research program, written by Ken Alibek (or Kanatjan Alibekov, before defection), its deputy director and foremost scientist.

I read this during my search for useful quotes for my PhD thesis (which is not on bioweapons!) and couldn’t put it down because I needed to know whether he would end with a reassuring “and that was the end of all our evil mass destruction science”. He didn’t. This book caused quite a stir in 1999, when it was released and Alibek’s main point, beside a need to confess the sins of his past, is to warn the West that Russia and other parts of the former USSR still had much more advanced agents of biological warfare than anyone could imagine.

A lot of this book describes the workings of the Soviet machine, inter-relations between different directorates, agencies and organisations, vicious political blackmail and Cold War diplomacy, and that can be a little confusing for the politically disinterested. Then there are Alibek’s descriptions of the strains of Ebola and Marburg viruses, anthrax, smallpox, tularemia and many other deadly pathogens his Biopreparat institutes were working with and they leave little to the imagination: how much damage could have been done and the horrible deaths people would have died in the event of a biological attack. If the animal testing wasn’t graphic enough, there were also the occasional accidental outbreaks in the testing facilities that killed workers and residents.

Despite his responsibilities and actions, I ended up liking Alibek, as he slowly comes around to once again “honoring the medical oath [he] betrayed for so many years”.

I was a child in West Berlin when the Wall came down and had always seen Mikhail Gorbachev as some sort of gentle and peaceful hero of unification and therefore was distraught to read that he signed off on “the most ambitious program for biological weapons development ever given to our agency”, including funding for a “viral reactor to produce smallpox at the Russian State Center of Virology and Biotechnology”, the facility known as Vector, that is still one of only two centers in the world today legally holding a stock of smallpox.

This book made me so uneasy and should everyone, and I’m not sure I recommend it – only to those with a strong stomach and a sunny optimistic disposition.

“Race, Culture and Intelligence” – Richardson and Spears (ed)

I bought this book at a sale for 50 cent, mainly because of its title and the fact that it was published in 1972. I was hoping for some shocking opinions rife with racism so that I could write about them here and possibly ridicule them. But unfortunately (for me, but fortunately for the 70s as a decade,) it is a fairly enlightened collection of essays by a bunch of sensible scientists, social and real (kidding), that are putting up solid arguments against the followers of Galton-like racism masked as science.

These essays are drawn from three areas concerning intelligence research; psychology, biology and sociology, and the conclusions drawn by the 15 writers all seem to agree that a) an IQ score is a terrible way to measure something as complex and manifold as intelligence and b) it is likely going to be impossible to separate any potential genetic influence from the environmental factors involved in shaping the mind of a human being.

One contributor, John Hambley, points out that insisting on genetic variability to be dismissed (for any trait) gives the “very dangerous impression that recognition of any genetic difference among members of the human species necessarily implies inevitable distinctions, that are judged on an axis of superiority-inferiority.” Instead “variability is a biological resource to be valued”.

I still found some leftovers of 70s vernacular; amazing how unacceptable expressions like “Negroes” and “mongol subnormals” have become. I particularly enjoyed the outdated references to the expected size of the human genome, then shrouded in mystery – it “may consist of as many as five to ten million genes”.

“The Devil’s Doctor” – Philip Ball

Although this biography of Paracelsus starts as a promising guide to medicine and magic in the late middle ages, finishing it turned out to be almost as painful as one of the crude surgery practices described therein.

Philip Ball, a former editor for Nature, introduces Paracelsus, renegade doctor, occasional skeptic, devoted Christian, dabbler in magic, would-be reformer of medicine, boastful megalomaniac, self-styled theologian and passionate alchemist, as a living paradox. There are dozens of contradicting viewpoints that remain of Paracelsus’ writing, outlining a character increasingly difficult to categorize as either “buffoon or genius”, as Ball points out even in his acknowledgements.

Paracelsus was a traveling medic and surgeon (quite distinct professions in those times) with questionable medical qualifications, who made enemies wherever he went. His religion, according to Ball, “might be best described as reformist in spirit, Catholic by default, and wildly unorthodox in practice.” He was “struggling to do something like science with a miner’s coarse lexicon and the mind of a poet”, never actually making a discovery that is still valid today, yet he single-handedly “started a medical revolution and founded a chemical tradition”. He had views about everything, calling Luther and the Pope’s arguments equivalent to “two whores debating chastity”, likening himself to Jesus and setting out dos and don’ts for young doctors: useful (possessing a “gentle heart and a cheerful spirit”), interesting (“should not be a runaway monk, should not practise self-abuse”) and perplexing (“must not have a red beard”). Most importantly, he tried to save lives, more often failing than not, but nevertheless being better at it than most of his contemporaries. Paracelsus advocated the use of personal experience, local cures (determined by astral influences, unfortunately) and his home-made drugs over the outdated recommendations of Galen.

This is not merely, or perhaps even mainly, a biography. Ball presents an account of Renaissance magic and science that is at times much too detailed and drags on for at least four chapters too many, peppered with relevant Paracelsian facts wherever appropriate. Then again, why not? We have here a person who seems to bind together, by his traveling route and larger-than-life nature, conflicts, wars, kings and the birth of a new religion, so maybe using Paracelsus’ life and journeys like a red thread through Renaissance Europe is a great idea. If only it wasn’t quite such a long thread.

“The Skeptic’s Dictionary” – Robert Todd Carroll

For this post I was going to read a dictionary, front to back, A to Zombie in this case, and then make some nerdy quip about it. So I started at acupuncture but was immediately side-tracked and ended up reading this book like a Choose Your Own Adventure: starting with chi, and from there energy, looking up the how-cool-would-this-be-if-it-contained-a-shred-of-truth entry for iridology, then reading about the various ways people use to back up their claims; pragmatic fallacy, regressive fallacy and confirmation bias.

While flicking for those entries I passed others that looked interesting and made notes to return to them. So I did, and even I have not admittedly read the whole dictionary, I must be close.

Carroll is the creator of skepdic.com and in a nice Introduction describes the four types of people he wants to reach with this book (basically everyone except the “true believer”). The entries are written with a palpable skeptic undertone (on avatar: “These notions seem so obviously a mixture of the true, the trivial, and the false that one hesitates to comment on them.”) but will acknowledge any relation to real phenomena fairly.

Some of my highlights included finding out about urine therapy, the different made-to-fit versions of Nostradamus‘ predictions, the Bible code entry and of course the penile plethysmograph, which measures invisible change in circumference of the penis and “[i]n addition to identifying false gays, [...] is used to treat sex offenders and to identify potential sex offenders”.

While reading the Skeptic’s Dictionary I passed an unlikely evening in the company of a tarot card reader and a woman who was about to go to her study group on reflexology, iridology and natural healing. Only politeness and embarrassment prevented me from laying on the skeptic’s arguments and spoiling the mood. If you have fewer inhibitions, by all means buy this book, it will provide you with all the ammunition you’ll need.

“Small World” (or “Nexus”) – Mark Buchanan

It was a mistake to read both Barabási’s “Linked” and this book by science journalist Mark Buchanan. At least in such a short space of time, but I’m tempted to say you’ll really ever only need one or the other. Published within a few months of each other in 2002, not only do these two books cover exactly the same topic (small world, scale-free networks in everday life) but they use the same anecdotes (lame Bill Clinton jokes, Internet hacker stories, the excitement of having an Erdös number – mine is 4!) and even some of the same chapter titles. I can only imagine how mortifying it must have been to find out about each other.

As this review must necessarily be a comparison to the book I read first, let me just say they both have slightly different focal points. Although both authors are physicists by training, Buchanan gives a little more detail about the biological networks found, like the neural connections of C.elegans, while Barabási concentrates more on his own playground – the internet and WWW.

Overall, Buchanan’s style surprisingly is a little less readable than Barabási’s, or maybe I was just not as tolerant the second time round. There is quite an abstract chapter about rivers and the modelling of their meandering course to the sea and Small World is longer without saying much more than Linked.

To be fair, I would still recommend this book as an introduction to network theory. I just felt a little cheated.

“Linked” – Albert-László Barabási

Having some vague notions about connectedness and network topologies I had been looking to learn more about this buzz area. If you are in the same boat, “Linked” is an excellent place to start as it offers nicely sized chunks of information on scale-free networks, power law distributions and the small world phenomenon.

The subtitle “How everything is connected to everything else and what it means for business, science and everyday life”, while being too long to include in the title of this post, gives an idea of what this book is all about.

For example, the omnipresent Six Degrees of Separation is explained and de-mystified (did you know it was first documented in a Hungarian short story and that Kevin Bacon is not actually the most connected actor in Hollywood?) to show that there is a short path between any two nodes (proteins, actors, websites, friends) in many networks, even though that number is not necessarily six.

Barabási opens each chapter with a human-interest anecdote; this and the fact that the only equations he uses are demoted to footnotes make for fluent reading and an accessible style. You will read about the 9/11 attacks, the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, networks of cellular metabolism, the Internet and the World Wide Web (perhaps, like me, you will finally understand what the difference between the latter two is).

“When will a thinking machine, orders of magnitude faster than a human brain, emerge spontaneously from billions of interconnected modules?” Apart from a tiny sub-chapter about how our wired up planet might give rise to a self-aware super-computer, Barabási’s portrait of networks is all positive and instills in the reader the excitement that made him study them in so much depth. I couldn’t recommend it more.

“Is Pluto a planet?”, David Weintraub

No, apparently. Or at least there isn’t a meaningful definition in sight that will make Pluto a planet without also including about 15 other objects in our solar system. Although Weintraub eventually comes down on this inclusionist side, the overall taste the book left in my mind was: No, Pluto is just a large Kuiper Belt object.

“Pluto earned its status as a planet by accident”, we learn, because the people who happened to find it were really wanting to find one to explain the supposed differences in Uranus’ and Neptune’s predicted and observed orbits by the new planet’s gravitational tug. They saw Pluto, called it a planet and the name stuck.

This book raised more questions for me than it provided answers, which I really enjoyed. For example: Could you measure the parallax of a train that looks like it is moving when you are on the one pulling away? How come I didn’t know that the Moon does not actually orbit the Earth but they both orbit a point very close to the centre of the Earth? Who named Pluto? Can you observe the change in planets from prograde to retrograde motion or is it theoretic? Why were the moons of Mars called Fear (Phobos) and Panic (Deimos)? Answers, anyone?

Weintraub takes the reader on a tour through astronomy’s history and while he is very thorough I was hoping for a style slightly more awe-inspiring, given the suitable topic. Thinking about Pluto’s moon Chiron and its likely fate of a change in orbit, “perhaps directly into the Sun or onto a collision course with Earth or Jupiter or Saturn” – this is the kind of spine-tingling sense of foreboding you can only really get from astronomy and I love it.

“Sex, Drugs & DNA: Science’s taboos confronted”, Michael Stebbins

If you enjoy reading a genre that is part personal vengeance, part terrorist handbook, part counter-terrorist manual and part random bits of science education, this is the book for you.

Stebbins makes his intentions clear from the preface in which he promises to “address the stuff that pisses me off the most.” He cites Michael Moore as a great influence and inspiration and if you enjoy Moore’s style of documenting the US government’s failures, Stebbins will be right up your street, too. I kept swaying between being taken over by his Moore-ish negative enthusiasm and feeling slightly patronised by his overwhelming use of “bullshit”, “crap”, and “piss”. Other childish ways of grabbing the reader’s attention are his extremely unsubtle use of irony, inane references to pop culture in an attempt to prove – what? and his tiresome (if sometimes funny) analogies.

Some interesting points are raised in this book, however, and I couldn’t believe some of the ridiculous initiatives and actions he mentions regarding science education and research, like the Wedge Report. The chapter on bioterrorism is intentionally terrifying and despite his apologies does read like a bit of a user’s manual. Other areas covered include GM foods, cloning and sexuality so Stebbins really did pick the most controversial topics topics he could find. A good summary rant is this one taken from the chapter about global warming: “The failure of scientists to educate the public, of journalists to report the truth and of responsible politicians to constantly call out and prevent irresponsible legislation from becoming law has left the deathly stench of irresponsible and morally criminal elements in this nation unchecked and rolling in profit.”

From an editorial perspective the casual relationship with apostrophes, the neon sign book cover (yes, I was judging) and the sans serif font somehow contributed to my feeling of reading a tabloid newspaper (albeit one with a conscience).

I am not sure that scientists are such a homogeneous collection with one voice as he implies with frequent uses of “scientists want” and “scientists have never”, but maybe science does need a mouthy defender like him, and for that Stebbins can be commended, even if some of the issues are of limited interest to readers outside the US.

“The View from Mount Improbable”, Richard Dawkins

“The View from Mount Improbable” is perfect for swotting up on Dawkins when you don’t have much time. It is an extract from the 320-page “Climbing Mount Improbable” and is published as part of a Pocket Penguin series, which is well worth checking out.

Dawkins starts with a summary of his famous metaphor for the results of evolution as an incredible mountain peak with a seemingly unclimbable ragged front. But his metaphorical mountaineers are so “intent [...] on the perpendicular drama of the cliffs, they do not think to look around the other side of the mountain. There they would find not vertical cliffs and echoing canyons but gently inclined grassy meadows, graded steadily and easily towards the distant uplands”.

This short book is then dedicated to the alleged bane of Darwin’s theory: the evolution of the eye. As it takes Dawkins only 56 tiny pages (including drawings) to dispel conclusively all qualms anyone might have with this eye issue, I will not attempt to summarise it further.

Read this book to brush up on arguments against creationists and their continuing reluctance to understand that evolution is, in fact, quite the opposite of chance resulting in perfectly adjusted organisms. Instead, it is a series of random mutations, selected for the small improvements they confer on an organism, over thousands of generations, to eventually give an organ, a mechanism or a species that appears to be made just so for its environment.