Great popular science book

[tulip]

Being as this is a science-based forum, I think you might like WHEN SCIENCE GOES WRONG: TWELVE TALES FROM THE DARK SIDE OF DISCOVERY.

I've just finished it and it is a great, interesting read.

 

It gives true examples of where science has got it wrong - big time!

 

The first story is really creepy. It's about a former Olympic athlete who has experimental brain surgery to cure Parkinson's disease. Unfortunately he dies soon afterwards and the woman doing the post mortem finds a foetus growing in his brain.

 

There's loads of other fascinating stuff like how a man was wrongly convicted and jailed for 25 years for rape on DNA evidence, how weather forecasters failed to predict the Great Storm of 1987 which killed 18 people and another fab one about baboons on ecstasy.

 

There are also stories about escaped anthrax, nuclear explosions, and a NASA space project costing millions ruined because of tiny data errors.

 

Although it's written by a neuroscientist, it's really easy to read. I hope you like it.

[TheUnknown]

Technically, science can't be "wrong". The scientific process can't be wrong because it never truly claims to be "right" it just says "this is most probable, according to the current data".

 

The PREDICTIONS of scientists may be totally wrong, but science tells us what is most coherent with the data. When data is scarce, science can't create a complete picture, and when scientists try to extrapolate or try to determine the missing pieces... SCIENTISTS (not science) can be mistaken.