When Science Goes Wrong : Tales From The Dark Side Of Discovery

by Simon LeVay

Brilliant scientific successes have helped shape our world, and are always celebrated. However, for every victory, there are no doubt numerous little-known blunders. Neuroscientist Simon LeVay brings together a collection of fascinating, yet shocking, stories of failure from recent scientific history in When Science Goes Wrong. From the fields of forensics and microbiology to nuclear physics and meteorology, in When Science Goes Wrong LeVay shares twelve true essays illustrating a variety of ways in which the scientific process can go awry. Failures, disasters and other negative outcomes of science can result not only from bad luck, but from causes including failure to follow appropriate procedures and heed warnings, ethical breaches, quick pressure to obtain results, and even fraud. Often, as LeVay notes, the greatest opportunity for notable mishaps occurs when science serves human ends. LeVay shares these examples: To counteract the onslaught of Parkinson’s disease, a patient undergoes cutting-edge brain surgery using fetal transplants, and is later found to have hair and cartilage growing inside his brain. In 1999, NASA’s Mars Climate Orbiter spacecraft is lost due to an error in calculation, only months after the agency adopts a policy of “Faster, Better, Cheaper.” Britain’s Bracknell weather forecasting team predicts two possible outcomes for a potentially violent system, but is pressured into releasing a ‘milder’ forecast. The BBC’s top weatherman reports there is “no hurricane”, while later the storm hits, devastating southeast England. Ignoring signals of an imminent eruption, scientists decide to lead a party to hike into the crater of a dormant volcano in Columbia, causing injury and death.





When Science Goes Wrong provides a compelling glimpse into human ambition in scientific pursuit.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, History, Essays, Popular Science, History Of Science, Science Nature

372 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 25, 2008

About the author

Dr. Simon LeVay is a writer and lecturer with a background in neuroscience. He is best known for his research on the brain and sexuality, but has also spent many years studying the visual system. He has written or co-authored several books on sexuality, and coauthored books on such diverse topics as earthquakes and volcanoes, extraterrestrial life, and Parkinson's disease. He has even written a novel. Dr. Simon LeVay lives in West Hollywood, California.

Reviews

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was a major disappointment. I'd seen an interview with the author on "The Daily Show" and wasn't that impressed, but bought the book anyway because of the promise inherent in its subject matter. Sadly, that promise remains largely unfulfilled in this pedestrian, and often irritating effort by LeVay. The book is arranged in twelve chapters, each considering a specific instance of what LeVay deems to be 'scientific failure'. These specific aspects of the book bothered me:

1. Several vignettes (e.g. the 1928 St Francis dam break, a 1961 nuclear reactor explosion at the Idaho National Laboratory) clearly deal with engineering, rather than scientific, failures. But throughout the book, LeVay makes little distinction among science, engineering and technology, which makes the title misleading.

2. "I had hoped to find out more about this from Tudor herself but ... she had died a few weeks earlier"
"Dyer ... seems to have disappeared from public view"
"Williams ... didn't respond to my requests for an interview"

The book is studded with this kind of admission. Failure to represent all points of view adequately may be inevitable in an exercise like this, and LeVay does acknowledge this difficulty. Nonetheless, the reader is left with some niggling doubts about his credibility. In a story about an experiment conducted almost 70 years ago, to miss obtaining testimony of the main protagonist by three weeks seems unfortunate, to say the least. And in almost every chapter, it seems, LeVay is forced to admit that testimony of at least one key person was unavailable.

3. One chapter, about the 'failure' of the BBC Met Office to predict a severe storm in 1988 has no discernibly useful comment to make about science, except maybe that computer weather prediction models are often inadequate. But it does give the unsettling impression that LeVay constructed a 'story' where none existed, then collected a bunch of selective quotes to buttress his preformed prejudices. Several times I found myself wondering about LeVay's status as a neutral observer, not the feeling one wants to come away with after reading a book like this. Similarly, the reason for including a vignette about a patient with late-stage Parkinson's disease, who flies to China for fetal-implant surgery forbidden in the U.S., with predictably disastrous consequences, is murky. What point is LeVay trying to make - that submitting to experimental surgery under poor supervision in an inadequately equipped facility is a bad idea? Well, duh! This type of pandering to lurid curiosity seemed better suited to World Weekly News than to a serious book.

4. Maddeningly, in several vignettes, on feels that an opportunity is being missed to write a far more interesting story. A story about confusion of units leading to the loss of the Mars Climate Orbiter and its aftermath suggests at least two more interesting possibilities: an analysis of the culture at NASA which made such errors possible, even likely, or a discussion of the high prevalence (with often deadly consequences) of serious dosing errors in U.S. hospitals. Similarly, LeVay's account of the death of Jesse Gelsinger in the now-infamous gene therapy trial at U. Penn was an even-handed presentation of the facts of the case, but left me wishing for a more illuminating discussion of its implications. The reader is left with the impression that the case dealt a death blow to the future of gene therapy (which seems unlikely). Several interesting questions raised by the case are left largely unexamined, e.g.:

* how scientific ambition can corrupt the scientific process
* the potentially destructive hegemony of the status quo in the biomedical and scientific establishment
* direct funding of clinical research by pharmaceutical companies and associated issues
* the appropriate balance of risk and caution in the regulation of biomedical research

Pointing out cases where things have gone wrong is necessary and useful. But ultimately, unless it fuels a discussion of how things can be improved in the future, it starts to feel like a slightly smug exercise in playing Gotcha!

LeVay's idiosyncratic selection of case studies, his conflation of science, technology, and engineering, as well as a repeated failure to explore the more interesting questions raised by his examples combine to make this book a real disappointment.

[Stephie Williams · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book looks at twelve mistakes in the history of science. Most of these mistakes were made in applied science (or technology). Unfortunately, I have misplaced my copy of the book and the few notes I took. Seeing this, I have no synopsis or commentary to offer.

I will say from the title of the book, that I was disappointed with the content of the book. I thought the book was not really on how science goes wrong, but how applied science and technology can go wrong.

Still the book should be of interest to anyone that wants to learn some of the mistakes made in the name of science with the understanding, that except for a few of the twelve tales, basic science is not really covered.

PS - I had mark this book as read already, but do not recall reading it before, and none of the text looked familiar to me.

[Abu Hasan محمد عبيد · Rating 4 out of 5]

يعرض الكاتب لاثنتا عشرة قصة حول بعض الأبحاث العلمية التي عثر فيها العلماء وضلوا الطريق مما أدى إلى أخطاء فادحة نتج عنها موت أو إصابة أشخاص إصابات بليغة
وكل قصة فيها عبر وفوائد
تتفاوت جودة قصص الكتاب ومدى جذبها للقارئ، لكن يعوض عنها الأسلوب العلمي والجهد التوثيقي الذي بذله الكاتب، وطريقته في عرض الأحداث في قالب قصصي جميل
أكثر ما شدني في الكتاب قصتين:
علم الفضاء يحيد عن مساره
علم تشريح التخاطب: دراسة الوحش

[Cheryl · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is not a good book, I did not even finish it but I wanted to say something about it so here I am.

I have a few issues with this book…

No 1.
It is boring. There are some interesting topics but there is a lot of technical talk here, in varying fields of science, because of this it is fleeting as we don’t have the time to go into any great depth with all the different stories to get through. This meant I couldn’t follow some of this book, at that point it becomes meaningless and I’m just skimming.

No 2.
For a book about science this does not come across as an objective read. This became an exercise in apportioning blame for some pretty serious science mistakes, some of which cost people their lives. The problem is that the author has assigned himself judge and jury which I have issues with in itself. Of course the ‘accused’ will not likely be willing to chat to the author and I don’t blame them, it’s a no win situation for them, who in their right mind would want to talk to an author about their mistakes? Here lies the problem of getting an accurate story. The author instead turns to other scientists/people and takes them at their word. Well of course the other guy would say that they are right and the other person is wrong. Without talking to the person you are blaming it isn’t going to be very balanced. He does comment on this problem himself and the problems he had writing the book for these very reasons but we carry on regardless of these issues. Our book now becomes a bit wishy washy with facts, there seems to be an awful lot of hearsay, and a fair amount of ‘probably’ this happened. That’s not fair or scientific.

No 3.
When you think about the basis of this book it is pretty nasty actually, dragging up a lot of painful history for all involved I imagine.

So overall a very questionable read which did not make for riveting reading. There could have been more to this, it was terribly executed, and I think the project should have been abandoned.

The author is lucky to get 1 star, it does not deserve it.

[Krista the Krazy Kataloguer · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fascinating book. Couldn't put it down. LeVay details twelve instances of scientific mistakes, fraud, and just plain bad science. I had only heard of two of them, the St. Francis dam disaster and the eruption of the volcano Galeras in Colombia, before. The rest were new to me. I was struck with the fact that, in many of these cases, the responsible parties failed to take responsibility, opting to pass the buck instead. I can't believe how the victims of the medical treatments gone awry continued to believe they were being cured despite all the negative effects of the treatment. I suppose when you run out of options, all you have to cling to is hope. Particularly interesting to me was chapter 7, "Nuclear Physics: Meltdown," about a little-known nuclear accident in Idaho in 1961. They know that the mistake was made by one of a crew of 3 men, but they don't to this day know why. That man, by the way, happened to be from Utica, New York, where I work! Funny how you find local connections in the most unexpected places. I hope LeVay writes another book like this, both enlightening and entertaining. Recommended!

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a really good reason for being pro-IRB. While all almost all of science works for advances for the good of man-kind, here are a few good examples of why regulation and oversite are EXTREMELY important. The first story about the guy who grows a fetus in his brain... READ IT!

[Ricardo Moreno Mauro · Rating 4 out of 5]

La ciencia es la manera de interrogar a la naturaleza y sacarle sus secretos. Con el conociemiento científico se potencia la tecnología. El único problema es que la ciencia la hacen los científicos, humanos con todas las bondades y fallas como cualquier otro: amor, bondad, caprichos, envidias, celos, traición. Entonces qué puede salir mal? Que pasa si en la parte más crítica de tu trabajo en realidad estás pensando que parece que tu esposa te engaña con el compañero de trabajo? o que quiero probar mi teoría no importa a que costo, inclusos tal vez creando traumas infantiles o daño físico a otros.

Estas son historias de como las pasiones se mezclan con la ciencia..

R.

[Neveen · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5/5

[Amber Hawes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this for class. Very fun and educational read about what can go wrong in science - particularly when pride/ego is involved.

[Francesca · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was wild at times and I loved it.

I really enjoy reading and learning about both science and the macabre so this was a perfect blend.
The author does a really good job of explaining lots of different topics and critiquing scientific methods fairly.
A number of the topics, each chapter a different one, I’d heard of so it was nice getting a different perspective on those, but a lot of the subjects were new and I think it will be an interesting read for anyone who likes questioning how things come to be scientific fact or how accidents happen.

Brilliant book!

[Michelle | michelledevoursbooks · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have been vacillating through this entire book about whether to give 1 or 2 stars. Upon finishing, I have decided upon 1. You might ask, "then why the hell did you read the whole thing, Michelle?" My answer is that most of the described incidences were quite interesting. Simon Levay in When Science Goes Wrong discusses twelve disasters that resulted during experiments in various fields of science and engineering. These events were varied and well-described. However, I do not recommend that anyone read this book. I have several reasons.

1. The title and subject matter are misleading. The book should be titled When Scientists Do Wrong since the majority of the events described were due to the hubris, attitudes, naivety, and inexperience of scientific professionals. Science in itself is a process of rigorous testing to disprove hypotheses. In fact, science often went *right* in several cases (for example, the ecstasy study) when scientists took criticism seriously, did *science*, and retracted/changed their conclusions with new data. What was described was often not science, just people being idiots.

2. The evidence provided by the author was often unsubstantiated hearsay. He made statements and then identified he was never able or willing to corroborate or prove them. In one instance, he cited an article by the Daily Mail. That would have been fine if the discussion was based on the media's contribution to the aftermath of a disaster; however, it read as if it was a source of facts in the aftermath, along with eye witness accounts (which, in a later section, he discussed were poor pieces of evidence anyways). The author including literally every piece of gossip (often derogatory statements about scientists made by other scientists) made this book out to be one big gossipy fest and not a scientific discussion.

3. The scientific explanations were too technical and sometimes verging on incorrect. First, no lay person will have the background to understand details of neurosurgery, civil engineering, space flight, and nuclear chemistry. It's not a book that is accessible to the general public, although someone with scientific background should be fine. Second, I found his attitude and explanations to several subjects disappointing. Particularly in the last section about nuclear chemistry and the discovery of superheavy elements. Granted, this book was published in 2006 and may be out of date for much of the science discussed, but all elements 107-118 have been discovered and confirmed, with other isotopes detected but still unconfirmed. In fact, the "magic number" and "island of stability" that seemed too implausible to the author are common subjects taught in the chemistry curriculum (I should know, I've taught them). As of yet, they're still theoretical, but so were all other man-made elements.

All in all, I do not recommend this book. The title leads one to believe that the disasters described would actually be due to science. In fact, the author describes many great examples in his epilogue. Instead, what you learn about are people going into active volcanoes and getting blown up because they lack common sense, foresight, and respect for their colleagues and the scientific process.

[Rory Fox · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very readable narration of scientific mishaps. Covering issues from engineering to physics, and experimentation to statistical analysis some of them are arguably more scientific, than others. But they all illustrate issues which can go wrong in applying scientific methodologies.

The stories were written for readers from a non-scientific background. This was a useful editorial approach, but I think it would have been helpful to conclude each story with a more explicit summary of what exactly was the (scientific) methodological error(s) in question.

For example one of the stories involved errors in injecting foetal material into a brain. Its clear that something went wrong, that outcome is indisputable. But its less clear from the story what the error(s) consisted in. Was it the failure to properly test the medication before administering it… but then the patient was dying and might not have lived long enough to benefit from strict testing. Was the error due to some aspect of how the treatment was administered…? Or perhaps there were multiple errors. A little more clarification would have been helpful.

Arguably, one of the most serious problems confronting modern science is the crisis in replication. The author refers to it in the Epilogue, by citing the failure to be able to replicate 8/21 of a sample of studies which appeared in Science and Nature between 2010 and 2015. This is a very serious problem in science, as it potentially wastes resources if people rely upon published results, which later turn out to be unreliable. The problem is sadly predictable, because publication favours the reporting of ‘interesting’ results. Spending a lot of time and resources getting a null result is so problematic for some scientists, that they may be under all sorts of subtle subconscious pressures to misread results in order to have something to report.

Is this a problem within science, or is it a problem within the culture of scientific reporting and publishing? And more importantly what, if anything, can be done to try and solve a problem like that?

Overall these are a highly readable set of stories which can be read in any order, without presupposing any information or expertise. A useful set of salutary warnings.

[Sally · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this. It's everything you want from a lay person's science novel. A romp through some infamous and obscure science screw ups. The main thing though, is unlike many other novels of its type, it's done respectfully. LeVay, a scientist himself, does not take this novel as an opportunity to badmouth, criticise or humiliate his scientific colleagues. If it is schadenfreude that you're looking for, you'll not find it here.
LeVay covers these often truly tragic mishaps with a sense of poise and and accuracy and a thorough reporting of the facts.
My absolute favourite part of this though, is that it gives you just enough information, context and intrigue to want to go and find out more. Since finishing it, I've found a couple of interesting documentaries on a couple of the subjects, and that's always an added bonus.
Definitely a wonderful use of a spare couple of days that will leave you with further obscure and interesting facts to liven up a dinner party, or perhaps that winning edge at trivial pursuit.

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

In these accounts, "science" per se did not go wrong. Science being a process and discipline of applying observation, measurement, logic, and reason to a specific issue, had it been followed well would not have produced some of the stories in this book. The accounts in this book were of science and technology woefully misapplied.

[Claudia · Rating 3 out of 5]

When science succeeds, the scientists are celebrated and feted. But when science fails or when procedures are sidestepped - especially those in place for the safety of any participants - the chance of a mistake happening escalates.

This covers twelve instances where mistakes were made. Some by accident, some due to circumventing procedures and/or recognizing the possibility of a disaster in the making. Weather forecasting errors. Underestimating how close a volcano was to a violent and deadly eruption. Trials and experimental medical procedures for a variety of drugs and diseases. Failure to completely evaluate the geological walls of a prospective dam site - namely the St. Francis reservoir dam in southern California. A nuclear meltdown accident. An anthrax outbreak all due to someone 'forgetting' to write a reminder to change a filter in the logbook. When accused are convicted and go to jail when DNA testing is incorrectly done and evaluated. The difference in metric and standard English measurements when dealing with the space race. Software errors and the discovery of new elements. Is stuttering a handicap or a learned disorder and using orphan children to test the theory.

Any sense of wrongdoing has been likely dealt with over the years since the errors were made and since the book was published in 2008. It's a reminder that anyone can make a mistake when they are more preoccupied and stressed to get the results which can lead to financial and career security, dealing with mislabeled bottles, so focused on the theory that they fail to see the animals and humanity they're working with.

2021-214

[Stefano Giorgetti · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author lists and explain 12 gross mistakes in science.
The book is nicely-written and provides “insights” of how science works … or doesn’t, without going down the rabbit hole(s) of details.

To me, the greatest value in this book is the message to non scientists that science is not static, monolithic, and abstract (set of) disciplines, rather an overall methodology or attitude for dealing with the complexities of our world, comprising processes to check the “established” knowledge and also for changing it.

Being myself a scientist, and aware of these founding pillars, the book didn’t provide significant added value. Also, being curious about the details, I found myself being a bit frustrated for the lack of these sometimes: hence the 3 stars.

But if you are curious about the topic in general, the book might be worth reading.

[Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

My rating is more 3 3/4 stars than 4.

Interesting, educational book. Each chapter is an independent topic, which makes it a good book to read in multiple sittings as you don't need to remember the details of the previous chapter. The basic premise for each chapter is that one doctor/scientist/medical study went against the standard belief of their professional field and the problems that arose from them doing so. Some chapters I found very interesting, some mildly so, and one I gave up on because I was having a difficult time keeping the science straight. (That's another thing with this book being written the way it was. Each chapter is independent so you can skip one and it doesn't matter.)

One of the chapters has the author bringing up his own life. Not sure why that was necessary but... his book, his option.

The book overall was well written and for the most part was a clear read. The biggest issue I had was that it is written in British English and not American English so my brain kept wanting to correct the spelling.

I don't remember any offensive language and there was no sexual content, for those that want to know things like that.

[Kat Orton · Rating 3 out of 5]

a little bit smart for me

I do my best with science, and this is really a great book, but particularly the chapters regarding physics, I really struggled with. I mean I didn’t even understand the ‘error’ let alone the endless paragraphs describing how it could have been avoided and the intricate dissection of what happened… for that I give it a 3, I feel some parts could have been explained for stupid people a little better

[Degenerate Chemist · Rating 4 out of 5]

"When Science Goes Wrong" is a collection of twelve case studies into accidents of a scientific nature. Most of these cases are focused on scientific fraud or when scientists forgo ethics when designing experiments. There are a few cases that are focused on engineering problems.

I really enjoyed this book. The case studies were interesting and at times horrifying. This book can dive a bit into pulpy shock-horror.

[Sara · Rating 2 out of 5]

I just couldn’t finish this one. When I got to chapter 11 I think it just got way too boring. I like the medical and nature ones but when it gets into physics and the periodic table of the elements and all that, I don’t understand it. So I find it boring. Books that I can’t finish I give 2 stars to. The parts I understood I really enjoyed (especially the volcano and Parkinson’s). All in all it was ok, some parts were just hard to understand.

[Simon (֊⎚-⎚) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Honestly, I skipped around quite a bit to the topics that interested me personally. There is a wide range of subjects in this book, most chapters filled with technical terminology, and it’s going to be a drag if you’re trying to read about a topic you don’t have an interest in, or any previous knowledge of. The author doesn’t expand much on what was previously known (most subjects don’t respond to his request for an interview) but the book is still fairly written.

[Bethany · Rating 4 out of 5]

“It is often just one such misstep...that leads to disaster.”

I enjoyed these thoroughly researched screw ups. It makes me feel human. I think we can learn a lot from these good efforts gone wrong, more Han you can by successes. Success seems to be happenstance in comparison to all the ways you can fuck up science, or anything involving humans really.

[David Caldwell · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was really hoping it would be more about good things with bad unintended consequences, but it was more about bad science/bad interpretation of data, so I wasn’t that thrilled by it. The book goes from tragedy to tragedy, some small, some large, and defines the way in which the scientists made mistakes. That would have been a more accurate title: “When Scientists Make Mistakes.”

[Christopher Heckman · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title is a big misleading. Some of the incidents are when _Engineering_ goes wrong, and most are medical experiments (although you could count this as scientific experimentation).

The author also tend to ramble on a bit.

[Kandachamy Vijayakumaran · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting collection of 12 cases where application of science had gone unscientific resulting in immeasurable damage. It is the greed and arrogance of the participants that resulted in these events and science in its true form was still at our help to unravel the follies behind.

[Steve Bera · Rating 3 out of 5]

We have 13 short stories about science from a multitude of disciplines. I think the best stories are at the beginning of the book. All stories are well told, though each could have been told more briefly. Good stories just the same.

[Bridget · Rating 3 out of 5]

Terrible title, but some interesting stories that I haven’t heard before

[Ray Savarda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Actually pretty good. Multiple stories of science gone wrong, by ignorance or malice.

[Hannah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting, but a little loosely held together. Definitely learned a lot of fun stuff, though! Could have wished for a little more science detail in a couple of chapters, but others made up for it.

[B MA · Rating 3 out of 5]

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