A Modest Construct

Posts tagged `ethics`

¶ Ender’s Game

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card: Publisher: Tor; Year: 1985/1994; Pages: 384

I was more familiar with Orson Scott Card for his outspoken Mormonism and membership in the National Organization for Marriage—they of the hokey and dishonest “Gathering Storm” commercials—and his views that homosexuality is an artifact of sexual abuse as a child. There are a number of reasons why I could argue why Card is, in fact, kind of a douchebag, but they are (mostly) irrelevant to a discussion of his writing and I’ll eschew them.

Besides, Card would hardly be the first good science fiction writer whose social or political views are either strange or entirely antithetical to my own. Heinlein was a bit of an odd duck, after all, and the man’s canonical. One of my favorites in Dafydd ab Hugh, who’s a proud conservative in just about every way.

The more pertinent question is to what extent—if any—this ideology permeates Card’s writing, and if it makes for a decent book. Ender’s Game, though nowadays marketed to young adults, is a classic piece of science fiction, and manages to make it onto most lists of influential scifi. I’d heard the name for years through various media until I decided that I could no longer avoid reading the damn thing to see what all the fuss was about.

¶ Plastic Fantastic

Plastic Fantastic by Eugenie Samuel Reich: Publisher: Macmillan; Year: 2009; Pages: 272

I remember only vaguely, back in 2002, the story of a scientist who had been exposed as one of the biggest frauds in history. At the time, I suppose, I didn’t follow science news nearly as much as I do now; on the other hands, it’s possible that even a story as big as “the greatest physics fraud in the last 50 years” still didn’t register much in the mainstream news.

When I read the premise of Plastic Fantastic, however, I remembered the scant attention I had paid to the story seven years ago.

The story of Jan Hendrik Schön begins around 1997, according to Eugenie Reich. That was around the time that Schön, who would eventually fool most of the physics community for 4 years, was working on his doctorate at the University of Konstanz, in Germany. Schön eventually found his way into Bell Labs, which at that point was the research wing of Lucent Technology. Reich paints Schön the student as a bright, if not extroverted, brilliant, or adventurous student.

But I’m getting ahead of myself; since a reader of Reich’s book (published in 2009) has at least the distinct possibility of knowing about the scandal, Reich opens with an explicit acknowledgment and brief summary of it: Hendrik Schön, a German researcher at Bell Labs, garnered critical and mainstream praise as a scientific genius at the helm of a number of huge scientific breakthroughs before ultimately being exposed as a fraud who had faked most, if not all, of his data. It took, Reich figures, about four years for Schön’s deception to go from casual fudging of data to egregious, wholesale fabrication and eventual discovery. Does this, she asks, represent a success of the much-vaunted scientific self-correction process, or its abject failure? Let’s find out.

¶ Elephants on Acid

Elephants on Acid by Alex Boese: Publisher: Harvest Books; Year: 2007; Pages: 304

People have done some pretty weird things in the name of science. In my wide and often random reading, I’ve already read about a couple of the experiments that Boese covers in this book.

Boese, a name of some fame in internet circles, is no stranger to odd trivia, and so I was not surprised when Elephants on Acid was full of deliciously quirky bits of science during the last century or so (the first chapter, on galvanization, admittedly stretches back quite a few centuries further). I was surprised, however, at how well researched and well-cited the entire collection was. Boese’s work is impeccable, which perhaps makes the whole concept all that much funnier. From a doctor who drinks vomit to prove that yellow fever isn’t contagious, to an experiment proving once and for all that a baby’s poop smells better to its own mother than it does to everyone else, Elephants on Acid will surprise you with the sheer daftness or silliness of some scientific inquiry.

There is a darker side, of course, to the whole thing. The title experiment, for instance, ends with the early and unfortunate death of the elephant in question. Along with the experiments that measure the chemical composition of farts and the heartbeat of an orgasming housewife, there are also dark spots in scientific history, where zeal for knowledge overrode ethical choices. Or plenty of experiments that will dismay animal lovers. Or simply diminish your faith in humanity (cf. footnote 1).

While Boese provides plenty of exposition for each tale, they are hardly in-depth analyses, nor do they abound with contextual information, so don’t expect something out of a scholarly journal. Still, it’s a quick and fun read, and you’ll learn something despite any attempts to the contrary. Like many books of the trivia genre, Elephants on Acid succeeds admirably in its role as edutainment.

§1929 · November 14, 2007 · (No comments) · Tags: Book Reviews, books, ethics, memes, reviews, science