Customer Reviews

Bold Science: Seven Scientists Who Are Changing Our World

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The seven scientists profiled here are

Craig Venter in genomics

Susan Greenfield in neuroscience

Geoffrey Marcy in astronomy

Polly Matzinger in immunology

Saul Perlmutter in cosmology

Gretchen Daily in ecology

Carl Woese in mircobiology.

Ted Anton, who is a professor of English at DePaul, interviewed all the subjects with the possible exception of Carl Woese--at least his name alone is conspicuously absent from the acknowledgments pages. (Perhaps they had a falling out.) The result is a somewhat breezy, understandably limited, People-like introduction to their work, personalities and lifestyle. There is an introduction and a concluding chapter.

What we can learn from this book is that science as it is practiced today is a highly social and political enterprise where those who would make it big must learn to toot their horn. Indeed, what these seven scientists have in common, aside from their great energy, is a gift for public relations. Some, like Susan Greenfield and Gretchen Daily, have a brash, aggressive style more often seen in the world of business than in the world of science. Venter, the founder of Celera, a company with a lot of venture capital behind it as it sequences the human genome, has meshed the two worlds so completely that he is as much an entrepreneur as he is a scientist. We see here too that success in science today requires an inter- and multi-disciplinary approach as envisioned by E.O. Wilson in Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, a book twice cited by Anton. We can also see that a successful scientist has to be an effective communicator, almost an administrator, in this age of surplus information.

Anton's style is occasionally vivid, sometimes careless and all too quickly done. It appears that he had some sort of deadline to meet along with length restrictions. In some cases he may not have followed up properly. I was annoyed at some points with partial information. For example, on page 84 he is telling the story of Polly Matzinger's accidental involvement with a Private or Sergeant Duffy, a police officer who borrows her car to do some police work. But Anton never makes it clear what happened to Duffy or whether he was a detective or not. Or, on page 85 where Matzinger, in her cocktail waitressing days, tells UC animal behaviorist Robert Schwab that she "never understood why a raccoon did not impersonate a skunk to scare off predators." I didn't get that one. (How?) And Anton doesn't explain. Also, on page 136 Anton recalls a bet between Paul Ehrlich of The Population Bomb fame and economist Julian Simon, Simon betting that the prices of five commodities would not rise over a ten year period. Simon wins the bet, but Anton does not tell us what the commodities were!

I was also displeased by some of the carelessness. Ernest Rutherford is "Earnest" Rutherford in the index and on page 150. Paul Ehrlich becomes Paul "Erlich" on page 137. On page 144 the bacterium tuberculosis is described as a virus! And on page 145 Anton is summing up Gretchen Daily's work in Costa Rica: "They were getting good results, finding that even a small amount of preserved forest...will preserve significantly greater species diversity that would have been expected. The possibility of maximizing tradeoffs was there, if only one knew where to look." After I got past the typo "that" for "than" I still did not know what "tradeoffs" Anton was talking about. Tradeoffs between what and what? I suspect some text was cut and the remaining wording not adjusted.

On the plus side, Anton has the ability to bring his characters to life with concrete details about their habits and their struggles, Geoff Marcy seeing a therapist for depression, Susan Greenfield giving up smoking as a marriage agreement, Polly Matzinger as a Playboy bunny who amassed $500 in parking tickets while sporting a bumper sticker reading "Commit Random Acts of Kindness." He can also be effective with figures of speech, as on page 134 where he is talking about "the vagaries of global warming": "If done improperly, the simplest climate forecasts spaghettied into infinite complexity." Or on page 132 where he is making the point that most microbes don't culture well or easily, so that most "biological work concentrated on the few weeds, like Escherichia coli, that could be studied in pure culture." Occasionally, Anton is able to catch the essence of an idea in a short expression, as on page 173 where he sums up one of Gretchen Daily's ideas: "the predators of insects will count for you the number of insects in an ecosystem."

I wonder if Anton had planned a larger book, perhaps one with photographs of the scientists in the field or in their lab, but for some reason a book that had to be abandoned. At any rate this book could have been outstanding had it been better edited and copyread, had it included photographs of the scientists (one picture here would indeed be worth a thousand words) and had Anton included short bibliographies of the published work of his seven scientists. As is, I think this might be valuable for those people thinking of starting a career in science, or for those just beginning their careers. Anton makes it clear that the talents required to rise to the top are often extraneous to the day-to-day work of the scientist, and that would be a good thing for someone just starting out to know.

Bold Science, a hegegraphy of profiles about seven famous scientists and how they work,reads like vinettes from a Coppola film. I am surprised that Hollywood has missed this riveting view into the world of the technical, political, and social worlds of the sciences. After all, they made a film of Susan Orlean's The Orchard Thief. Anton, a professor who has taught me much about writing at DePaul University, builds a strong narrative by weaving character details with facts about hard core scientific discovery and tales of the political struggle to obtain grant funding in the latter part of the 20th Century. This should be a must read on every intro to science course list. Anton interviews Craig Venter, the geneticist, Susan Greenfield, the neuroscientist, Geoff Marcy, the astronomer, Polly Matzinger, the immunologist, Saul Perlmutter, the cosmologist, Gretchen Daily, and Carl Woese. Like Tom Wolfe, Norman Mailer, Truman Capote, and Hunter Thompson before him, Anton follows these seven characters until he is able to weave a compelling narrative around the science they do. The result: he shows seven people who love science and defy the mysterious nature of the scientist documenting their humanity.

I picked up this book based on Ted Anton's reputation, but concerned that it might be one of those "great people in science" type books that are foisted on junior high students as Bar Mitzvah presents. I needn't have worried. Anton makes the personal details vivid (cold winter hours in the observatory, the struggles to write computer code) but spends equal time making sure we understand the science involved. I just wish there were an update so I could find out how these discoveries have held up.

This is the best collection of its kind I've ever read, and one of the 10 best non-fiction books I've ever read on any topic. I ran across this book as part of my research on creative organizations and people, and was stunned by the quality. The scientists are quirky and fascinating, and Anton's writing and editing is as good as it gets. Anton is the Red Smith of science writers.