Customer Reviews

Guinea Pig Scientists: Bold Self-Experimenters in Science and Medicine (Outstanding Science Trade Books for Students K-12)

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Guinea Pig Scientists contains nine chapters, each on a different scientist who made a difference by plaicng themself in harm's way to varying degrees. The book is hardly in depth, but it covers the most important aspects of each scientists methods and what was learned from them. This would be a great book to use to get adolescents interested in scientific inquiry. It is an engaging read, and the gross out factor will bring in even reluctant readers. Be warned: not all of the scientists survive their experiments.

GUINEA PIG SCIENTISTS by Leslie Dendy and Mel Boring share with readers ten true stories of men and women who have been so dedicated to scientific research that they have experimented on themselves. These include George Fordyce, Lazzaro Spallanzani, William Morton, Horace Wells, Daniel Carrion, Jesse Lazear, Marie and Pierre Curie, John Scott and Jack Haldane, Werner Forssmann, John Paul Stapp, and Stefania Follini.

Each chapter includes several illustrations (sketchs, and/or photographs which are all captioned), several sidebars filled with additional information, and concludes with a "Now We Know" section which brings the research up to date. (The book is arranged chronologically).

Also included is "History's Timetable" which lists (starting in the 1500s) key scientists and discoveries up to the present day. Hoping to encourage further study, they have included other guinea pig scientists in italicized font throughout the timetable.

GUINEA PIG SCIENTISTS is well-documented. They list bibliographical references for each chapter in addition to providing bibliographical notes for each quotation. It is also indexed.

GUINEA PIG SCIENTISTS is a fascinating book. With chapter titles like "Swallowing Bags, Bones, and Tubes" "The Sad Story of Laughing Gas" and "The Night of the Deadly Blue Glow" it's sure to appeal to a wide variety of readers.

Guinea Pig Scientists is a wonderful introduction for putting a face and an exciting story behind a particular science. I expect many children (and adults) to go read further about different topics or the scientists because their appetites have finally been whetted.

Guinea Pig Scientists might make for great supplementary reading in a middle school science class. Students might take note of the dedication, bravery, persistence and unparalleled ethics of the scientific pioneers featured in this book. Some efforts resulted in glory and fame, some resulted in ridicule and ostracism, and some ultimately ended in death. All efforts however resulted in enormous gain for science and mankind.

There is some fascinating information here like the scientist who withstood temperatures of 200 degrees. Incredibly some of the scientists featured in the stories lived to a hearty old age. Even I didn't know that polonium, discovered by Marie Curie, was named after her birth country of Poland.

The authors do a good job making complicated scientific topics understandable and gripping. A few illustrative graphics here and there expounding and clarifying some arcane concepts would have been welcome by this Potato Head.

In the closing comments the authors mention that some in the scientific community frown on self -experimentation, but it's a near necessity for astronauts, hampered by their numbers and their cramped quarters.

I had noticed a lack of diversity in the book's subjects. An author's note explains that self-experimentation had mostly been the province of male Europeans and that not many women experimenters could be found. Dendy and Boring do take pains to point out that people of all racial backgrounds, men and women both, conduct today's experiments.

This well designed book is aimed at junior high/high school readers, but is really good for anyone interested in science and scientists. It treats, with copious quotations and illustrations, the many scientists that used themselves as test subjects, injecting themselves with diseases, using themselves as crash test dummies, breathing and handling all kinds of dangerous substances, sometimes with fatal consequences. We all benefit from their courage (and foolhardiness?) in the interest of science. Interesting, and well told. Very positive.

We all know that inventions must be tested. We hear a lot about testing of product and drugs on animals. But did you know that some humans were and still are willing to be the "guinea pigs". This book is a biography of nine scientist how did just that!

Self-experimenters in science and medicine often fostered discoveries and advancements which hastened the invention of much-needed cures, yet are seldom discussed: that's why middle school students will find Guinea Pig Scientists so important. C.B. Mordan provides black and white illustrations to this gathering of biographies and discoveries which charts bold experiments which helped change the world - and risked the lives of scientists.

Self-experimenters in science and medicine often fostered discoveries and advancements which hastened the invention of much-needed cures, yet are seldom discussed: that's why middle school students will find Guinea Pig Scientists so important. C.B. Mordan provides black and white illustrations to this gathering of biographies and discoveries which charts bold experiments which helped change the world - and risked the lives of scientists.