The Noble Lie: When Scientists Give the Right Answers for the Wrong Reasons [Hardcover]

Gary Greenberg (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 16, 2008

Is drug addiction really a disease? Is sexuality inborn and fixed or mutable? Science is where we often turn when we can't achieve moral clarity. In The Noble Lie, acclaimed and controversial science writer Gary Greenberg shows how scientists try to use their findings to resolve the dilemmas raised by some of the most hotly contested issues of our time, from gay rights to euthanasia and the drug war. He reveals how their answers often turn out to be more fiction than science—and explores whether they cause more harm than good.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Has science replaced religion for a modern society unwilling to bear moral responsibility? Questions of life and death lie in doctors' hands. Even a diagnosis, says science writer and psychologist Greenberg, is a moral statement: the doctor is telling you what's wrong with your life and how to fix it. This unconvincing statement exemplifies Greenberg's difficulties in his muddled attempt to grapple with our faith in scientific truth. Diseases are invented, not discovered, he claims. By exploring various medical issues—such as addiction, depression, brain death—he tries to demonstrate that deciding which suffering should be relieved and how is not as simple as applying a stethoscope to a chest—hardly an original idea. The truth becomes a casualty of organized medicine's need to provide relief to all who say they are suffering, and that need is institutionalized and commercialized by structures like the FDA and the drug industry. The noble lie inherent in the treatments offered for common diagnoses can't last, says the author. But while Greenberg's questions about the scientific validity of medical research and treatments are urgent, they have been explored more capably and cogently elsewhere. (Sept.)
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From Booklist

Taken from the world of medicine, Greenberg’s seven tales caution his readers about the underlying assumptions of certain diagnoses rendered by doctors. With his skepticism informed by a prewriting career as a psychotherapist, Greenberg casts his doubts into humorous form, often at his own expense, as when he describes participating in a clinical trial of fish oil’s therapeutic value in treating depression. But first he must pass standard psychological evaluations that determine—scientifically!—if he’s officially down in the dumps. Greenberg’s mini history of the creation of such evaluation methods underscores their irreducible subjectivity, a facet that also appears in his stories about medical definitions of alcoholism, homosexuality, schizophrenia, comas, and death. In the case of alcoholism, its definition as a disease rather than a weakness originated, amazingly enough, in a 1942 article, not by a medical professional, but by a public relations flack. Yet, Greenberg observes, patients report benefiting from therapies however unscientific he suspects their bases are: that’s the noble lie he examines. Alt-medicine fans will be informed and entertained by this engaging author. --Gilbert Taylor

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (September 16, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470072776
• ISBN-13: 978-0470072776
• Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 0.9 x 9.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #365,285 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

GARY GREENBERG has written about the intersection of science, politics, and ethics for many magazines, include Harper's, the New Yorker, Wired, Discover, Rolling Stone, and Mother Jones, where he's a contributing writer. His reporting has been widely reprinted and anthologized, including in The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2002. He is also a practicing psychotherapist in Connecticut.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thought-provoking Book, October 19, 2008

By 

Glenn A. Cheney (Hanover, CT USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Noble Lie: When Scientists Give the Right Answers for the Wrong Reasons (Hardcover)

In The Nobel Lie, Dr. Greenberg manages the near impossible. While enteratining the reader with a humor that's both deep and dry, he probes a medical issue that gets right down to the question of what is normality and what, if anything, it's worth. The implications ripple into religion, politics, law, morality, even the nature of consciousness and existence. His interwoven threads of reasoning and observation bring together homosexuality, hallucinogens, the Unibomber, and death. What do they have in common? Well it's a little hard to explain, but Greenberg manages to do it and even makes it look easy. He doesn't exactly answer life's biggest questions, but he renders them as palatable as popcorn. This is a good book for anyone who needs something new to think about. For others, well, there's always hallucinogens and TV.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Immensely thought-provoking, February 2, 2009

By 

Daniel Weber (Alaska) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Noble Lie: When Scientists Give the Right Answers for the Wrong Reasons (Hardcover)

Greenberg is a find--informed, original, humane, humorous, and above all, intellectually honest. I felt only one major disagreement with his thesis: I'm not convinced that all the lies are noble.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good Stuff., August 28, 2010

By 

Patras (Mountaintop,PA USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Noble Lie: When Scientists Give the Right Answers for the Wrong Reasons (Hardcover)

Good stuff about the medical and science systems in life, written by a counselling professional who showed upsides as well as downsides of a host of lies we often swallow. Parts of the book even seemed theraputic. It was very funny as well as elucidating. The Noble Lie: When Scientists Give the Right Answers for the Wrong Reasons