Scientific Conversations: Interviews on Science from The New York Times [Hardcover]

Claudia Dreifus (Author), Natalie Angier (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 13, 2001

Dr. Benjamin Carson, a pediatric neurosurgeon, describes what it feels like to dig around in someone's brain. Dr. Leon Lederman, Nobel laureate, displays the wry humor that has earned him the title :the Mel Brooks of the physics world.: Pulitzer Prize-winning author John McPhee reveals how he cam to terms with the vastness of geological time and that he once tied himself to a chair in order to write. Ira Flatow, host of National Public Radio's Science Friday, recalls how his childhood fascination with electrical outlets almost caused him to blow up his mother's bathroom. Astronomer Royal Sir Martin Rees discloses his astrological sign.
In these thirty-eight interviews, originally published in the weekly Science Times section of The New York Times, Claudia Dreifus brings all of her colorful personality to bear on her subjects, as well as an arsenal of philosophy, literature, current events, and an unmistakable curiosity. As each conversation unfolds, we learn surprising and fascinating things about some of the most intriguing figures and issues in science today. Dreifus's outsider status in the world of science is perhaps one of her greatest interviewing strengths. A political journalist for much of her career, she stumbled into a position at the Science Times. With little more scientific background that the average person, she scrambled to prepare for her meetings with some of the greatest minds across a broad range of disciplines-from astronomy to geology, from biology and medicine to computer science and mathematics. She soon found herself in a refreshingly candid environment, so unlike the one she had known on the political beat. It is from this perspective that she makes science tangible, accessible, and entertaining.
When you add a deep-rooted scientific curiosity to the savvy of a crack political reporter, you get more than just extraordinary chemistry: Claudia Dreifus reminds us that interviewing can be an art form.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Feeling "inchoate stress" from interviewing politicians, Dreifus convinced her bosses at the New York Times to let her interview scientists. Gathered here are nearly 40 interviews with not only widely recognized author-scientists such as Martin Rees and Stephen Jay Gould but also researchers rarely sought out by reporters. Disdainful of the interview candidates pushed on her by university flacks, Dreifus (among other approaches) would instead attend scientific conferences; one yielded a talk with an enthusiastic expert in birdsongs. Dreifus also seeks out lesser-known women scientists. If not always well represented in science, they are increasingly populating its disciplines, examples of whom, such as the director of the National Science Foundation (microbiologist Rita Colwell), recall, at Dreifus' prompting, the rampant sexism they have encountered and overcome. Although Dreifus does not have a science background, she is meticulous about doing preparatory work for each interview and often picks people who have not arrived in science along conventional routes, such as former cocktail waitress and NIH immunologist Polly Matzinger. A lively reprise from the paper's science section. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

"There is no format that makes science and scientists more digestible than a 'conversation' with an intelligent interlocutor who is intrigued with the subject. And there few journalists who are able to get scientists talking about their work with more lucidity than Claudia Dreifus."—Orville Schell, Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism, University of California, Berkeley

"Claudia Dreifus is the generation's answer to Oriana Fallaci, a savvy . . . interviewer who creates gorgeous dramas out of real-life conversations. This is a journalist who is also an artist."—Nadine Strossen, President, ACLU

"Claudia Dreifus gives readers the luxury of great conversation, and the necessity of personal bridges into the scientific world. Rarely has learning been so pleasurable."—Gloria Steinem

"Claudia Dreifus is a nonpareil of interviewers."—Studs Terkel

"Gathered here are nearly 40 interviews with not only widely recognized author-scientists such as Martin Rees and Stephen Jay Gould but also researchers rarely sought out by reporters. Disdainful of the interview candidates pushed on her by university flacks, Dreifus (among other approaches) would instead attend scientific conferences; one yielded a talk with an enthusiastic expert in birdsongs. Dreifus also seeks out lesser-known women scientists. If not always well represented in science, they are increasingly populating its disciplines, examples of whom, such as the director of the National Science Foundation (microbiologist Rita Colwell), recall, at Dreifus' prompting, the rampant sexism they have encountered and overcome. Although Dreifus does not have a science background, she is meticulous about doing preparatory work for each interview and often picks people who have not arrived in science along conventional routes, such as former cocktail waitress and NIH immunologist Polly Matzinger. A lively reprise from the paper's science section."—Gilbert Taylor, Booklist

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: W. H. Freeman (November 13, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0716746611
• ISBN-13: 978-0716746614
• Product Dimensions: 9.7 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,641,895 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Claudia Dreifus writes the "Conversation with..." feature in the Tuesday Science Section of the New York Times.

She's also an Adjunct Associate Professor at Columbia University's School of International and Policy Affairs where she teaches courses in writing about international relations and also on writing about global science.

Many of her students have gone on to have successful careers in media and in diplomacy.

"Higher Education?" is Dreifus' sixth book and her first published collaboration. Her co-author on this work was Andrew Hacker, contributor to the New York Review of Books, her life-partner.

And now that they've written a book together, they are both feel they've developed the skills to negotiate world peace.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Thumb-nail sketches on the cutting edge of science, July 13, 2002

By 

Dennis Littrell (SoCal) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Scientific Conversations: Interviews on Science from The New York Times (Hardcover)

This collection of interviews from the New York Times by one-time political journalist Claudia Dreifus works well as an introduction to various areas of current scientific interest.

Each of the 38 conversations (11 with women) includes a two and a quarter by one and a half inch black and white photo of the interviewee, an introduction, some Q and A, and a postscript in which Dreifus reports on a follow-up. The persons being conversed with are mostly scientists, but there are medical practitioners, a couple of politicians, an AIDS victim, and some administrators. There are some superstars (Martin Rees, Arthur C. Clarke, Freeman Dyson, Stephen Jay Gould, Roger Penrose) and some others who are not very well known outside their area of expertise (e.g., Luis F. Baptista, Birute Galdikas), and still others who are perhaps best known for being in the public eye (Princess Diana's psychiatrist, Susie Orbach; National Public Radio's Ira Flatow; maverick science writer John Horgan). One has the sense that the conversations have been distilled from a larger essence.

The most striking interview is with Dr. Nawal M. Nour, a Sudanese-born gynecologist who treats African-American women in the Boston area who have been mutilated by so-called "female circumcision." Dreifus asks Nour if "These operations" are used "as a means of social control."
Dr. Nour's surprising response is that "the people who are perpetuating the practice are usually the women themselves." She adds, "I find that people do it because of a deeply ingrained belief that they are protecting their daughters. This not done to be hurtful, but out of love." (pp 171-172) Dr. Nour's prescription is to dispel such grotesque ignorance with education.

One of the most interesting interviews is with medical researcher Polly Matzinger, whom I've read about elsewhere. She is the ex-Playboy bunny and waitress who famously began her scientific career when a UC Berkeley professor, Robert Swampty Schwab, to whom she was serving beer, realized her talent after hearing her ask, "Why has no animal ever mimicked a skunk?" She is currently a leading proponent of the exciting idea that it is not "self" and "non-self" that our immune system distinguishes between, but instead between the benign and the dangerous. This is a radical idea that is "turning the world of immunology upside down." (p. 191)

Perhaps the most unusual "scientist" interviewed (at least in terms of his occupation) is self-styled "forensic mathematician" Charles Brenner. He does the mathematical calculations necessary to analyze DNA evidence.

The interview with physicist Freeman J. Dyson is interesting mainly because Dreifus got him to voice lukewarm support for the idea that Werner Heisenberg, Hitler's most talented physicist (and subject of the recent play Copenhagen) in part kept the bomb from the Nazis by not giving the project "the kind of push it needed." Dreifus also elicited Dyson's opposition to Bush's new Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars redux) "because the system doesn't work, mostly because it can be easily outwitted." (p. 22)

As a sometime sampler of "food supplements" I was interested in the conversation with Stephen E. Straus, the virologist who serves as Director of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine in our government's National Institute of Health. He has a $90-million budget to test alternative approaches to medicine. This is significant because no one else has the resources do this sort of research on a scale large enough to be worthwhile. The drug companies will not do extensive research on food supplements because they can't patent the supplements and therefore feel such an investment will not pay off.

I enjoyed reading this collection and was intrigued to see how much Dreifus did with the limited space she had available for each interview. Her disarming style with a sharp sense of how to probe often overcame the inevitable superficiality inherent in conversations lasting only about six pages each. A case in point is the question she springs on celebrity psychiatrist, Susie Orbach: "Your highly influence 1978 book, Fat is a Feminist Issue, posited the idea that some women had eating disorders because they had been undernurtured by their mothers. Do you still believe that?" This is the kind of question--like "Do you still beat your wife?"--that one doesn't have to stick around to hear the answer to. The point has been made. Orbach does allow that if she were writing that book today, she "wouldn't write it in the same way."

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Probing the Scientist, November 22, 2001

By 

Donna Kelsh (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Scientific Conversations: Interviews on Science from The New York Times (Hardcover)

An exploration of our great scientists from the unique perspective of a New York Times writer. Dreifus's knack is to draw out her interviewees and distill complex subjects into compelling, easily understood science. I never miss her interviews in Science Times.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very interesting reading--highly recommended!, December 17, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Scientific Conversations: Interviews on Science from The New York Times (Hardcover)

Claudia Dreifus has done a tremendous job in compiling interviews from a vast array of scientists of various expertise. The interviews are generally provacative and allow the reader (better than any other book of this kind that I have read) to understand the mind and passions of the scientists. Very highly recommended!!!