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Policy

Wide World of Science, Briefly

C&EN staff review recent science books covering everything from cooking to geology to fraud

March 7, 2005 | A version of this story appeared in Volume 83, Issue 10

"GASP! The Swift and Terrible Beauty of Air" is, like its subject, both easy to get caught up in and hard to get your arms around. Joe Sherman's lucid book is more than a history of the study of air, more than a chronology of the evolution of the atmosphere, and more than a sober documentation of the gradual pollution of Earth's "membrane." "GASP!" is also a story of Sherman's personal quest to make air more tangible for himself and to think more deeply about it.

I vacillate between opining that Sherman packed too much into his 379-page book (414 pages with notes) and relenting that he presented an inordinate amount of information in a remarkably digestible way. He never stops telling stories. Each scientist Sherman introduces--at least three or four per chapter--has a personality, a home life, and an odd quirk or two. The bacteria that struggle for life on early Earth have colors, actions, and vivid nicknames: bubblers, breathers, and bluegreens.

Sherman's exhaustive reporting doesn't slow the stories down. Lively details about Antoine Lavoisier's red-haired wife simply help to pull the book along. Sherman does have an agenda. He likes clean air and blames politics and an "auto-loving, smokestack-impaled world" for dirtying it. Yet he reveals his agenda more with information than with opinions. And his tender advocacy of air and marvel at its beauty are entirely disarming.--LOUISA DALTON

 

"Nothing has driven more species to extinction or caused more instability in the world's ecological systems than the development of an agriculture sufficient to feed 6.3 billion people."

Missouri Botanical Garden Director Peter Raven's famous statement is cited by "Mendel In the Kitchen: A Scientist's View of Genetically Modified Foods" as one of the strongest defenses of genetically modified (GM) foods. Only with a revolution of our agricultural processes, author Nina V. Fedoroff says, can we hope to feed our increasing population without further sacrificing the environment.

In fact, people have been tinkering with plants for millennia. Without even knowing what genes are, early farmers propagated beneficial mutations. Cross-breeding, grafting, and even mutagenic radiation or chemicals have all been used to create now-common plant varieties.

So why are people so afraid of GM foods? Fedoroff, a Pennsylvania State University professor and biotechnology pioneer, attempts to answer this question while laying those fears to rest. With science writer Nancy Marie Brown, Fedoroff has crafted a detailed yet accessible narrative that blends the history and science of crop development with a broad analysis of the events and media coverage that has put GM foods at the center of a cultural and political firestorm.

While some might point out that the book is the opinion of an obvious GM proponent, Fedoroff supports her arguments with plenty of well-researched examples. It might not sway staunch opponents anytime soon, but "Mendel in the Kitchen" contributes nobly to the ongoing GM debate.--VICTORIA GILMAN

 

With a provocative title like "The Great Betrayal: Fraud in Science," you might expect Horace Freeland Judson's latest book to be a sizzling page-turner detailing pungent accounts of science gone astray. But you'd be wrong. With more than 400 pages at his disposal, Judson gives only thumbnail sketches of a dozen or so instances of modern scientific fraud and devotes much of the book to dry academic matters like the definition of scientific fraud and problems of peer review.

Even the book's centerpiece, a chapter devoted to the mid-1980s controversy surrounding questionable data published in Cell by principal investigators David Baltimore and Thereza Imanishi-Kari, lacks the passion that episode suggests. Careers were thwarted. Reputations were tarnished. Yet the retelling is tepid.

The book's principal conceit is that fraud in science cannot be brushed aside as the acts of a few bad apples who are usually sussed out by science's self-policing. Instead, Judson argues that these instances reveal problems endemic to the scientific culture. This is hardly a surprise, let alone a betrayal. Of course, with the tremendous pressure to publish, some unscrupulous scientists fudge their data. Of course, egomaniacal scientists are resistant to criticism from unknown postdoctoral fellows.

Judson does a better job of showing that universities and research institutions aren't prepared to deal with accusations of fraud and often attempt to keep matters quiet and punish whistle-blowers. After so many dense, dry pages, however, readers are more likely to feel bored than outraged.--BETHANY HALFORD

 

The broken spine and stained pages of our family's copy of "On Food and Cooking," by Harold McGee, attest to our frequent use of the book over the past 20 years. Its subtitle, "The Science and Lore of the Kitchen," is an apt description of the accessible and comprehensive compendium of what foods are composed of, where they come from, the transformations they undergo during cooking, and how culinary traditions have evolved. It's the reference I dipped into to figure out what to do with green potatoes and where my vegetarian daughter learned how soybeans are made into tofu.

Now McGee has published a revised and updated edition. It's hard for me to buy the book jacket's claim that he's expanded the text by two-thirds, given that both books appear about the same size and that only the chapter on fish and shellfish seems completely new. But McGee has added discussion of a number of issues that weren't on the radar screen two decades ago, including trans fats, genetically engineered foods, mad cow disease, and acrylamide. I was disappointed, however, that I couldn't find a treatment of "net carbs" or much on "glycemic index," given how often those terms are thrown around these days.

If you already have the 1984 edition of this excellent book, I wouldn't recommend rushing out to buy the new version. But a kitchen without any copy at all is definitely missing a rich resource.--PAMELA ZURER

 

"The Genomics Age: How DNA Technology Is Transforming the Way We Live and Who We Are" purports to be a guide to the science and potential applications of modern molecular biology for a lay audience. Unfortunately, Gina Smith's oversimplifications and inaccuracies mar the effort. She starts with a superficial look at DNA, DNA sequencing, and the Human Genome Project. From there, she moves to a range of future applications for DNA and DNA technology, including genetic testing, antiaging research, cancer treatments, gene therapy, stem cells, and cloning. Her explanations are watered down to the point where they're sort of accurate--but not really.

For example, Smith's simplifications lead her to attribute findings to the wrong person. She credits James Watson with the discovery of telomeres in 1972, although the structures, located at the end of chromosomes, were already known by then. What Watson noticed was that during replication, DNA isn't copied all the way to the end, so the telomeres shorten with each cycle.

In addition, the audience is ill-served by the arrangement of the too-numerous sidebars and pull-quotes: They aren't adequately set apart from the rest of the text and interrupt the flow of each chapter. Although some of the sidebars provide new information--such as the triplet codes for amino acids or the DNA tests that are currently available--most of them simply repeat information from the main text. Smith appears to be on firmer ground when she talks about possible future technologies, perhaps because the material those chapters are based on is more speculative to begin with.--CELIA HENRY

 

Early risers and night owls alike should find the time to explore the mysteries of circadian rhythms described in "Rhythms of Life: The Biological Clocks That Control the Daily Lives of Every Living Thing." Teenagers gain a solid argument for sleeping late. Travelers get some practical advice for fighting off jet lag. Everyone can learn how bees tell time.

Russell G. Foster and Leon Kreitzman present an in-depth and interesting discussion of what we know about biological clocks, how we came to know it, and what we still don't know. The authors can't touch on everything, but the book covers immense ground. Topics range from early and recent research on our internal clocks to their role in medicine and from what happens when our clocks go wrong to the effects of light. The authors do leave out some interesting subject material, such as the effects of intertidal and lunar rhythms on biological clocks.

Foster and Kreitzman make a strong attempt to appeal to both the educated lay reader and the expert. In their introduction, they acknowledge that the science may be too simple for some and too technical for others. For readers lacking a biological background, the authors suggest skipping difficult sections or tackling them in bite-sized portions. But overall, "Rhythms Of Life" is an accessible and informative overview of the temporal biological programming that drives every living thing.--RACHEL SHEREMETA PEPLING

 

Did you ever wonder what it would be like to visit the Bay of Naples and gaze up at Mount Vesuvius looming in the distance? Or what it might be like to journey through the Alps? These are just two of the places where "Earth: An Intimate History" takes us. Richard Fortey uses a narrative format to describe the geological landscape of locales around the world--from those noted above, to the Grand Canyon, to the sea floor.

He explains in technical terms--terms that are likely understandable by scientists but perhaps a bit technical for the lay audience--how Earth's more geologically interesting formations were produced. The foundation of these processes, of course, is plate tectonics--an idea that Fortey notes led to modern geology.

But the book is not pure geology; Fortey does a good job of giving the reader an understanding of how human history and Earth's history are intertwined. For example, he takes the reader from the "counterfeit paradise" of the Hawaiian Island Oahu's hotels and beaches to its volcanic heritage, detailing those things that are truly native to the island. Adding to the book's appeal is a section of color plates of photographs and drawings of the places Fortey details in the text.--SUSAN MORRISSEY

 

"Promethean Ambitions: Alchemy and the Quest to Perfect Nature" aims to "investigate the thinning boundary between the natural and the artificial." Focusing on the European medieval and Renaissance periods between 1200 and 1700, William R. Newman uses alchemy as a foundation for examining human efforts to perfect and imitate nature.

But what could have been a fascinating science philosopher's and historian's look at the transmutational longings of alchemists, the evolution of alchemy into chemistry, and its modern repercussions is instead a collection of information in want of a thesis. Newman spends much time on the minutiae of medieval texts, with exhaustive analyses of sometimes trivial arguments between obscure historical figures. Though his subject matter feels weighty, his point is not really clear. Is it that humans are fundamentally uncomfortable with the power of science? Or that science, art, and nature are fundamentally intertwined?

On the plus side, Newman's book is skillfully written and chock full of abstruse philosophical vocabulary. But although words like soteriological, quodlibetal, and demiurge are great fun to look up, even the promise of winning at Scrabble isn't enough to sustain the effort needed to plow through this ponderous tome.--ELIZABETH WILSON

 

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