Now on ScienceBlogs: HeartlandGate: Anti-Science Institute's Insider Reveals Secrets

ScienceBlogs Book Club: Inside the Outbreaks

Greg Laden's Blog

Evolution, Life Sciences, Science Education, Human Evolution, and Stuff

Darwing_Face.jpg Learn more about Charles Darwin and his work.

Hornbill170.jpg Looking for stuff about birds?

Lion_mane170.jpg Lean more about lions

Congo_sidebar.jpg An archaeological expedition to the Congo


The Skeptical Search Engine


Nature Blog Network
Climate Defense Fund


The contents of Greg Laden's Blog are copyrighted by Greg Laden.

Recent Comments

Search

Profile


Click on "About" for the big picture, and "Archives" for the details.


Recent Posts

Blogroll

If you don't see yourself on my blogroll, just drop me a line and let me know. I'll add you.*
*Assuming that I'm on your blogroll, of course!

Archives

« What To Do when your DVD Video Goes Missing | Main | CDC Surveillance for Violent Deaths Released »

When Science Goes Wrong

Posted on: April 12, 2008 6:27 PM, by Greg Laden

Simon LeVay, who is the guy who first identified the relationship between sexualy dimorphic hypothalamic nuclei in mammals (in the medial preoptic or anterior areas) and homosexuality in human males, has come out with a new book ... When Science Goes Wrong.

LeVay's book looks interesting, at least according to the Publisheres Weekly Overview on the Amazon site (see link above):


Experimental brain surgery goes horribly awry; a dam fails catastrophically; a geologist leads an ill-equipped party to its doom in the mouth of an active volcano: these are the amazing and sometimes horrific stories of technical errors and scientific mistakes that LeVay (The Sexual Brain) relates. Some, like the case of the British meteorologist who failed to predict a hurricane that killed 18 people, seem due to arrogance. Others--the loss of a costly spacecraft, a criminal conviction based on inaccurate DNA analysis, multiple deaths after an accidental release of anthrax--are the result of ordinary human error. Some incidents may well have been deliberate, such as a nuclear reactor error that was possibly the result of a love triangle gone bad, or the data falsified by a physicist seeking fame as the discoverer of a new element. LeVay surveys a range of fields, offering several reasons why things go wrong and noting that for every brilliant scientific success, there are a dozen failures. Readers curious about particularly notorious cases will find LeVay's book both entertaining and thought provoking.

But what I really want to who you is this interview of LeVay by John Stewart, where you will find, among other things, an interesting discussion of the possibility that the Earth will be sucked into a tiny Black Hole this June:

Hat Tip: Bad Astronomy

Share on Facebook
Share on StumbleUpon
Share on Facebook

TrackBacks

TrackBack URL for this entry: http://scienceblogs.com/mt/pings/69340

Post a Comment

(Email is required for authentication purposes only. On some blogs, comments are moderated for spam, so your comment may not appear immediately.)





ScienceBlogs

Search ScienceBlogs:

Go to:

Advertisement
Follow ScienceBlogs on Twitter

© 2006-2011 ScienceBlogs LLC. ScienceBlogs is a registered trademark of ScienceBlogs LLC. All rights reserved.