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Rating: 
Summary: Unfortunate approach to history
Review: In the beginning of 20th century Pavlov (Russian physiologist) was nominated several times for the Nobel prize. Pavlov was rejected several times because he freely credited his co-workers which was very unusual at that time and the Nobel committee concerned who was mostly responsible for results - Pavlov, or people working in his lab. Daniel Todes, the author of the book, failes to mention that since then crediting of one's coworkers became very common in the West too. Today it is almost impossible to find a lab where the boss failes to credit his or her multiple co-workers for the experiments conducted by them but conceived by the boss. Nobel Commettee doesn't have a problem with this any more. But Daniel Todes does. He is painstakingly counting the references for Pavlov's technicians on the pages of his Lectures, making it almost a crime. I am well in the middle of the book (probably I will never finish it), and I am still left wondering why such undistinguished guy (in the Mr. Todes' view) finally got his Nobel Prize. According to the book, Pavlov was rather a mediocre scientist, working in mediocre institution in a backward country (that's Russia, and this is probably the key to understand Mr. Todes position), who never invented anything new (Pavlov's famous surgical technics were traced to old technics, in which nerves were freely cut on an assumption that they are irrelevant. This is the same as saying that invention of the automobile was nothing exceptional, since long before people used horse-drawn carriages). Mr. Todes comes very close to accusing Pavlov of scientific dishonesty (Pavlov's claim of his "happy dogs" was not true, in Mr. Todes oppinion, because before he would get "happy dogs" after surgical operations, he would have to kill over 20 dogs to perfect his surgical technics). The fact what rarely anyone could repeat Pavlov's surgery was again used not as an illustration of Pavlov's skill, but only to complain that it was almost impossible to anyone to repeat his experiments. Even Pavlov's attempts to again and again confirm his own results were used against him - logic goes something like this "if he is repeating his own experiments - he is not sure of them, and if he is not sure of them why did he publish them before he was sure".
It looks like an author does not know that nothing in science can be done the first time, all experiments must be repeated and animal sacrifice is a sad, but nesessary part of any physiological experiment, that if someone can not perform a complex operation, it is his problem, not of the one who can, and repeating of experiments after publication is a common thing. It looks like author's logic goes like this "If everything with these damn Russians appears to be great, we know it can not be true, and nothing can be good in reality". And since he "knows" it for sure, he will try to find all that bad which does not exist in reality but is so obvious in his imagination.I sincerely hope that author is a journalist fairly ignorant of the process of making science in a physiology lab (I do know as I am working in the lab myself) because the book then can be considered a result of a journalist's incompetence. If the author is a scientist, I can not find another explanation than malicious intent to knowingly stretch the facts.
I give it 2 stars, to prise the big work author did in Russian archives, and to honor work of his sincere helpers in both Russia and the US. It also has several nice photographs of Pavlov and his lab. I will scroll the rest of the books for photos, but I feel too bad for the author to read the book to the end.
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