Nine Crazy Ideas in Science: A Few Might Even Be True.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting, but overly technical in parts
Review: Do more guns result in less crime? (Or is it the other way around?) Is AIDS caused by HIV? Is sun exposure beneficial? Are low doses of nuclear radiation beneficial? Does the sun have an unseen companion star, the so-called Nemesis hypothesis? Do oil, gas and coal have abiogenetic origins? Is time travel possible? Do faster than light particles exist? Is the Big Bang a cosmologist's fiction?

These are the nine "crazy" ideas George Mason University Professor of Physics Robert Ehrlich examines. He rates the level of craziness of each idea by assigning zero to three "cuckoos." (A fourth cuckoo, meaning "certainly false" is not used.) Some of his conclusions might be surprising. For example, he likes the idea that oil, coal and gas have abiogenetic origins, a view I like as well, but one that goes against the conventional wisdom. He considers the idea that there was no Big Bang as "crazy"(a three cuckoo idea) as the idea that AIDS is not caused by HIV.

This certainly is a great idea for a book. Unfortunately I think Ehrlich spends too much time on the fine points of statistical analysis, especially in the first four chapters, and not enough on the crazy ideas themselves. For example on the possibility that low doses of radiation might be beneficial (Chapter 5) he gives us eleven graphs representing the data from various sources. The graphs require a significant involvement and effort on the part of the reader to appreciate, as does the accompanying analysis. If you are not familiar with statistical terms and ideas, this will be slow going.

At other times, Ehrlich seems unaware of what the reader would like to know. For example, on page 86 he mentions a "group of female workers" who "ingested radium while painting watch dials...when they put the small brushes in their mouths...to keep them pointed." He goes on to note that the radiation they received was "localized" and therefore "a number of them survived doses that on a whole-body basis would surely have been fatal." However he doesn't say how many women were involved or even give a ballpark figure. He doesn't say how those who did not die suffered. He only shows a graph giving a percentage of workers who had tumors.

In one case, I think that Ehrlich got lost in the data and failed to note the obvious. In the chapter on the possible benefits of sun exposure, he notes that the instance of coronary heart disease is less among people spending more rather than less time in the sun. He concludes that the idea is not crazy (zero cuckoos). I won't argue with that, but I suspect that the lower rates of coronary heart disease by those with more sun exposure is better understood as a result of those same people getting more exercise. Just being out in the sun implies getting more exercise that staying indoors. This is a factor that Ehrlich does not mention. He talks about gardeners being out in the sun more than non-gardeners, but seems unaware that gardening is good exercise!

I am also troubled by any analysis of causation based purely on statistical models. If the instance of lung cancer is twelve times higher among smokers than non-smokers, surely smoking is implicated. However, as in the analysis of violent crime stats in areas with more guns versus areas with fewer (from Chapter Two), the differences are in the order of small percentages. Putting aside statistical measurements of error, the fact is, as Ehrlich rightfully notes, there are so many other factors that are unaccounted for in such data that any conclusion must be taken with the proverbial grain of salt.

Ehrlich admits he has "a strong affinity" (p. 11) for one of the ideas, namely that particles exist that travel faster than the speed of light. But I also think he has other biases that he may not be aware of. His enthusiasm for the possibility of time travel to the past allows him to gloss over and downplay some of the problems. For example on page 171 he notes that "we can say for sure" that "backward time travel that allowed you to kill grandpa is impossible," but he fails to note that this same logic forbids the time traveler from doing anything at all, period. The very physical presence of the time traveler would change something even if it's only at a microscopic level, even if it resulted only in microbial paradoxes! Also, chaos theory's "butterfly effect" might flap its mighty wings, disturbing future events in incalculable ways.

When Ehrlich goes easy on the stats and concentrates on imparting information and explaining in denotative language, he does very well. There is a lot of worthwhile and interesting information here for the general reader. I learned, for example, that the orbit of a planet around a binary star is only stable if the planet is at a great distance from the orbiting stars, or if one of the stars is at a great distance from the planet orbiting the other star (p. 102). Also the reason the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary is referred to as the "K-T" boundary and not the "C-T" is that "C" is already used for the Cambrian period (p. 104).

The latter chapters, especially the one on faster than light particles, were a little too technical for me. I had the sense that Ehrlich was addressing his colleagues rather than the general reader.

This is an interesting book with some controversial conclusions that will be of interest to many people, marred by not being as readable or as accessible as it might have been.

Rating:
Summary: Some crazy ideas make sense
Review: I've read many books and essays by authors who keep speaking of conspiracies, racism and other isms that blocked good ideas. Robert Ehrlich's gem of a book isn't like that at all. Ehrlich takes some contentious ideas and carefully considers the evidence. Each chapter is 20 pages or so, the reasoning is clear and most should be understandable by high school seniors. Also, the book is very fair. There are no ad hominem attacks. In the case of More Guns, Less Crime and the hypothetical nemesis planet, Ehrlich goes back to the original data and shows how enthusiasts have distorted it. The book would be a wonderful basis for a college course in science for non-scientists. Science is very important in today's world, yet few of us feel able to even roughly evaluate new claims. We rely on those who share our political persuasion. My favorite was "Oil and gas are not fossil fuels." Ehrlich's coverage of faster than light particles and time travel is clear, as would be expected from his physics background. He does very well on the life science issues as well. We should be more open to crazy ideas, and I hope that Prof. Ehrlich writes a sequel.

Rating:
Summary: How a Scientist Can Make a Fool of Himself
Review: Robert Ehrlich reveals his potential for bias as early as p10, where he dismisses die-hard enthusiasts of cold fusion. The reality of the effect, observed in at least a half dozen labs, may be seen in the book by Charles G. Baudette, Excess Heat, Why Cold Fusion Research Prevailed, 2000. The effect is being re-investigated by the Dept.of Energy.

In Chap 2, More Guns Means Less Crime, Ehrlich did indeed catch John Lott in a double faux pas in the graph on p23. First, the ordinate does not begin at zero, and this is not indicated on the Y-axis with a break, so the effect noted is exaggerated. Secondly, the perfect fit of points to the curves was an artifact of the computer graphing program in which the points calculated by the program from the real data are shown, not the real data. This may come as surprise, but I have seen this before, in a curve used by the Heart Institute of the NIH to predict all-cause death rates from blood pressure (BP) as a continuous graded thing. In fact, there is little risk until BP reaches the 90% percentile for age and sex (Port S, et al., Lancet 2000;355:T175-180).

But Ehrlich promotes trigger locks on guns in the complete absence of evidence they reduce accidental shootings of children. Ehrlich used an increase in violent crime rate without an adjustment for population growth. He tried to use a selected 10 states to give an overall picture USA robbery rates relative to gun ownership laws. Ehrlich also failed to note crime rate changes in other countries that passed anti-gun laws. All in all, Lott makes his case despite his mistakes; Ehrlich does not.

In Chapter 3, p48, a graph of HIV-positive hemophiliacs in the UK shows no drop in death rates after the year in which AZT was introduced. Ehrlich has no conception of the toxicity of AZT (Moss RW. Questioning Chemotherapy, Brooklyn, NY: Equinox Press, 2000, p124). HIV passes only the first of Koch's postulates. It has not been isolated in pure form and passed on in pure form. The HIV test gives false positives with TB and other diseases, and has not spread as alarmists predicted in developed countries (Hodgkinson N, AIDS: Scientific or Viral Catastrophe, J Sci Exploration 2003;17(1):87-120).

In Chapter 4, Ehrlich falls into the trap of using relative risks without absolute risks, a common error [Joel M. Kauffman, Bias in Recent Papers on Diets and Drugs in Peer-Reviewed Medical Journals, J. Am. Physicians & Surgeons, 9(1), 11-14 (2004).] He is blank on the difference between UVB, which produces vitamn D, causes sunburn and the easily treated skin cancers, and UVA, which causes the deadly melanomas. He fails to note the benefits of UVB in reducing rates of breast, colon and prostate cancer. He fell into the trap that eating cholesterol causes coronary heart disease, and that red wine significantly prevents it. He is blank that vitamin D is made from cholesterol by UVB. (See The ProteinPower LifePlan, by Michael R. Eades, MD & Mary Dan Eades, MD. New York, NY:Warner Books, 2000.) He wrote that diet is not related to obesity, as shown by trials; but he was blank that all the trials he referred to were on low-fat diets, and that all the low-carb trials he ignored have been beneficial for obesity [Joel M. Kauffman, Low-Carbohydrate Diets, J. Scientific Exploration , 18(1), 83-134 (2004)]. On p67, Fig. 4.3, he shows cholesterol concentrations with no units, a sure sign of an amateur. On p71 he thinks that the disappearance of all ozone from the stratosphere would zap everything with UV from the sun; this shows his abysmal ignorance that ozone is made from oxygen by very short UV from the sun, and it would soon re-appear.

In Chapter 5, Ehrlich's dismissal of radiation hormesis manages to avoid all the papers by Calabrese, Wolff, Cuttler, Luckey, Feinendegen, Muckerheide, and many others with 4,500 examples of hormesis in 1,000 papers. By drawing straight line thru data in in Figures 5.4 and 5.5 (pp85,87) he ignores effects at low levels, and shows his bias [See Joel M. Kauffman, "Radiation Hormesis: Demonstrated, Deconstructed, Denied, Dismissed, and Some Implications for Public Policy", J. Scientific Exploration, 17(3), 389-407 (2003).]

This comedy of errors made it foolish for me to continue reading the rest. Buyer beware.-----22 Apr 04