Michael Brooks


13 Things That Don't Make Sense

The Most Baffling Scientific Mysteries of Our Time

2008, BeavertonLib 500 BRO


MoreLater


Free Radicals

The Secret Anarchy of Science

2011, BeavertonLib 500 BRO


Journalism.

p16 Stewart Brand 1965 "Why haven't we seen a photograph of the whole Earth yet?"

p34 Michael Faraday, Sandemanian church

p85 "I dislike arguments of any kind. They are always vulgar, and often convincing." -- Oscar Wilde's Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest, Act 3, page 9. Attributing this attitude to Wilde himself is a stretch.

p121 "The greatest obstacle to knowledge is not ignorance; it is the illusion of knowledge" -- Daniel Boorstin, January 1984 Washington Post interview. antecedent quotes

p248 "Even the fights, the injuries, and the injustices have their purpose. If you want to rise to the top, you and your scientific insight have to be bomb-proof. Any big new idea and its proponent both have to survive so much violence, and unseat such strongly rooted predecessors, that, if they make it through to widespread acceptance, we can be as sure as possible that they are correct. Most of us the unwitting beneficiaries of this gladiatorial process. That is why we unhesitatingly board aeroplanes or take aspirin: science is trustworthy. But few of us are aware of the cost at which that trust is achieved. ..."

That paragraph's last sentence is "The strange thing is that the scientists would rather you remained in the dark." Which is pseudo-mindreading bullshit, marring the rest of the paragraph. One-on-one, most scientists are forthcoming about the competitive process with non-journalists (like me). Brooks is a journalist, and could ruin a scientist's career by widely exposing a particular scientist's professional disputes and gladiatorial strategies.