When Science Goes Wrong: Twelve Tales From The Dark Side Of Discovery (2008) - Plot & Excerpts
Mostly I enjoyed reading this book and I wish there was a "3.5" to award to it. The topic, "science mistakes" was the incentive for me to pick it up. Although I have not read any other books by the author, he has developed a clear and informative writing style that makes the book easy to pick up and follow along. I know that this is supposed to be a collection of notable, some might say 'spectacular', failures of science, but I consider at least three of them to be engineering errors, rather than science errors.What is the difference? Maybe not a lot, but science is a methodology whereby we conduct basic (and possibly applied) research into the physical world, abstractions, human action and interactions and so on. Engineering, on the other hand, takes previously discovered rules, theories, "laws" (like gravitation), material properties, or processes and uses them to produce artifacts, devices, etc.Although I feel a few of the stories to be not fully "science", I was interested in each one and all of them are "science-related". So, if you are looking for a good non-fiction, science-related book, I do recommend this one. And I commend the author for his investigative skills in revisiting events that may have been difficult to research (both because of the age of the story, as well as the reluctance of individuals to comment on it.) Despite the one star this wasn't a horrible book. I just wouldn't recommend it :) I liked reading the stories of the crazy mixed up science problems, but I didn't like how there was so much SCIENCE! Don't laugh :) I had to skim many things because I didn't understand them or just didn't care about the history. It was like reading a science book, ugh. But, I did read the whole chapter on stuttering :) So if you like science-type things, I could see this being a very entertaining book.
What do You think about When Science Goes Wrong: Twelve Tales From The Dark Side Of Discovery (2008)?
cant help but feeling I just put down a copy of Science Illustrated... I expected more..
—Chicalina14
I read one of the stories and did not enjoy the writing style.
—mjt3393
