This is by far the longest review I’ve ever written, but I feel like it is my responsibility, as a scientist interested in education, to fully express the degree to which this book is problematic and misleading. The premise of Pandora’s lab is to discuss ‘surprising’ examples of ‘science gone bad.’ There are many issues with this, but one of the biggest is that if you have read other science books or listened to pretty much any podcast, you will already be familiar with most of these stories, to

This is by far the longest review I’ve ever written, but I feel like it is my responsibility, as a scientist interested in education, to fully express the degree to which this book is problematic and misleading. The premise of Pandora’s lab is to discuss ‘surprising’ examples of ‘science gone bad.’ There are many issues with this, but one of the biggest is that if you have read other science books or listened to pretty much any podcast, you will already be familiar with most of these stories, told in a better and more interesting way. Most of the time in the book, I wanted to wave my hand and say “yeah yeah we all have heard this story before many times.” So, hardly surprising. Add to this the fact that the writing is an unfortunate combination of perfunctory and polemical styles, and one quickly comes to the conclusion that a reader would be much better off finding other, much better written books than this one.

A second problematic component is that the book is, more often than not, discussing stances and opinions held by people in spite of, not because of, the general scientific consensus. It’s unclear, for most of the stories, how the bad which emerges has anything to do with science. It generally takes the stance that society should base decisions on science, not whackadoodle unfounded claims unbacked by most scientists. This really has nothing to do with science going bad, it has to do with collective groups of people making ill-fated decisions in spite of the scientific evidence. The tagline of the book is fundamentally misleading, but this is not its only sin.

The book also makes the dangerously naïve argument that data and facts exist objectively, outside of scientific paradigms and cultural frameworks, if only we look behind the curtain. This is not how science has ever worked or will ever work in the future. There is no such thing as objective data collection or data analysis. There is no such thing as objective research, and it is not possible to objectively evaluate the value of a scientific theory, outside of any societal context. It is only possible to conduct science from within a scientist’s experiential framework, and all scientists are people who participate in society and exist in a culture. It is not possible to understand the mistakes of the past and learn how to avoid similar mistakes in the future using this ill-informed and nonsensical concept of ‘objective data.’ As Offit does not seem to realize this, the book simply cannot offer any useful insight. I would recommend that Offit read pretty much any book about the history or philosophy of science, to better understand how flawed one of the main messages of the book is.

In a rather ironic twist, given the premise of his book and his frequent declarations that ‘it’s all about the data,’ he has an entire chapter devoted to the poorly researched argument that the publication of Silent Spring directly led to hundreds of millions of people dying of malaria. This is inaccurate on many levels. First, while DDT was banned in the united states, it was not banned worldwide. It was not even fully banned in the united states – it was permitted for use in cases of public health, just not for agricultural purposes. In fact, the US still manufactures and exports DDT-laced mosquito nets as part of various aid programs. DDT has continued to be and still is used to control malaria-carrying mosquitos. The main reason why its use today has declined so much is that it is not particularly cost-effective anymore when used as a fogging agent, and countries which struggle with chronic malaria outbreaks generally have found that other approaches besides area fogging are cheaper and save more lives, and only makes sense when used in rotation with other pesticides to manage the problem of insecticide resistance.

In fact, even before the publication of Silent Spring, many health officials were concerned about rapid declines in the effectiveness of DDT, as mosquitos were quickly evolving resistance to it. Alarmed articles from the late 1950s and early 60s can be found which panic about how DDT is no longer effectively controlling malaria. Declines in the efficacy of DDT, along with the myopic behavior of reducing funding as soon as malaria cases dropped (only to balloon back up again without further preventative measures) explain why DDT use declined over time. In the late 1950’s, DDT use in the US had declined precipitously, with only 1/10th of the volume which was produced in 1950 being produced in 1960. But Silent Spring didn’t come out until 1962. Oops. How can one possibly make the argument that the book is single-handedly responsible for the decline in DDT use if was already declining?

The arguments in this entire chapter are easy to refute, in part because the author just seems to have read the talking points from one of the many right-wing crank websites decrying Silent Spring. This is especially evident when looking at the sources for this chapter, which seem to be predominantly secondary sources (either nut-job books or blogs). Unfortunately, in re-using these commonly used arguments, the author should have maybe spent a bit more time doing research, as even the Wikipedia page on DDT has all the information necessary to refute the arguments made in this book. When a 5-minute read of a Wikipedia page demonstrates that an author doesn’t know what they are talking about, it’s hard to have faith in their ability to read and understand scientific literature. Ironic given the basis of the book, I know. The author raises good points about Carson over-reaching beyond the scope of the data and trumpeting sensationalist conclusions not based on meticulous science, but then he goes on to do exactly the same thing, only in the opposite direction. Moderately hilarious, except for how depressing it is.

This book also contains such revelations as “famous old people sometimes say dumb things, even when they’re scientists.” If you didn’t know this, then you have probably never read the news, or a nonfiction book. If this is indeed your first nonfiction book, boy are you in for a treat! There are lots of them, and most of them are better than this one!

I do have to admit that the chapter discussing Haber was interesting, as I knew much of the history surrounding the Haber-Bosch process, but I did not really know the full history of Haber as a scientist, and I enjoyed learning his complicated and tragic story.

More than anything, I’m confused as to how the stories in this book relate to concerns about science. Most of the examples are of how people will say and do things in spite of science, and how society as a whole often prefers to ignore inconvenient evidence. I’m not sure how bad things that happen because rigorous science was ignored are examples of ‘science gone wrong.’ It’s examples of people preferring convenient pseudoscience to complicated and nuanced rigorous science, and how, believe it or not, this can lead to ill-informed conclusions. As an example, Offit seems to attribute the entire supplement industry to Linus Pauling’s addled claims about vitamin C. This makes no sense, as since the beginning of time people have clamored to buy miracle quick fix tonics and supplements, never with any evidence to support their efficacy aside from the sensationalist claims of the hawkers, and often in direct contradiction of the general scientific consensus. This problem has nothing to do with ‘science gone wrong.’ Indeed, despite overwhelmingly universal scientific consensus that homeopathy makes no sense, it has been popular for over a hundred years. It is not an example of science gone wrong, but inexplicably Offit acts as if the ill-advised comment of one prominent scientist in support of it is the only reason why homeopathy exists. If it was popular before the comment, and continued to be popular after the comment, how can one possibly attribute its popularity to a single comment made far after its worldwide spread? Offit does not seem to understand that there are powerful psychological factors which play into the continued popularity of pseudo-science. He instead is under the simplistic impression that if you show people a pile of data and tell them they are dumb, they will change their perspective, despite reams of scientific evidence that this is now how human minds typically work. Thus, even his well-intentioned recommendations at the end of the book to be more data-literate and listen less to sensationalist pseudoscience in the news is not helpful, new, or insightful advice. I’m pretty sure this the 1,000,000th book to recommend that the general culture should be more attentive and nuanced when drawing conclusions about science. This advice is also not helpful, and research on science communication generally demonstrates that, when trying to educate the public using the style recommended by Offit in the book, not only is this communication style ineffective, but it often has the opposite effect, entrenching the opposing viewpoint in the listener even further.

So, overall, we have a not particularly well written book, recycling old material into an ineffective format, while also introducing some woefully inaccurate information, and which demonstrates the author’s fundamental misunderstanding of how both science and society work. I cannot possibly recommend this book to anyone. While the author may have thought he was performing a public service by writing this book, I fear it is at best harmless and at worst horrendously misleading.