Monkeys, Myths, and Molecules: Separating Fact from Fiction, and the Science of Everyday Life, by Dr. Joe Schwarcz
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Monkeys, Myths, and Molecules: Separating Fact from Fiction, and the Science of Everyday Life, by Dr. Joe Schwarcz
Free PDF Ebook Monkeys, Myths, and Molecules: Separating Fact from Fiction, and the Science of Everyday Life, by Dr. Joe Schwarcz
Quacks and pundits beware!The internet is a powerful beast when it comes to science; the answer to any query you may have is just a few keystrokes away. But when there are multiple answers from various sources, how do we know what information is reliable? In Monkeys, Myths, and Molecules, bestselling author Dr. Joe Schwarcz takes a critical look at how facts are misconstrued in the media. He debunks the myths surrounding canned food, artificial dyes, SPF, homeopathy, cancer, chemicals, and much more.Unafraid to expose the sheer nonsense people are led to believe about health, food, drugs, and our environment, Dr. Joe confronts pseudoscience and convincingly and entertainingly advocates for a scientific approach to everyday life.
Monkeys, Myths, and Molecules: Separating Fact from Fiction, and the Science of Everyday Life, by Dr. Joe Schwarcz- Amazon Sales Rank: #574985 in Books
- Brand: ECW Press
- Published on: 2015-05-12
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.20" h x .80" w x 5.50" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 280 pages
Review "The author successfully demonstrates how claims should be queried and analyzed before they are accepted . . . Recommended for readers of health, nutrition, and popular science." — Library Journal"The book is chock-full of captivating anecdotes . . . The author engages readers with his wit and wisdom." — The Canadian Jewish News
About the Author Dr. Joe Schwarcz is director of McGill University’s Office for Science and Society and the author of 14 bestselling books. Well known for his informative and entertaining lectures, Dr. Schwarcz has received numerous awards for teaching and deciphering science for the public. He is the host of the radio program The Dr. Joe Show and has appeared hundreds of times on television. He lives in Montreal, Quebec.
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Most helpful customer reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful. Teaches some good facts, isn't much interested in understanding fiction By Aaron C. Brown These are some smoothly-written essays on science, mainly nutrition and chemistry, applied to everyday questions like cooking and health. The style is clear and lively, although the author does occasionally veer to the edge of professor-jokes (overelaborate telegraphed jokes that have been told too many times, and weren't all that funny to begin with).The strengths of the book are the author's expertise and straightforward explanations. In addition to his scientific specialties, he works in some bits of history and other subjects. A weakness is that the questions he discusses are not particularly interesting.For one example, he tells us there are people who think chewing gum is bad for you, in part due to additives and chemicals it contains. He makes the point that all additives are chemicals, then mentions some of the slandered ingredients and defends them as either not present in chewing gum, not harmful or not in sufficient quantity to be harmful.Now if you don't chew gum or know about the people who dislike it, none of this seems like relevant information. It's always nice to know something, but there seem more useful bits of knowledge. The author doesn't try to understand why people dislike gum and debate the issue fairly, the reader gets the impression that he thinks they are scientifically illiterate, and thus not worthy of refutation. I took the trouble to look them up and they're more reasonable than the author suggests. They list some reasonable sounding objections, such as links to temporomandibular joint disorder, headaches and increased mercury uptake for people with mercury fillings. There are real studies to back these claims, although they are small sample and not the most authoritative. There's no consideration of the amount of risk relative to the pleasure of chewing gum, but the author commits this same sin frequently, for example with respect to cantaloupe (he strongly recommends thoroughly washing it before cutting, because some people have died from ingesting bacteria from the outside of a cantaloupe, but he gives no numbers to compare the additional life expectancy from washing versus the time it takes to wash, nor the health benefit of this compared to things of similar effort).The anti-gum people also seem to dislike ingesting things were not present in preindustrial human diets. This is their objection to the chemicals they complain about, not specific claims of health damage from them. And they use the word "chemical" in the sense of "molecules extracted or created in refined forms via industrial processes" in contrast to the scientific sense in which any molecule is a chemical; so complaining about chemical additives makes sense. So they're not as foolish as the author implies, or at least they're not inconsistent, and he hasn't addressed their points. So whether you care about the issue or not, this book doesn't add anything useful to the subject.More generally, the author tends to pull out what he considers to be the scientific question in a controversy, and answer his narrow questions; but suggest that he has settled the broader controversy. In the first topic of the book, he traces the history of nutrition advice to reduce heart disease, which was usually overconfident and often wrong. But he does not draw the lesson that scientists should be more humble. Instead he gives his opinion about the current state of knowledge. I grant that his opinions are more nuanced and reasonable than the historical views he criticizes, but I suspect those earlier scientists were more nuanced and reasonable than the people they were refuting. For all of this, it's not clear that scientific nutrition advice has saved net lives since the first expert made the first pronouncement.Despite these defects, the book teaches a lot of science in terms that range from mildly entertaining to painless. It's not a great popular science book, but it's a pretty good one.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful. A large disjointed collection of short essays By Vincent Poirier The best thing about McGill chemistry professor Joe Schwarcz's Monkeys, Myths, and Molecules is that the title uses the Oxford Comma. (Hear, hear!)The second best thing about MMM is that while billing itself as a book about science in general, it covers lots of chemical topics, from how aspirin is composed to adding copper on a nail using the blue crystals found in chemistry sets from the 1960s. (Today's chemistry sets don't have chemicals. These aren't considered safe in this age of politically correct nannies.) Most science essays and clips we see in the media are about space, physics, computers, or biology. It`s really great to see chemistry in the forefront for once.The third best thing in MMM is Schwarcz's incessant debunking of misconceptions and outright charlatanisms: lots of poisons are natural, just about everything that is beneficial in food is a chemical, and homeopathy is a sham.But in the end, as a book, it's disappointing: it's a large disjointed collection of two or three page essays tenuously gathered under different topics. It's a good book to dip into from time to time, but it doesn't build up a theme, it doesn't present a big picture, and it doesn't exhaustively study a good topic.Fun but not engrossing.Vincent Poirier, Montreal
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Entertaining and informative. By Yvette D Skinner Entertaining and informative. I've just started reading this book and I've thoroughly enjoyed it so far. It's like a chemical episode of mythbusters.
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