Nine Crazy Ideas in Science – A Few Might Even be True

Overall this book was good but I have a bone or two to pick with the author. In the introduction he gives you some guidelines on how to tell if an idea is crazy. Under question 2, "Who proposed the idea"?, he rips William Shockley a "new one" because Shockley has an idea that intelligence is a trait of different races. He says Shockley's expertise in physics gives him no special insights into the basis of human intelligence, although it may have given his theory more visibility than it deserved. Really? Who is Mr.Robert Ehrlich to decide if this theory has any merit? Has he or anyone else proven it false? It seems that Mr. Ehrlich has let emotion and political correctness creep into his opinion about this. There's no place in science for either one. With all the physical differences in people of different races, I would personally be surprised if all races had the same exact average level of intelligence. Also in chapter 4 "Sun Exposure is Beneficial", he cites studies that explore the idea of people living at different latitudes and altitudes who get differing amounts of sun exposure. These studies look at Great Britain in some detail but gloss over the United States. It would have been simple for Mr. Ehrlich to get some numbers on CHD mortality rates on people living in the northern part of the USA vs. people living in the south. People down south obviously are exposed to more sunlight and of greater intensity, but he would have discovered a higher incidence of CHD mortality there also. Huh? It's because black people have a higher CHD mortality rate than caucasian people and there are many more black people living down south. I can't quite imagine him trying to tiptoe around those circumstances so he stayed away. He could have compared the CHD mortality rates for all caucasians in the USA by state and come up with some useful data. In chapter 2 "More Guns Means Less Crime" Mr. Ehrlich says that he had an opinion about this idea going in but reversed his belief after looking into it. So did I. I never read John Lott's book but I had heard so much about it that I thought it was true. I also thought it seemed rational. Mr Ehrlich gave the idea that more guns means less crime three cuckoos. He gave the idea that the greater availability of guns increases crime only two cuckoos even though the evidence for both ideas is equal per the data in that chapter. Go figure. Chapters 5, 6 and 7 are very interesting indeed and discuss ideas I had never heard of. Chapter 5 explores the idea that low doses of nuclear radiation are beneficial. Chapter 6 suggests it may be possible that our solar system has two suns. Fascinating, but I'm not convinced. Chapter 7, "Oil, Coal and Gas Have Abiogenic Origins". I wouldn't have believed it but based on the evidence presented here I think it's very possible. Whenever I hear someone say "fossil fuels" it will probably bring a smile to my face. All in all this is a very interesting read although you probably won't agreee with all these ideas it's still well worth your time. I would have rated it 5 stars except for an obvious reason or two.

As difficult as a book like this is too science-y, this is the main problem of the book, and it gets progressively worse with each chapter. Not to say that I didn't like the book, I really did, but it was at its strongest when Ehrlich is applying his formidable abilities to more common-place topics than astrophysics.The analysis in last three chapters (involving time-travel, faster than light particles, and the big bang) was difficult to understand, and I went to one of the top engineering schools in the country. Ok, ok, I failed out, but I'm more likely to understand all of that than the layman.