Embedded Files
1. Bad Science by Ben Goldacre
Have you ever wondered how one day the media can assert that alcohol is bad for us and the next unashamedly run a story touting the benefits of daily alcohol consumption? Or how a drug that is pulled off the market for causing heart attacks ever got approved in the first place? How can average readers, who aren’t medical doctors or Ph.D.s in biochemistry, tell what they should be paying attention to and what’s, well, just more pseudoscience garbage?
Ben Goldacre has made a point of exposing quack doctors and nutritionists, bogus credentialing programs, and biased scientific studies. But he has also taken the media to task for its willingness to throw facts and proof out the window in its quest to sell more copies. Now Goldacre is taking on America and its bad science in this revised version of his runaway U.K. bestseller. But he’s not here just to tell you what’s wrong. Goldacre is here to teach you how to evaluate placebo effects, double-blind studies, and sample size, so that you can recognize bad science when you see it. You’re about to feel a whole lot better.
2. Complications: A Surgeon’s Note on an Imperfect Science by Atul Gawande
A brilliant and courageous doctor reveals, in gripping accounts of true cases, the power and limits of modern medicine.
Sometimes in medicine the only way to know what is truly going on in a patient is to operate, to look inside with one's own eyes. This book is exploratory surgery on medicine itself, laying bare a science not in its idealized form but as it actually is -- complicated, perplexing, and profoundly human.
Atul Gawande offers an unflinching view from the scalpel's edge, where science is ambiguous, information is limited, the stakes are high, yet decisions must be made. In dramatic and revealing stories of patients and doctors, he explores how deadly mistakes occur and why good surgeons go bad. He also shows us what happens when medicine comes up against the inexplicable: an architect with incapacitating back pain for which there is no physical cause; a young woman with nausea that won't go away; a television newscaster whose blushing is so severe that she cannot do her job. Gawande offers a richly detailed portrait of the people and the science, even as he tackles the paradoxes and imperfections inherent in caring for human lives.
At once tough-minded and humane, Complications is a new kind of medical writing, nuanced and lucid, unafraid to confront the conflicts and uncertainties that lie at the heart of modern medicine, yet always alive to the possibilities of wisdom in this extraordinary endeavor.
3. Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by Michio Kaku
Space elevators. Internet-enabled contact lenses. Cars that fly by floating on magnetic fields. This is the stuff of science fiction—it’s also daily life in the year 2100.
Renowned theoretical physicist Michio Kaku details the developments in computer technology, artificial intelligence, medicine, space travel, and more, that are poised to happen over the next hundred years. He also considers how these inventions will affect the world economy, addressing the key questions: Who will have jobs? Which nations will prosper? Kaku interviews three hundred of the world’s top scientists—working in their labs on astonishing prototypes. He also takes into account the rigorous scientific principles that regulate how quickly, how safely, and how far technologies can advance. In Physics of the Future, Kaku forecasts a century of earthshaking advances in technology that could make even the last centuries’ leaps and bounds seem insignificant.
4. The Design of Everyday Things, by Donald Arthur Norman
Donald Arthur Norman is an American researcher, professor, and author. Norman is the director of The Design Lab at University of California, San Diego. This book is about how design serves as the communication between object and user, and how to optimize that conduit of communication in order to make the experience of using the object pleasurable.
5. Zoobiquity: The Astonishing Connection Between Human and Animal Health by Barbara Natterson-Horowitz
When a cardiologist is invited to Los Angeles Zoo to help a monkey in heart failure, she finds herself collaborating with the head veterinarian. They noticed there was a discrepancy in their medical knowledge, where each had valuable information to share with one another about cardiology. From STDs, to eating disorders, to pleasure seeking, and more- this cardiologist's research highlights the surprising ways that animal science relates to human health.
6. Brief Answers to the Big Questions by Stephen Hawking
Stephen Hawking was recognized as one of the greatest minds of our time and a figure of inspiration after defying his ALS diagnosis at age twenty-one. He is known for both his breakthroughs in theoretical physics as well as his ability to make complex concepts accessible for all, and was beloved for his mischievous sense of humor. At the time of his death, Hawking was working on a final project: a book compiling his answers to the "big" questions that he was so often posed--questions that ranged beyond his academic field.
Within these pages, he provides his personal views on our biggest challenges as a human race, and where we, as a planet, are heading next. Each section will be introduced by a leading thinker offering his or her own insight into Professor Hawking's contribution to our understanding.
7. How to Become an Accidental Genius by Frieda Wishinsky
The book includes the thinking and problem-solving strategies used by ordinary people who invented extraordinary things. Told through short stories and bright photographs the book encourages readers to THINK like an accidental genius. It also encourages readers to Be persistent, Pay attention, and Don’t be afraid of failure.
8. The World Without Us by Alan Weisman
The World Without Us examines humanity's impact on the planet and explores what would happen to natural and built environments if the human race suddenly disappeared.
9. Stuff Matters by Mark Andrew Miodownik
“Why do we study this?” This is one of the common questions from students in any science
class, especially Chemistry. Since Chemistry is dealing with material science, this book will help to answer the above mentioned question. The book, “Stuff Matters “explains the composition of various common materials around us. Mark Andrew Miodownik is a British materials scientist, engineer, broadcaster and writer at University College London. Previously, he was the head of the Materials Research Group at King’s College London, and a co-founder of Materials Library. With his vast experience and knowledge of materials, the author engages the reader with his storytelling approach. “Stuff Matters” is full of fascinating information that makes us see the myriad materials that make up our life, from bone china to chocolate to dental crowns to airplanes, in a very different light. The writing is highly entertaining, making one laugh and exclaim and wonder, but it is also highly educational, and it strikes a perfect balance, giving the reader excellent science without going into so much excruciating detail.
10. There's a Hair in My Dirt! A Worm's Story by Gary Larson
All creatures, great and small have a niche to fill in their native ecosystems. That’s why sometimes we need to step back and let nature run its course, even if, for instance, a seemingly defenseless mouse is about to get swallowed up by a snake. It’s not our place to intervene. Gary Larson, author of the satirical comic “The Far Side,” presents an accurate and funny depiction of the ways of the world through the eyes of an earthworm.
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