When Science Goes Wrong

Mostly, we hear about science’s triumphs — the wonder drugs, the moon landings, the ever-faster computers. But for every brilliant scientific success there are a dozen miserable failures. Usually these involve no more than some wasted funds and a blank spot on somebody’s resume. Once in a while, though, a scientific experiment doesn’t just fail — it goes spectacularly wrong. And that makes for a great story.

This book is a collection of 12 such stories, told by a renowned scientist and science writer. They include the following:

- The Runner’s Brain: Pathologist Rebecca Folkerth was shocked by what she found one night in 1991 while dissecting the body of
52-year-old Max Truex: parts of a foetus seemed to be growing inside his head. Truex, it turned out, had participated in a bizarre medical experiment.

- Meltdown: Before Richard L. McKinley could be buried at Arlington National Cemetery, his hands had to be cut off: they were too radioactive even for his lead-lined coffin. An experiment at a nuclear reactor in Idaho had gone awry, killing him and two others.

- The Ecstasy and the Agony: When neuroscientist George Ricaurte reported that the drug “Ecstasy” caused permanent brain damage, the news jolted politicians and party-goers alike. A year later, Ricaurte admitted his mistake: he had injected his monkeys with the wrong drug.

- The Day the Dam Broke: When the St. Francis Dam north of Los Angeles collapsed, a wall of water 140 feet high raced toward the ocean and killed hundreds of people. Even 75 years later, the geologist’s error that caused the catastrophe is apparent to anyone who visits the site.

- The Wrong Man: It took the jury just two hours to convict Josiah Sutton. After all, a forensic scientist had testified that his DNA was a
1 in 694,000 match to the rapist’s. Sutton got a 25-year prison sentence, but he was innocent.

- The “Monster Experiment”: Could a normal child be taught to stutter? Speech pathologist Wendell Johnson decided to find out—using children in a state orphanage. The answer was no, but some of the children were psychologically scarred for life.

When Science Goes Wrong is an absorbing account of scientific misadventures. It does not point the finger of blame so much as it highlights the inherent risks associated with practicing science in a human context.

Watch LeVay discussing the book with Jon Stewart on The Daily Show here.

Book Author

Simon-levay Simon LeVay is a neuroscientist turned science writer and teacher. He was educated at Dulwich College, Cambridge University, and the University of Göttingen, Germany. In 1971 he moved to the United States: he has conducted research at Harvard Medical School and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, and has taught at the University of California and Stanford University. He attracted worldwide attention in 1991 with the publication of a study reporting on a difference in brain structure between heterosexual and homosexual men. This study helped trigger a spate of recent research in...
more about Simon LeVay...

Book Reviews

  • Guardian
    "…much of the pleasure in each of LeVay's expertly narrated chapters (the author is himself a neuroscientist) is in watching science go right, as subsequent empirical investigations throw light on what went wrong in the first place…. Throughout, he displays a decided verve for both storytelling and hardcore explication."
  • Daily Mail
    "…this book will intrigue you to the very last sentence."
  • Los Angeles Time
    "Spine-tingling, occasionally gruesome accounts of well-meant but disastrous scientific bungling."
  • Geotimes
    "The dark – but – fascinating – side of science….an absorbing read."
  • Booklist
    "Intriguing…well-told stories."
  • Publishing News
    "...entertaining and thought provoking."
  • Publishers Weekly
    "Amazing…entertaining…thought-provoking."
  • Kirkus
    "Venturing into the unknown can have unexpected consequences. LeVay offers many different explanations for what caused the calamitous mistakes he examines. Sheer bravura could account for the vulcanologists who were killed climbing into the crater of an about-to-erupt volcano. Imperfect information and a TV weatherman’s vanity led to misreporting on a hurricane that killed 18 Britons in 1987. Bad geological advice, combined with design changes made by an engineer with a God-like reputation, built a dam in the wrong place in 1920s California. That pounds-to-Newtons mistake that doomed the Mars Climate Orbiter? Faulty software that someone should have caught, but didn’t. The Houston Crime Lab’s errors in DNA testing wrongfully imprisoned a rape suspect for nearly five years, but lab reforms and the work of Innocence Network lawyers give this cautionary tale a moderately happy ending. Research on human subjects provides LeVay with some grim examples: brain surgery using fetal tissue to “cure” Parkinson’s disease; a gene-therapy experiment that killed a teenager with a genetic metabolic disorder; and a 1939 study that tried to determine whether people could be induced to stutter by telling normal children they had symptoms and should try to stop. There is little question that these cases flagrantly violated ethical considerations, primarily because the designers fervently believed their hypotheses and employed questionable methods in order to be “proved” right. In only a few instances does the author suspect coverup or deliberate intent: the horrible story of the release of anthrax spores in a Russian biological warfare factory; the alleged tampering with readouts to show production of a transuranium element; and the unresolved case of a runaway nuclear reaction that killed three scientists. LeVay’s epilogue notes that oversight and regulation have helped, but reminds us that research involves risk-taking."