Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Tom Wolfe describes Tom Bethell as one of America's best essayists. We can see why. Bethell, an Oxford graduate, has written on a variety of scientific topics over the years and distills them in this outstanding book. He shows -- and quotes his sources copiously, so you don't need to take Bethell's word for things -- case after case of scientific "consensus" that has led the world down a dead end. But once an established view takes hold, it becomes extremely difficult for dissenting views to get a hearing. They certainly don't get government funding -- and the role that government funding plays in propping up poor science is a fascinating and consistently overlooked point that this book drives home again and again. The establishment media, meanwhile, fearful of questioning our new priesthood, consistently goes along with whatever they're told to say. The book is not only beautifully and intelligently written, but it's also fun to read, believe it or not. Bethell's engaging style makes this book hard to put down. Some of the points Bethell raises are quite surprising. He is skeptical of stem cell research, not for religious reasons (though he may have those as well for all I know) but because in recent months we have begun to learn that science has over-promised, so to speak. The grandiose claims of major cures being around the corner, he shows, are massively overstated. Stem cells don't seem to behave the way researchers thought they might. Or take African AIDS. We've heard almost ludicrous figures regarding the number of Africans with AIDS. Wait till you read this chapter and you learn what it takes to qualify as having AIDS in Africa. You don't even need to test positive for HIV. That could be why the demographic catastrophes anticipated for Africa haven't panned out; Africa's population has increased dramatically over the past decade. Then there's hormesis, the principle according to which certain things that are toxic in high doses are positively beneficial at low doses. This insight, which the scientific mainstream disdained for so long, is impossible to avoid today. The U.S. government, on the other hand, has spent countless sums and disrupted countless lives on the basis of the standard view that toxins are toxins, whether in large doses or in trace amounts. Entire communities, schools, etc. have been evacuated on this basis. Bethell shows, for instance, that cancer rates are often lower -- indeed MUCH lower -- among people who have had mild exposure to radiation than among control groups with no such exposure. This flies in the face of the oft-repeated claim that there is no such thing as a safe dose of radiation. Bethell also exposes the hysteria over species extinction and the bizarre methodology used to reach the fantastic figures of extinctions we've routinely heard. Then there's the banning of DDT thanks to environmental extremists, which resulted in hundreds of millions of avoidable deaths. Bethell even manages to dig up quotations from major intellectuals who have openly favored the devastating demographic effects of banning DDT. That's scary stuff. Now let me tell you what you can expect from some of the reviews you'll see of this book. Lots of people will love it, as they should. Others, usually people who haven't read it -- yes, this is VERY common on Amazon -- will denounce Bethell because this or that person gives him a blurb, or because he is skeptical of Darwin, or whatever. Don't let these people do your thinking for you -- someone who condemns a book he hasn't read is hardly in a position to criticize "dogmatism," is he? What I'd like to see from critics of this book are SPECIFIC points Bethell makes that are wrong. Much of what Bethell teaches us here isn't really a matter of controversy. He's telling us, in some cases, about wildly exaggerated claims by mainstream scientists, the demonization of those who have dissented from these claims -- so much for the cool rationalism we expect to accompany science -- and the excruciatingly slow process by which the exaggerations have been exposed. Modern science is a wonderful thing, responsible for a great many inventions and innovations that have improved our lives. But science is no more exempt from politics, pettiness, and agendas than any other field of human endeavor. Given the media's and the general public's intimidation in the face of science and scientists, though, behavior we would never tolerate in any other aspect of life is routinely given a pass in the scientific field. Tom Bethell is to be congratulated for a volume that is at once thoroughly enjoyable, compulsively readable and full of serious and important information. When you see one-star reviews by people who have no specifics about the book, but just go on and on about what a fool Bethell is (or who try to appear they've read the book by quoting a phrase from the cover image above), IGNORE THEM ENTIRELY. No one writing such a review read the book. But you should -- and they should, if for once in their lives they could show evidence of the open mind such people are always telling us they have.