Book review: "When Science Goes Wrong - 12 Tales from the Dark Side of Discovery" by Simon LeVay

I have one of those jobs where if I screw something up there are repercussions - I get yelled at, maybe my department is out some money, I feel embarrassed. All of the people in this book, when they screw up something terrible hands. Like at least one person dies. This book, written by a neuroscientist, has 12 different chapters where science went TERRIBLY WRONG.


There's a chapter about a hurricane that shaped the southern part of England in 1987, it snuck up on the meteorologists of England, and one weatherman on air was super flippant and dismissive about reports coming in that there was in fact a hurricane. I'm surprised more people didn't die. And also that the weatherman who was an asshole live on air has cashed in on his infamy with product endorsements. WHAT?!

There was a chapter about MDMA (Ecstacy) being used to treat people with Parkinson's disease or people with similar symptoms. It does not end well. At all.

Or there's the biological warfare manufacturing facility in rural Russia (yep, there's a great sentence when talking about disasters) THAT FORGOT TO PUT AN AIR FLITER ON A VENT SO PEOPLE IN THE WAY OF THE WIND OUTSIDE OF THE BUILDING GOT POISONED BY ANTHRAX. Pardon the all caps, but GOOD GRIEF. Don't worry, most of the Russian government says it was a tainted meat outbreak. Also, did you know that the last person who was killed by smallpox was a medical photographer who worked at University of Birmingham? Her office was above a lab studying it, that scientists mishandled it, and it went up through the air vent into her office and killed her. A few days after the photographer was killed the scientist who mishandled the virus slit his own throat in his yard.


The chapter that made me say "what the hell?" the most out loud in my reading was about an accident in a nuclear reactor testing station in Idaho. (Yeah, not a great start, right?). There was an accident where 3 men were killed nearly instantly. One man was pinned to the ceiling by one of the rods that had shot out from the nuclear pool thing and pinned him to the ceiling through the pelvis (his name was Dick Leggs.....for real. Dick Leggs). Another one had his pelvis driven up into his abdomen. One other guy survived long enough to get him into the ambulance and then died. Their bodies were so radioactive that to get them to be decontaminated enough to hand over to their families for burial they had to amputate all four of their limbs and their head, and take out most of their internal organs. These families buried empty torsos in led lined coffins that went in a led lined vault that was covered by 6 feet of concrete and buried 14 feet down (don't visit those graves in Arlington). Their funeral services could only be 5 minutes long and the family had to be 20 feet back from the grave.

They still aren't 100% sure of the cause of the accident but such theories that have been thrown out include "Maybe one of the guys was sleeping with another one of the guy's wives and it was like, a nuclear murder suicide" or my personal favorite "Maybe Dick Leggs was adjusting the rods and one of the other guys came up and ~goosed him~ while he was bent over and he pulled the rod out too far and thats how he ended up pinned to the ceiling of this damn nuclear reactor". (Not a joke, that's an option).  Also, several of the people who were involved in the rescue effort died from radiation exposure, just by handling the bodies, or driving an ambulance with that dying man in it for less than 4 minutes.


SLEEP TIGHT EVERYONE!