Product Description

In 2008, science can only really account for four percent of our universe, and the rest, well, just seems to be missing. The effects of homeopathy donÂ’t go away under rigorous scientific conditions. Thirty years on, no one has an explanation for a seemingly intelligent signal received from outer space. The speed of light seems to have changed over the lifetime of the universe. The US Department of Energy is re-examining cold fusion (a nuclear reaction in which atoms release more energy than they consume) because the evidence is too solid to ignore. The placebo effect is put to work in medicine while doctors canÂ’t agree on whether it even existsÂ… In an age when science is supposed to be king, scientists are beset by experimental results they simply cannot explain. But, if the past is anything to go by, these anomalies contain the seeds of future scientific revolutions. This mind-boggling but entirely accessible survey of the outer-limits of human knowledge is based on a short article Michael Brooks wrote for the New Scientist in 2005. It became the most circulated New Scientist feature ever. He has now dug deeply into these mysteries, and the results of his investigations point to an exciting future for scientific discovery.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1975 in Books
• Published on: 2009-02-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Review
'Fascinating, bang-up-to-date... Like all the best science popularisers, Brooks reawakens us to the astonishing fact of our mere existence, the strangeness of the world around us, and the astonishing amount that science has yet to discover' Christopher Hart, Sunday TimesA" 'Odd data clusters are crime scenes, over which Brooks combs with the reassuring casualness of an expert... to provide riveting cliffhangers of scientific detection... admirable' Steven Poole, GuardianA" 'Entertaining... engagingly written... a worthwhile read for budding explorers of new worlds' Jon Turney, IndependentA" 'Excellent... Brooks is breezy and fun - always readable and never dull... each chapter is a little vessel of delights... Deserves to be up there as one of the best popular science books of 2008/9. Recommended' popularscience.co.ukA" 'Entertaining... engagingly written... a worthwhile read for budding explorers of new worlds' IndependentA" 'Prepare yourself to be entertained and challenged in equal measure' BBC FocusA" 'Sensational... pitch-perfect... The ideas in his book are dizzying' Simon Ings, Sunday TelegraphA"

From the Back Cover
Science starts to get interesting when things don’t make sense. Even today there are experimental results that the most brilliant scientists can neither explain nor dismiss. In the past, similar anomalies have revolutionised our world: in the sixteenth century, a set of celestial irregularities led Copernicus to realise that the Earth goes around the sun and not the reverse. In 13 Things That Don’t Make Sense Michael Brooks meets thirteen modern-day anomalies that may become tomorrow’s breakthroughs. Is ninety six percent of the universe missing? If no study has ever been able to definitively show that the placebo effect works, why has it become a pillar of medical science? Was the 1977 signal from outer space a transmission from an alien civilization? Spanning fields from chemistry to cosmology, psychology to physics, Michael Brooks thrillingly captures the excitement and controversy of the scientific unknown. ‘Elegantly written, meticulously researched and thought-provoking … sure to spur intense debate.’ – New Scientist

About the Author
Michael Brooks, who has a PhD in quantum physics, is a consultant for New Scientist. His writing has appeared in the Guardian, Independent, Observer and THES.www.13thingsthatdontmakesense.com

Customer Reviews

13 Things - Medieval Edition
Its pretty clear Brooks is no scientist. He seems to lump the scientific method and the myriad advances made through its implimentation into a tangible, fallible anthropomorphic contruct; silly science, it can't even explain where most of the universe is!

"The effects of homeopathy don't go away under rigorous scientific conditions"

Yes, yes they do - key word up there: rigorous.

"The US Department of Energy is re-examining cold fusion...because the evidence is too solid to ignore"

All 'evidence' to date has been either irreproducible or discredited - cold fusion is rather like 'Pascals Wager' - the possibility of sucess is so tempting that dellusion quickly follows.

"The placebo effect is put to work in medicine while doctors can't agree on whether it even exists... "

Really, who are these doctors? The existence of the placebo effect is so well known that it is used as a standard control in any decent drug trial.

"In an age when science is supposed to be king, scientists are beset by experimental results they simply cannot explain"

The implication that science is somehow broken or damaged by unknowns is rife and this book does very little to set that straight. Science thrives on unknowns. Ok, often gaps in our knowledge exist, they may or may not get closed, old theories become replaced by new, or go through iterative improvements, but the point is this: A gap does not imply that all science is broken, in crisis, inadequate or impotent - New Scientist is quickly becoming known in scientific circles as a magazine that will eagerly sell out this idea in favour of an attention-getting headline, or book blurb.

As food for thought on this, here is a medieval edition of 'things that don't make sense':

1) Lightning & thunder
2) Seeing visions after eating rye bread.
3) How rain can fall endlessly out of thin air.
4) Why we don't fall off the earth
5) Rotting
6) Disease
7) Recovery from disease
8) Tides
9) Comets
10) Solar Eclipses
11) Earthquakes
12) Witchcraft & floatation
13) Life

schizophrenic debates regarding various theories that have been put forward to explain the unexplainable
Brooks provides some fascinating and intriguing explanations of things that have not currently been explained by science. However, I started to loose interest during the latter part of the book - where some of the chapters seemed be less than convincing, and I found myself wondering if there were more exciting things that can not be explained by science than those discussed. I thought it was brave of Brooks to discuss homeopathy, however, I do not agree with much of his scientific explanation of this curiosity, and overall I think this devalues his message somewhat. However, the style of writing is interesting and easy going, and I particularly enjoyed the chapters on the Wow signal, cold fusion and the Pioneer probes. In all the message by the author is that science is not boring or dead as some proponents of science have suggested. A good factual read, packed with lots of schizophrenic debates regarding various theories that have been put forward to explain the unexplainable. 13 Things That Don't Make Sense is a stimulating and thought provoking read.

The book makes sense at any rate
The aim of the book is to highlight certain paradoxes which still exist within the realm of science. This is because either scientific theories are mutually exclusive and thus cannot both be right, or because the nature of the evidence has not been successfully explained to form a convincing theory. In some instances, the scientific theory is clearly not sufficiently robust to fully explain the data.

The book is a highly entertaining read, though some chapters more than others. It offers a balanced view of all sorts of conundrums, and brings the uninformed reader up to speed with where scientists are currently up to as regards some of the most intriguing questions of our times.

Brooks analyses these in a non-polemical way, although judging by some of the reviews and comments here, this has been misinterpreted by some readers. For those who have already drawn their own conclusions and come down strongly in favour of one theory or another, the fact that the book seeks to dramatise the limits of our knowledge in some areas of science appears to be unpalatable. But for most of us, it is refreshing to see that science does not currently have all the answers. That is not to say that some of these mysteries might not be resolved in the future - indeed the premise of the book is surely that an open mind, the passing of time, additional data or the birth of a great genius will allow us to solve some of these riddles. But at the time of the writing, the paradoxes and questions are well-posed.

13 Things comes across as well-researched and presented in a fair and even-handed way. We should indeed be sceptical about science. It is unreasonable to suppose that it has all the answers at any given time. As Talib points out in "Fooled by Randomness" and revisits in "The Black Swan", you cannot ever really prove a theory. You can only disprove one. This book points out that maybe even Newton's equations may need some tweaking to explain all observable data. The important thing is surely to continue to observe the world and the explanations of its working with an open mind. This book serves to foster that mindset as well as to stimulate enquiry and curiosity. A recommended read for all those who maintain an interest in understanding the universe, our place in it and want to know just how little we can really be certain of.