Help create a JREF recommended science books list?

Relics of Eden: The Powerful Evidence of Evolution in Human DNA by Daniel J. Fairbanks
 
This is definitely not a book that aims to introduce readers to science, but if you're interested in the history of linguistics, check out The Linguistics Wars by Randy Allen Harris. No expert knowledge required.
 
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Ivor the Engineer said:
Has Bad Science by Ben Goldacre been mentioned yet?
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I don't know. However, the last time I looked at Amazon, there were no plans to release it in the US. Nonetheless, I just received a copy (via Amazon USA) from the UK, for under $30.
 
JJM said:
I don't know. However, the last time I looked at Amazon, there were no plans to release it in the US. Nonetheless, I just received a copy (via Amazon USA) from the UK, for under $30.
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I got my copy from Aberdeen airport on my way back from a four-day management training course. I'm on the last chapter now, and while the subject matter is applicable to the US and elsewhere, the book mainly focuses on woo merchants in the UK.

IMO the best feature of the book is the way it educates the reader in the basics of how to spot good and bad methods used in research and (perhaps particularly useful for the lay reader) the errors and deceptions that occur in the popular media when reporting scientific research.
 
The Tao of Physics - Capra
Even if you loathe metaphysics it is still a fantastic an easy to read description of quantum mechanics.

Flatland - Edwin Abbot Abbot
A very quick and easy book to read, funny and inciteful. Comprehending the 4th dimension was never this easy to do.

;-j
 
WaterBreather said:
The Tao of Physics - Capra
Even if you loathe metaphysics it is still a fantastic an easy to read description of quantum mechanics.
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Wouldn't this book be more apt in the "Not recommended pseudoscience books" section?

I thought this was where a lot of the half baked new age ideas (Law of attraction etc) floating around spawned from.
 
patrick767 said:
rsaavedra said:
10. "Asking the Right Questions: A Guide to Critical Thinking" by M. Neil Browne
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heh... I haven't seen that name in awhile. I had him for a course in college called "Great Ideas". At the time I think most of us in the course thought he was kind of nuts as he's proudly eccentric. He's also known for aggressive questioning that makes undergrads like we were very uncomfortable.

I may not have liked it much at the time, but looking back I consider him one of my best professors. Were I to ever go into teaching, I think I'd want to do a course on critical thinking. It's so lacking in society.
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I have entertained that possibility too: teaching a course in Critical Thinking. Closest to it that I've gotten into has been to teach a course in Discrete Math; had some logic-related topics in it.

The Logic course in my computer science undergrad studies was mostly the only one with a critical thinking explicit slant in it. The textbook was Irving M. Copi's "Introduction to Logic", which I think deserves a place in this thread. (I'm realizing, listed this book in a previous post of mine already :P) Had some sort of practice in argument analysis within the study of syllogisms. The student was offered some exercises with paragraphs that included different arguments, and the main premises and conclusions had to be identified. It also had exercises on identifying fallacies -if I recall correctly.

Some of the best teachers I've had are/were highly critical in their thinking; just by example they showed some good thinking practices. I wonder how interesting and fascinating a formal critical thinking class tought by those professors would have been. I'm sure a class by Neil Brown should have been excellent.
 
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My own list of favorite science books so far - some have been mentioned previously, but having been a beginner this past year myself, I would recommend them to people who are just starting out as being excellent books.

Carl Sagan: The Demon-Haunted World Excellent introduction to critical thinking, the importance of scientific reasoning, and covers many topics from alien abduction to the burning of witches - a classic.

Mary Roach: Spook Great, humorous coverage of a wide range of subjects pertaining to life after death.

Michael Shermer: Why People Believe Weird Things

Janice E. Brooks and Jay Vogelsong: The Conscious Exploration of Dreaming Perfect for anyone who is convinced that they have had lucid dreams or out-of-body dream experiences that are "real," this book describes the experiments of the authors over many years of lucid dreaming and how they came to the conclusion that lucid dreaming, no matter how "real" it may seem to the dreamer is simply a dream state.

Natalie Angier: The Canon Great introductory science book for anyone who has missed the science boat and needs something very basic and written with a sense of humor.

Richard Feynman: "Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman!" This book is entertaining and provides a unique look at the world through the eyes of a very accomplished scientist.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson: Death By Black Hole Interesting, humorous book written by an astrophysicist, easy for even a beginner to understand.

Isaac Asimov: Isaac Asimov's Guide to Earth and Space Nice simple and straightforward science. For example: How was the moon formed? What makes the wind blow?

Robert Park: Voodoo Science Great book on science versus pseudoscience, easy to understand and was another book along the lines of Carl Sagan's that convinced me of how important it is to be able to tell the difference.

Michio Kaku: The Physics of the Impossible He tackles all sorts of borderline-woo subjects, rating them on a range of possible to impossible - very easy to read and interesting.

Bill Bryson: A Short History of Nearly Everything My second favorite introductory science overview, after N. Angier's.
 
Autism's False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine and the Search for a Cure, by Paul Offit, MD: Great book written by the chief of infectious diseases and director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children's Hospital of Philadephia, also professor of pediatrics at U of Pennsylvania School of Medicine (all royalties apparently to be donated to autism research). Comprehensive look at the autism so-called controversies, the dangerous claims of the antivaccine movement - and the last few chapters include a memorable discussion on scientific method, science and society, and science and journalism.

Two more, though I think the first one has already been mentioned: An Anthropologist on Mars by Oliver Sacks, and The Way I See It by Temple Grandin (autobiographical collection of articles by a woman with autism who was mentioned in the Oliver Sacks book - both fantastic books)
 
What's a "layfolk"?

andyandy said:
... basically a grouping together of the best, most accessible books to introduce layfolk to different scientific fields ...
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Some of the books I have seen suggested, like Misner, Thorne & Wheeler's black monolith Gravitation, would challenge a pro, hardly appropriate for layfolk. And I don't think much of the Tao of Physics either, as it seems more like new age meditation to me, than an "introduction" to anything. So I wonder, what do you have in mind for level of content? Are layfolk people who can't do algebra? Do you want books with no math, a little math, or something else? Gould's Structure of Evolutionary Theory, like Gravitation, is literally heavy enough to hold your house down in a hurricane (well, almost literally, anyway). Is that the kind of book you want to try to "introduce" layfolk to evolution, or the kind of book you want then to go for, after the introduction is done? There is quite a range of possibilities here, and I would just like to get a handle on what you/we have in mind.
 
One Renegade Cell

One Renegade Cell: The Quest For The Origin Of Cancer, by Robert A. Weinberg. One of the best popular science books I've ever read.
 
Tim Thompson said:
Some of the books I have seen suggested, like Misner, Thorne & Wheeler's black monolith Gravitation, would challenge a pro, hardly appropriate for layfolk. And I don't think much of the Tao of Physics either, as it seems more like new age meditation to me, than an "introduction" to anything. So I wonder, what do you have in mind for level of content? Are layfolk people who can't do algebra? Do you want books with no math, a little math, or something else? Gould's Structure of Evolutionary Theory, like Gravitation, is literally heavy enough to hold your house down in a hurricane (well, almost literally, anyway). Is that the kind of book you want to try to "introduce" layfolk to evolution, or the kind of book you want then to go for, after the introduction is done? There is quite a range of possibilities here, and I would just like to get a handle on what you/we have in mind.
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I think ideally we have been aiming toward "layfolk" as in those who are not experts or professionals in the field, though it seems the list has included personal favorites of varying degrees of difficulty, and the way we define difficulty seems to vary widely.
 
For those wishing to obtain a better understanding of science today without the boredom of page after page of formulas and dry facts, do try any of Carl Djerassi's science based novels. A good one to start with would be The Bournaki Gambit, which gives an incredible insight on how scientists compete for the Nobel Prize. It is a thinly veiled roman a clef on the development of PCR, and how the many who helped develop this groundbreaking technique for copying DNA got no credit when Kary Mullis won the Nobel for it in 1993.

Djerassi is a Professor of Chemistry at Stanford who back in the late sixties developed the birth control pill. After writing many Chemistry texts he turned to novels to reach a much larger audience. I heard him say on a BBC interview once: "Come here, and I'll tell you a story." I've read 7 of his novels, and found all both extremely informative and riveting at the same time.
 
The Scientific Method

I think it is not enough for such a list to show only books on specific topics in science, but should include books about the scientific method. Indeed, too many people think that the "scientific method" is nothing more than a little check list of things to do. But there is no such quick guide to science that is proper. If we are going to deal with topics in pseudoscience that look like science to the unaided eye, then we should have a real treatment of science on hand, whereby one might learn to tell the difference. With that in mind, I suggest two books from my own collection.

Scientific Method in Practice
Hugh G. Gauch, Jr.; Cambridge University Press, 2003; 435 pages.

This book is devoid of advanced mathematics; if you can read English and handle simple arithmetic, you can read this book. A thorough, and up to date examination of what science really is and how science is really done.

Chapter Titles:

1. Introduction
Includes the author's personal experiences, and deals with the benefits of being familiar with the methods of science, beyond the simple basics.

2. Science in Perspective
Science as a liberal art and a brief history of the search for truth; also examines the "four bold claims": Rationality, Truth, Objectivity and Realism.

3. Science Wars
Examines the controversy over science's claims to rationality & truth, including debate between philosophers & scientists, between scientists themselves; examines the "four deadly woes": Elusive Truth, Underdetermined Theory, Incommensurable Paradigms and Redesigned Goals.

4. Science's presuppositions
Ontology, epistemology and logical presuppositions.

5. Deductive Logic
As the title implies; a formal & informal & historical study of deductive logic.

6. Probability
As the title implies; a formal study of probability. Includes Bayes's theorem.

7. Inductive Logic and Statistics
As the title implies; a formal & informal & historical study of inductive logic; includes Bayesian statistics.

8. Parsimony and Efficiency
Parsimony is Ockham's Razor; includes examples from math & science.

9. Case Studies
Intuitive physics, parsimony in physics, molecule shape and drug design, electronics testing, statistics in medicine.

10. Science's Power and Limits
Includes limitations, preconditions & world views.

11. Science Education
The six benefits: better comprehension, greater adaptability, greater interest, more realism, better researchers and better teachers.

12. Conclusions
An overview of the book and the scientific method.

The author, Hugh G. Gauch, Jr., is a research support specialist in Crop and Soil Sciences at Cornell University, and holds an M.S. degree in plant genetics from Cornell University.

An Introduction to Scientific Resarch
E. Bright Wilson, Jr.; McGraw-Hill, 1952; Dover reprint 1990; 375 pages.

This book is not devoid of advance mathematics, and that might detract from its value as a book for beginners & layfolk. However, neither is it dominated by advanced math. Unlike Gauch's book, which is aimed at both scientists and more general audiences, Wilson's book is intended for scientists and students going into scientific research. It is less general than Gauch's book, and directed towards practice & technique for the researcher. It helps if the reader is familiar with matrices and advanced algebra. There are a few differentials but not enough to be a big deal for readers unfamiliar with calculus. This is the book to point people to when they insist that they have proven that all of science is wrong.

Chapter Titles:

1. The Choice and Statement of a Research Problem
2. Searching the Literature
3. Elementary Scientific Method
4. The Design of Experiments
5. The Design of Apparatus
6. The Execution of Experiments
7. Classification, Sampling and Measurement
8. The Analysis of Experimental Data
9. Errors of Measurement
10. Probability, Randomness and Logic
11. Mathematical Work
12. Numerical Computations
13. Reporting the Results of Research

In this case the chapter titles should be explanatory enough. It is an older book with a much more classical science look & feel, written by a scientist who learned his trade in the 1930's & 1940's. Edgar Bright Wilson, Jr. (1908-1992) earned his PhD in Physical Chemistry at Caltech as a student of Linus Pauling in 1933, and then moved on to the faculty at Harvard University. He co-authored a graduate text on quantum mechanics with Pauling. His book on scientific research is well known & influential in the science research community, or at least it was in its day.

I think the two books by Gauch & Wilson complement each other nicely, and together cover the methodology of science about as well as it can be covered. I suggest that anyone seriously interested in science beyond the myopic view of solving specific problems, and especially anyone active on a forum like this, where science & pseudoscience & society meet, should at the least have these books available for reference.
 
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