Pandora's Lab

This is a book about how some science  that went wrong.

I read  an excerpt of this book on transfat  in National Geographic, and I wanted to read the full book.

The book presented 7 case histories in science that led to disastrous outcome: Heroine and Pain Killer, Trans fat, Nitrogen Fixation , Eugenics, Labotomy, DDT and Vitamin.

Can one imagine now that there was a period in time in our recent history heroin was hailed as wonder medicine? U.S. has spent trillion dollars to fight the drug trafficking , rehab addiction to heroin and related drug.

Trans fat was at one time recommended by U.S. government to replace butter, but it tuned out to be worse than butter, caused more cardiovascular disease related death.

Then there are fake science in labotomy, Eugenics, high dosage consumption of Vitamin.

On the other hand, the elimination of DDT led to the epidemic of malaria and death of million people. Overuse of Nitrogen based fertilizer helps to feed the world but could lead to distinction of human species !

How could those happen? Did no one see the problems before they led to disasters? Of course there were.

A common thread in all these stories is the media biased hype and relentless push by activists. Before a full picture was formed, media/activists promoted only one side of the story. Dissent, negative observations, opposing views were drowned.

Sound familiar?

The Harvey Weinstein scandal led to an avalanche of allegations of sexual assaults/harassment. This is a good thing  - victims now have the courage to speak out. But allegation is not the fact, we can not throw "innocent until proven guilty" principle away. Apparently there are people using this wave of allegations of sexual harassment for revenge, political gain ...  Remember the Rolling Stone scandalous article " A rape on Campus"?  The "victim", who is the real villain,  made up the story to get back to her unobtainable love object.

Back to science and technology, now in technology world, passwordless internet is all the rage. Promotion to develop technology to use finger print, iris,  facial recognition to identify a person uniquely and unambiguously despite serious potential fatal consequences.  Finger print is the first to be shown not reliable ; here is the link to a funny but scary story about the risk of using finger print to protect your phone.  What about iris, the novel Angels & Demons y author Dan Brown provided a scenario that criminal could cut one's eye out for access.

The real lessons learned from the Pandora's lab are: look at the full pictures, don't rush to conclusion/judgement, and use critical/independent thinking!!




https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/13/americans-trillion-dollars-drugs_n_4943601.html

https://healthyforgood.heart.org/eat-smart/articles/trans-fat

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans_fat