Author: randy.plym

With Humanities Highlights, Himmelfarb staff aims to spotlight useful books from our Humanities collection. This week, we’re showcasing “Rigor Mortis: How Sloppy Science Creates Worthless Cures, Crushes Hope, and Wastes Billions,” by NPR science-journalist Richard Harris. 

About the Book: 

Applying his decades of journalistic experience to the “reproducibility crisis” - a term coined to describe the difficulty in replicating large amounts of published science - Richard Harris interviews many key figures attempting to improve the standards of science. Chapter by chapter, he analyzes factors of the crisis such as human error (reporting only what works, not doing double blind experiments, refusal to comply with fact checkers), sample sizes determined by budget, experiments that use only one cell line, test animal problems, a culture that incentives publication speed over accuracy, debunked facts circulating like ghost ships, and more. 

Part compendium of errors, part call to action, “Rigor Mortis” is an eye-opening account of the last couple decades of scientific rigor. 

Reasons to Read: 

If you’re looking for a balanced, outsider’s take on the subject, Harris does an excellent job presenting arguments and counter-arguments. For example, he discusses both Brian Nosek’s Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology, which attempted to replicate 50 published attention-gathering papers, and the criticism of the project from Robert Weinberg, one of the lead scientists of the chosen studies (Harris, 2017, pg. 159). 

Despite the aggressive (and somewhat hyperbolic) title, Harris writes with a sense of concern that never feels disparaging. If you’re looking for a broader look at the issue, the extensive interview range presents a fuller picture than many of the articles out there. 

Reasons to Avoid: 

If you’re already familiar with the issue, “Rigor Mortis” could prove depressing. 

Although science self-corrects, and although Harris presents improvements across the board (and emphasizes how many of them would be cost effective), the road ahead seems long, and the weight of culture change seems daunting. 

Further Reading: 

• The C. Glenn Begley pieces about the Reproducibility crisis mentioned in chapter one: “Raise standards for preclinical cancer research” and his followup, “Six Red Flags for Suspect Work.” 
• Nigel Hawkes’ BMJ article: “Most Laboratory Cancer Studies Cannot Be Replicated, Study Shows.” 
• John P. A. Loannidis’ Plos Medicine article: “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False”

References: 
Harris, Richard. (2017). Rigor Mortis: How Sloppy Science Creates Worthless Cures, Crushes Hope, and Wastes Billions. Basic Books.

With Humanities Highlights, Himmelfarb staff aims to spotlight useful books from our Humanities collection. This week, we’re showcasing “The Year of Magical Thinking” by Joan Didion. 

About the Book: “The Year of Magical Thinking” is a memoir of the grief experienced by Joan Didion, novelist and journalist, after the sudden death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne. Written the year after his death, Didion turns her journalistic eye to her own raw thought processes, resulting in a masterful study of grief and a testament to a successful marriage. 

Reasons to Read: Since Didion wrote “The Year of Magical Thinking  so close to her husband’s death, the work maintains an immediacy; reading it almost captures the evolution of her thoughts as they developed. Raw but measured, it provides a sharp picture of grief that could very well help those who are grieving. 

Reasons to Avoid: If you’re triggered by flaunting of luxury, be prepared for copious references to exotic travel, hotel living, ruby crystal glasses, and phrases like [speaking of the late 60s], “a mood where no one thought twice about flying 700 miles for dinner" (Didion, 2005, p. 49). 

Further Reading: 

• Play It as It Lays - Didion’s classic 1970 novel, which depicts 1960s Hollywood and an emerging nihilism (available at Himmelfarb through Ebook Central Complete). 
• Slouching Towards Bethlehem - Didion’s 1968 collection of non-fiction, often regarded as the best example of her new-journalism  (available through consortium loan).

References:

Didion, J. (2005). The Year of Magical Thinking. Vintage International.

With Humanities Highlights, Himmelfarb staff aims to spotlight useful books from our Humanities collection. This week, we’re showcasing “The Status Syndrome: How Social Standing Affects Our Health and Longevity” by Sir Michael Marmot. 

About the Book: Based on the Whitehall Studies (ten year mortality studies into the British Civil Service), “The Status Syndrome” is the culmination of Sir Michael Marmot’s decades long research. In it, he concludes that autonomy and the ability to participate in society are key factors of health. Relentlessly, he investigates the usual suspects of poor health - smoking, processed foods, etc - and demonstrates how they don’t fully account for health disparities. A blend of medical research and public health recommendation, “The Status Syndrome” demonstrates a keen intersection of analysis and application. 

Reasons to Read: Beyond being highly accessible, Michael Marmot brings a unique perspective as the original leader of the Whitehall studies. And since the studies themselves focus solely on the middle class, the book avoids the obvious (ex: of course dire poverty leads to poor health outcomes). 

It’s a book that goes beyond left and right wing politics, and, in fact, might challenge either value-set. It can be read selfishly - i.e. what are the ingredients for a healthy/quality life, and how do I position myself? Or, it can be read selflessly - i.e. how can we organize society so others can have a healthy/quality life? 

Reasons to Avoid: The book takes a commonsense idea - higher status correlates tightly with better health outcomes - and takes the magnifying glass to its nuances. But if you prefer easily graspable ideas without looking into the examples, then “higher status correlates tightly with better health outcomes” might be enough for you. 

If you’re a policy-junky, you can skim the Acheson report online (fully titled the “Independent Inquiry into Inequalities in Health Report”), from which Marmot derives his government recommendations. 

(Not) Fun Facts: 

• In an eye-opening example, Marmot features our very own D.C. as an example of status gradient. “The status syndrome can be illustrated by a short ride on the Washington, D.C., subway. Travel from the southeast of downtown Washington to Montgomery County, Maryland. For each mile traveled, life expectancy rises about a year and a half. There is a twenty-year gap between poor blacks at one end of the journey and rich whites at the other” (Marmot, p. 2).

References

Marmot, Michael. (2005). The Status Syndrome. Times Books.

With Humanities Highlights, Himmelfarb staff aims to spotlight useful books from our Humanities collection. This week, we’re showcasing an inspirational book for the New Year: “Mountains Beyond Mountains: the Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer,” by Tracy Kidder.

About the Book: Part biography, part origin story of Partners in Health, “Mountains Beyond Mountains” tells the story of Dr. Paul Farmer, a man who dedicated his life to battling disease and serving the poor with out-of-the-box-thinking, a justice-fueled irreverence for the status quo, and a willingness to redefine the impossible. Journalist Tracy Kidder follows Farmer’s service in Haiti and Peru with wonder and intimidation, entertaining periodic skepticism about Farmer’s practicality (walking 7 hours to visit a single patient, for example) while ultimately marveling at the work accomplished. 

Reasons to Read: As an inspiration for anyone studying medicine or public health, Farmer shows that apathy can be overcome, policy change can happen, millions can be saved – and anything’s possible.  

Reasons to Avoid: Farmer’s example seems (at times) impossibly high, even unreplicatable, and his vision of charity impossibly uncompromising. It’s important to remember that charity does not require genius and that any progress helps.

Fun Facts: 

• The Arcade Fire song, “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)” is named after the novel (CBC Music). 

Further Reading: 

• Bending the Arc - a 2017 documentary about Partners in Health
• How Paul Farmer helped save the lives of millions of people by John Green
• Infections and Inequalities: the Modern Plagues, by Paul Farmer
• Partner to the Poor: a Paul Farmer Reader

References: 

10 things you didn't know about Arcade Fire's The Suburbs (Jul 31, 2020). CBC Music. https://www.cbc.ca/music/10-things-you-didn-t-know-about-arcade-fire-s-the-suburbs-1.5669278.

Cover Photo by Reynaldo Mirault on Unsplash

With Humanities Highlights, Himmelfarb staff aims to spotlight useful books from our Humanities collection. This week, we’re showcasing “The Knife Man: Blood, Body Snatching, and the Birth of Modern Surgery” by Beth Macy. 

About the Book: “The Knife Man” is a biography of maverick surgeon, “John Hunter:” the father of scientific surgery. Moore deep-dives into the murky depths of pre-enlightenment surgery and the (sometimes sketchy, sometimes shadowy) birth of modern surgical practice. 

Reasons to Read: If you enjoy reading about quacky medicine (bloodletting for every possible ailment), want to reinforce your gratitude for the 21st century (anesthetics!), or feel intrigued by sentences like, “Excitedly, he hurried the limb up to his attic” (Moore, 2005, p. 11). 

Reasons to Avoid: If you’re squeamish about rotting bodies (and physicians tasting them . . .), excising bullets with grime encrusted tools, cauldrons to boil down skeletons, bladder stones “the size of tennis balls” (p. 46), or grisly accounts of gonorrhea (one Georgian aristocrat had “at least” 19 bouts)  (p.128).  

Fun Facts: 

• Among many other firsts, John Hunter was the first person to successfully practice artificial insemination, way back in the 1770s (Ombelet and Robays, 2015).  
• John Hunter’s eclectic manor formed the basis for Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. With his wide involvement in grave robbing rings, it’s not hard to imagine. (John Hunter Left a Body of Work Behind Him, 2019). 

References:

John Hunter Left a Body of Work Behind Him. (Oct. 4th, 2019). Scottish Field. 

Moore, Wendy. (2005). The Knife Man. Crown. 

Ombelet, W., & Robays, J. Van. (2015). Artificial insemination history: hurdles and milestones. Facts Views

Vis Obgyn, 7(2): 137–143. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4498171/#:~:text=John%20Hunter%20wrote%20the%20first,the%20founder%20of%20scientific%20surgery%E2%80%9D.

Wilson, T. C., “The dissecting room,” OnView, accessed October 17,

2023, https://collections.countway.harvard.edu/onview/items/show/13559.