Reading Diversions Book Club

Reading Diversions is a special Scientific Library collection of books written in an informative and entertaining way. People read these books for scientific INTEREST rather than for scientific RESEARCH.

The Reading Diversions Book Club is coordinated by Scientific Library staff and offers you an opportunity to read and discuss books on fascinating scientific topics, generally from the Library's Reading Diversions collection.  We are also offering fiction compainions to some titles. You may choose to read the fiction or non-fiction choice, or both. It is NOT required that you read both books to attend the discussions.

All are welcome to participate, and we meet approximately every five weeks at lunch time in the Conference Center in Building 549.  Feel free to bring your lunch along to the discussion. See a list of our discussions below for dates and locations.  If you prefer not to buy a copy of the books, the Library may be able to borrow a copy for you. Please contact either Robin Meckley (x5840) or Tracie Frederick (x1094), if you would like to join the group or if you have questions.


 

Topic: Fraudulent Science
Meeting Date and Location: Thursday, January 8, 2009, 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m. Conference Room A, Building 549

Non-fiction Option: Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud    book cover
Author: Robert L. Park
Description: As the author points out, the line between foolishness and fraud is thin. Because it is not always easy to tell when that line is crossed, he uses the term voodoo science to cover several types of science: pathological science, junk science, pseudo-science, and fraudulent science. His book is intended to help the reader recognize voodoo science and to understand the forces that conspire to keep it alive. Scientists, Park observes, insist that the cure for voodoo science is to raise the level of scientific literacy. But what is it that a scientifically literate society should know? It is not specific knowledge of science that the public needs, Park argues, so much as a scientific world view - an understanding that we live in an orderly universe governed by natural laws that cannot be circumvented by magic or miracles. (Source: Books in Print)
Availability of Library Copy  More copies are available for the discussion.   Contact the Library to borrow one.
Discussion Questions

Fiction Option: Intuition    book cover
Author:Allegra Goodman
Description: This novel is an intricate mystery and a rich human drama set in the high-stakes atmosphere of a prestigious research institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Sandy Glass, a charismatic publicity-seeking oncologist, and Marion Mendelssohn, a pure, exacting scientist, are codirectors of a lab at the Philpott Institute dedicated to cancer research and desperately in need of a grant. Both mentors and supervisors of their young postdoctoral proteges, Glass and Mendelssohn demand dedication and obedience in a competitive environment where funding is scarce and results elusive. So when the experiments of Cliff Bannaker, a young postdoc in a rut, begin to work, the entire lab becomes giddy with newfound expectations. But Cliff's rigorous colleague-and girlfriend-Robin Decker suspects the unthinkable: that his findings are fraudulent. As Robin makes her private doubts public and Cliff maintains his innocence, a life-changing controversy engulfs the lab and everyone in it. (Source: Books in Print)
Contact the Library to borrow a copy.
Discussion Questions

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Topic: Charles Darwin
Meeting Date and Location: Thursday, February 12, 2009, 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m. Conference Room A, Building 549

Non-fiction Option: The Reluctant Mr. Darwin    book cover
Author: David Quammen
Description: A fresh look at Darwin's most radical idea, and the mysteriously slow process by which he revealed it. Evolution, during the early nineteenth century, was an idea in the air. Other thinkers had suggested it, but no one had proposed a cogent explanation for how evolution occurs. Then, in September 1838, a young Englishman named Charles Darwin hit upon the idea that "natural selection" among competing individuals would lead to wondrous adaptations and species diversity. Twenty-one years passed between that epiphany and publication of On the Origin of Species, the human drama and scientific basis of Darwin's twenty-one-year delay constitute a fascinating, tangled tale that elucidates the character of a cautious naturalist who initiated an intellectual revolution. The Reluctant Mr. Darwin is a book for everyone who has ever wondered about who this man was and what he said. Drawing from Darwin's secret "transmutation" notebooks and his personal letters, David Quammen has sketched a vivid life portrait of the man whose work never ceases to be controversial. (Source: Books in Print)
Availability of Library Copy  More copies are available for the discussion. Contact the Library to borrow one.

Fiction Option: The Darwin Conspiracy    book cover
Author:John Darnton
Description: What led Darwin to the theory of evolution? Why did he wait twenty-two years to write On the Origin of Species? Why was he incapacitated by mysterious illnesses and frightened of travel? Who was his secret rival? These are some of the questions driving Darnton's richly dramatic narrative, which unfolds through three vivid points of view: Darwin's own as he sails around the world aboard the Beagle; his daughter Lizzie's as she strives to understand the guilt and fear that struck her father at the height of his fame; and that of present-day anthropologist Hugh Kellem and Darwin scholar Beth Dulicmer, whose obsession with Darwin (and with each other) drives them beyond the accepted boundaries of scholarly research. Hugh and Beth's discovery of Lizzie's diaries and letters lead them to a hidden chapter of Darwin's autobiography. It is a maze of bitter rivalries, petty deceptions, and jealously guarded secrets, at the heart of which lies the birth of the theory of evolution. (Source: Books in Print)
Contact the Library to borrow a copy.

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Topic: Nanotechnology
Meeting Date and Location: Thursday, March 19, 2009, 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m. Conference Room A, Building 549

Non-fiction Option: The Dance of Molecules: How Nanotechnology Is Changing Our Lives     book cover
Author: Ted Sargent
Description: What if a doctor could stop cancer by targeting a single malignant cell before it multiplied? Imagine a paper-thin "power suit" that could keep you warm on a winter day. What about a computer that connects directly with a person's thoughts? In this groundbreaking exploration of the future of nanotechnology, Ted Sargent reveals how all disciplines of science, from medicine to microchips, are converging to create materials using the tiniest scale possible -- molecule by molecule. And instead of trying to overcome the natural world, nanotech takes its every move from the perfect, elegant structure of nature itself. Its potential is seemingly endless, with practical implications that will revolutionize the way we live, work, and play. In an age when science often evokes more fear than faith, when the potential for super viruses and diabolical cloning looms in our consciousness, Sargent enthusiastically illuminates nanotech's positive possibilities. By working with the tiniest building blocks in nature, pioneering scientists will drastically improve the quality of life for all of us. (Source: Books in Print)
Availability of Library Copy  More copies are available for the discussion.   Contact the Library to borrow one.

Fiction Option #1: The Diamond Age: or a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer    book cover
Author:Neal Stephenson
Description: Decades into our future, a stone's throw from the ancient city of Shanghai, a brilliant nanotechnologist named John Percival Hackworth has just broken the rigorous moral code of his tribe, the powerful neoVictorians. He's made an illicit copy of a state-of-the-art interactive device called A Young Ladys Illustrated Primer Commissioned by an eccentric duke for his grandchild, stolen for Hackworth's own daughter, the Primer's purpose is to educate and raise a girl capable of thinking for herself. It performs its function superbly. Unfortunately for Hackworth, his smuggled copy has fallen into the wrong hands. (Source: Random House)
Contact the Library to borrow a copy.

Fiction Option #2: Prey    book cover
Author:Michael Crichton
Description: In the Nevada desert, an experiment has gone horribly wrong. A cloud of nanoparticles-micro-robots-has escaped from the laboratory. This cloud is self-sustaining and self-reproducing. It is intelligent and learns from experience. For all practical purposes, it is alive. It has been programmed as a predator. It is evolving swiftly, becoming more deadly with each passing hour. Every attempt to destroy it has failed. And we are the prey. As fresh as today's headlines, Michael Crichton's most compelling novel yet tells the story of a mechanical plague and the desperate efforts of a handful of scientists to stop it. Drawing on up-to-the-minute scientific fact, Prey takes us into the emerging realms of nanotechnology and artificial distributed intelligence-in a story of breathtaking suspense. Prey is a novel you can't put down because time is running out. (Source: Books in Print)
Contact the Library to borrow a copy.

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Topic: Use of Human Cadavers
Meeting Date and Location: Thursday, April 23, 2009, 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m. Conference Room A, Building 549

Non-fiction Option: Stiff: The Curious Lives Of Human Cadavers    book cover
Author: Mary Roach
Description: Despite the irreverent, macabre title, this is a respectful and serious examination of what happens to cadavers, past and present. Salon columnist Roach explains how surgeons and doctors use cadavers donated for research purposes to help the living, and also examines potential new variations on how we bury the dead. She explores some interesting historical side avenues as well: the use of corpses to test the guillotine, earlier anatomical beliefs, grave robbers, the elixirs various civilizations concocted out of corpses for medicinal purposes, and, most important, how cadavers provided valuable information to us for understanding such plane crashes as TWA Flight 800. Roach also addresses philosophical issues. (Source: Books in Print)
Contact the Library to borrow a copy.

Fiction Option: The Bone Garden    book cover
Author: Tess Gerritsen
Description: Present day: Julia Hamill has made a horrifying discovery on the grounds of her new home in rural Massachusetts: a skull buried in the rocky soil - human, female, and, according to the trained eye of Boston medical examiner Maura Isles, scarred with the unmistakable marks of murder. But whomever this nameless woman was, and whatever befell her, is knowledge lost to another time. Boston, 1830: In order to pay for his education, Norris Marshall, a talented but penniless student at Boston Medical College, has joined the ranks for local "resurrectionists" - those who plunder graveyards and harvest the dead for sale on the black market. Yet even this ghoulish commerce pales beside the shocking murder of a nurse found mutilated on the university hospital grounds. And when a distinguished doctor meets the same grisly fate, Norris finds that trafficking in the illicit cadaver trade has made him a prime suspect. To prove his innocence, Norris must track down the only witness to have glimpsed the killer: Rose Connolly, a beautiful seamstress from the Boston slums who fears she may be the next victim. Joined by a sardonic, keenly intelligent young man named Oliver Wendell Holmes, Norris and Rose comb the city - from its grim cemeteries and autopsy suites to its glittering mansions and centers of Brahmin power - on the trail of a maniacal fiend who lurks where least expected... and who waits for his next lethal opportunity. With suspense and pitch-perfect period detail, The Bone Garden interweaves the narratives of its nineteenth- and twenty-first-century protagonists, tracing the dark mystery at its heart across time and place to a finale as ingenious as it is shocking. (Source: Books in Print)
Contact the Library to borrow a copy.

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