Rating: 
Summary: Science on the Fringe
Review: The Emperor of Scent is a fascinating, fun to read account of a man out on the scientific fringe. Chandler Burr, tells the story of Luco Turin, PhD in biology and a self described "Bio-physicist" who has been practically obsessed with smell all his life. Turin is clearly an expert when it comes to using his nose to decipher the mysteries of perfume. A book he authored on the subject has gained him access to the inner sanctum of the scent industry. In the course of his scientific and non scientific dabbling, Turin becomes interested in the theory of smell. The mainstream theory is that smell is based upon the shapes of molecules. But there are several problems with this theory, and as is sometimes the case, the scientific establishment refuses to deal with these problems rationally as too much is invested in the current theory. Turin resurrects an old theory. That smell is based upon how a molecules vibrate. This theory was considered preposterous in the past because the mechanism to measure this vibration seems too complex to be done biologically. Turin tackles this by proposing a plausible biological mechanism for tunneling electron microscopy or spectroscopy. He even finds some supporting evidence for this mechanism in scientific literature. Next Turin sets out to do some experimentation to provide evidence to support his theory. In physics there are theoreticians and experimentalists, In biology theory and experiment are the realm of the same individual or team. Turin seems to be a better theorist than an experimentalist. As it turns out biologists don't understand math very well. (fear of math may have been a reason for choosing that field) and Turin's theory is full of math. On the other hand physicists don't understand biology. Turin is caught in the middle. And no one wants to take him seriously. The Emperor of Scent spends many pages recounting Turin's attempts to be taken seriously. But he is an outsider who wants to upset the apple cart with a new theory only a multidisciplinary scientist such as he can really understand. He has little supporting evidence and is too impatient to spend years in a lab gathering the evidence he needs to support his theory. Instead he keeps leaping for the brass ring. While Chandler Burr is not very objective in his account he does tell an interesting story. This is not a scientific work, but a work of journalism. Burr's ultimate purpose may be to promote Turin's theory, but he also does a fine expose' of the scientific establishment at its' best. He also does a great job of introducing us to Luco Turin. A man out of the mold of Richard Feynman. Fun loving, entertaining, intense and monomaniacal at times. The Emperor of Scent is interesting on many levels. I learned a lot about smell, smells, and the fragrance industry. I also enjoyed the story of how a ball coming in from left field is handled by the scientific establishment. A very human story.
Rating:
Summary: fast, engrossing read, one-sidedness small flaw
Review: The Emperor of Scent is excellent as much for its smooth readable style as for its fascinating topic. The book follows the story of scientist Luca Turin as he tries to unravel the mystery of the sense smell. Early in his work, Turin decides that the accepted theory, that the shape of the molecules gives them their smell, is completely wrong and that instead it is the vibration of the molecules that gives them their unique scent. The rest of the book details his tilting against establishment science in an attempt to prove his theory.
The science is for the most part clear and easy to follow; Burr does an excellent job of bringing it to the lay-level and the few times where the reader might feel a bit overwhelmed are far-between and mercifully brief. Burr and Turin don't simply investigate the smell sense in the abstract; the science/art of perfumery makes up much of the story, especially early on in the book as Turin writes a perfume guide which eventually gets him into the super-secret perfume labs which in turn leads to his theory. Personally I found these parts interesting to a point but could have done with fewer quotes from his reviews or fewer explanations of perfumes, but they don't really slow the book much and mostly disappear at the halfway point. The same is somewhat true though to a lesser degree with the details of Turin's personal life, most of which seemed extraneous to the story and somewhat perfunctory.
These are minor flaws though. One last one is that the book seems to end a bit abruptly. The major flaw is that Burr's presentation is very one-sided. While this probably helps from a narrative aspect, giving us a "character" to route for, streamlining the book, giving us something to believe in, from a non-fiction viewpoint a more balanced approach would have been better, giving us more reason to trust Turin. While the opposing viewpoint is clearly explained, its proponents are almost unanimously portrayed as near-villains and there is very little detail on specific objections, other than those raised to a single paper Turin published. The whole "debate" therefore happens somewhat in a vacuum which does a bit of a disservice to the work's non-fiction genre.
On the other hand, it is such a good read, it's hard to care too much about the lack of objectivity (Burr does try to explain the one-sidedness away but it comes off a bit weak). As mentioned, it is a fast, smooth read. And it is laugh-out-loud funny in places, warmly humorous in others. And it does exactly what a good non-fiction book should aspire to beyond clearly explaining; it leads the reader into further exploration of the same topic. It's hard to imagine someone finishing this and not wanting to read more on the "7 Big Boys" who manufacture almost all the smells we meet and greet in our daily lives. Or how/why those smells are chosen. Or whether the debate between Shapists/Vibrationists has taken any further turns.
Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: A redolent exploration of our most neglected sense
Review: The sense of smell is the most neglected, most protected, of our senses, especially in the developed world. So many of us are so far removed from smell, we ignore, distrust, or fear this sense. Scientists believe that the human sense of smell is every bit as good as that of our best friend, dogs. We just haven't developed it to the degree they have, Luca Turin exempted.
Yet the sense of smell is also the most primitive of the senses, and the most evocative. A particular smell can transport me back to a certain time or place more effectively than a song, or an image. Olfaction is wired to a more primitive part of the brain, which may explain its power and its unconscious influence.
But smell is also our most amazing sense. The resolving power of our sense of smell is orders of magnitude greater than the eye or the ear; in our noses we have the olfactory equivalent of a telescope AND a microscope (a scanning tunneling microscope, to be exact, if Turin is right). We can dectect the minutest difference between two chemicals, and scientists have shown that we can detect the presence of perhaps a SINGLE molecule among trillions of other particles.
And yet, smell is also the least understood of the senses. It has resisted classification and analysis, probably because of our own reluctance and disconnection to it.
That's what I loved about this book. It was an eye-opening (nose-opening?) examination of something I give so little thought to. And the more you think about it, the more you read this book, the more amazed you are that you have this thing, and how it works just blows your mind. It also reintroduced me to the pleasures of this sense that I usually neglect.
I am not a scientist in any of these fields and therefore am not really competent to evaluate, but Turin's theory smells right to me. While the mechanism is exotic, it seems to me quantum mechanics (Vibration) would be easier to do in the nose than what the Shapists propose. Therefore, according to the scientific principles of parsimony and Occam's razor, Turin's theory deserves careful examination if for no other reason.
Sadly, the theme of the tale, as Turin himself understands, is not unique to him. Vested interests and petty jealousy very often impede the process of discovery. Science is still a human endeavor.
This book is:
1) A fascinating tour of scents and how we experience them
2) An scientific discussion of how the sense of smell works
3) A profile of a fascinating person
4) A tragedy about cruel scientific orthodoxy and intellectual martyrdom. The casuality is not so much Turin as the process of discovery itself.
Very highly recommended!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book on resistance of science to new theories
Review: This book is very engrossing, and I will not repeat the praise many other readers have posted here. Instead, I will respond to some reviewers who criticize Luca Turin's theory based on his not having performed certain kinds of experiments, or criticize the author's failure to go into the science in more detail. To the contrary, the book's main point is very well supported: Turin has developed a coherent theory of smell and has backed it up with enough data that other scientists, instead of simply shouting him down, should instead have conducted any experiments they claim he should have done. The book shows that Turin has done enough to now put the burden on other scientists, who are more established, better-funded, and better equipped with labs etc., to do more than simply claim Turin left gaps, and then sit on their hands. The point is that science should not be about sitting in judgment on whether a particular scientist should be rated high or low; it should be about the development of promising theories regardless of the names attached to them. The book shows that the praise-and-prestige game of modern science impedes scientific progress. Other books that tell the same kind of story of scientific supression motivated by clinging to prestige are "The Rejection of Continental Drift" and "Plate Tectonics," both by Naomi Oreskes. The behavior of the opponents of continental drift (who lost, obviously) is uncannily similar to the behavior of those who oppose Turin's smell theory.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book on resistance of science to new theories
Review: This book is very engrossing, and I will not repeat the praise many other readers have posted here. Instead, I will respond to some reviewers who criticize Luca Turin's theory based on his not having performed certain kinds of experiments, or criticize the author's failure to go into the science in more detail. To the contrary, the book's main point is very well supported: Turin has developed a coherent theory of smell and has backed it up with enough data that other scientists, instead of simply shouting him down, should instead have conducted any experiments they claim he should have done. The book shows that Turin has done enough to now put the burden on other scientists, who are more established, better-funded, and better equipped with labs etc., to do more than simply claim Turin left gaps, and then sit on their hands. The point is that science should not be about sitting in judgment on whether a particular scientist should be rated high or low; it should be about the development of promising theories regardless of the names attached to them. The book shows that the praise-and-prestige game of modern science impedes scientific progress. Other books that tell the same kind of story of scientific supression motivated by clinging to prestige are "The Rejection of Continental Drift" and "Plate Tectonics," both by Naomi Oreskes. The behavior of the opponents of continental drift (who lost, obviously) is uncannily similar to the behavior of those who oppose Turin's smell theory.
Rating: 
Summary: WHAT SCIENCE IS REALLY LIKE!
Review: This in an important book. Using a narrative style reminiscent of C.P. Snow, the author gives his readers an inside view of interdisciplinary science - how new ideas arise and are worked through, and of the curious tribalism of segments of the scientific community, leading to the NIH response (meaning "not invented here").
The subject is how odors are sensed by living organisms and the scientist is Luca Turin, an energetic cosmopolitan polymath with a deep knowledge of perfumery and a doctorate in physiology. Turin has mastered an impressive swath of knowledge from the fields of biology, chemistry and physics and to construct a novel theory of olfactory perception. The conventional explanation of this phenomenon has long been Shape - an odor molecule with a particular size and shape fits into (or not) an appropriately shaped socket on the receptor - but this explanation has several difficulties that have been ignored by the community of olfactory scientists. Turin's explanation is Vibration - the receptors use ``inelastic tunneling spectroscopy" to register the molecular vibrations of incoming molecules, and he has assembled an impressive amount of empirical evidence in support of this view.
That's part of the story and it is told well, but an equally interesting tale is of how badly this idea has been received by those scientists who have been studying olfactory perception for decades and have become wedded to Shape. With Vibration in hand, Turin is outside the tribe, and his attempts to promote the theory are unfairly impeded. As the author doesn't hesitate to name names, this part of the story will be of great interest both to historians of science and to those general readers who wish to know how science really works.
Rating:
Summary: For Perfume-Lovers, Biology Nerds, and Curious Minds
Review: This is one of those rare un-put-downable books. It's unusual to find a book on science that is so highly, compellingly readable. It weaves together stories of science in theory and in practice (amazing discoveries, long years of research, stubborn hidebound resistance) and both the allure and industry of perfume, through the figure of Luca Turin. The story focuses on the scientist's lifelong obsession with perfume (the book is a must-read for any woman who wears classics like Chanel No. 5, Rive Gauche, or Shalimar) and his determination to unlock the mystery of how we smell--and the science community's determination to ignore his compelling conclusions.
Rating:
Summary: Not to be missed
Review: This may be the best popular scientific book ever written.
The writing style flows from beginning to end without a single misjudged word or phrase. It seems much more like a thriller than
a story of intellectual discovery. As the reader is drawn along by the narrative, key technical concepts are absorbed almost by osmosis.
This is cutting edge science presented so clearly that it seems self-evident, even though it involves advanced concepts in physics, chemistry, and biology.
Luca Turin is the ideal subject, a man who would be fascinating even if he didn't produce revolutionary science. The reader ends the book waiting for the scientific community to wake up and
FedEx his Nobel Prize without delay.
The highest praise to Chandler Burr for giving us an unforgettable portrait of Luca Turin and his pursuit of the mystery of smell. It seems unlikely that anyone will pick up this book without eagerly devouring it and wishing that every book on science could be half this good.
|
