Eight Preposterous Propositions: From the Genetics of Homosexuality to the Benefits of Global Warming

Rating:
Summary: Analyzing some timely issues
Review: Robert Ehrlich tackles eight interesting and often timely topics including the possibility of homosexuality being genetic and the possible "benefits" of global warming. The book does an excellent job of giving each proposition the benefit of the doubt and carefully examines the evidence for and against.

In the chapter "Can Sugar Pills Cure You?" Ehrlich not only addresses the proposition that placebo's actually work in helping with pain (not a surprise) but also discusses how easy it is for a drug that is essentially a placebo to get FDA approval. The FDA doesn't require double blind tests to use "active" placebo's i.e. placebo's that mimic a drugs side effect. This can easily cause the test to become unblinded. Since a drug only needs to be a small fraction more effective than the placebo, unblinding can easily give a false positive. This is only one way in which FDA approval is flawed. A drug like Prozac shows little effectiveness beyond the placebo effect yet has a 225,000 percent markup over manufacturers cost.

The chapter on Global Warming presented a lot of information for and against the dangers of Global Warming. The end result seemed to be that Global Warming is more than likely occuring but he gave one flake for the proposition that we shouldn't worry about it. Based on the information in the chapter the flakiness of not worrying about Global Warming would seem to be specific to the individual. A teenager should probably be more worried than a seventy year old. Someone living on the coast should be more worried than someone living inland and someone living in a third world country should be more worried than someone living in the United States. It seems odd that Ehrlich gave a universal one flake.

The final subject on high cholesterol being perfectly safe played off like a tennis match. Does high cholesterol increase the risk of congenital heart failure or not? The evidence seemed to go back and forth but in the end Ehrlich sided with the evidence that lowering your cholesterol is healthy for your heart. However he does once again take a deserved swipe at the FDA with respect to some cholesterol reducing drugs such as gemfrobrizil, lovastatin and clofibrate. Many healthy people are being encouraged to take these statins and Ehrlich has concerns that the people taking these drugs are essentially guinea pigs similar to the women who had hormone replacement therapy and discovered that the cure was worse than the disease. These drugs may be carcinogenic and raise the risk of cancer.

Although the book is about specific topics it's a great guide for learning scientific analysis in general. Understanding terms like "regression to the mean" can actually be applied to real world problems. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to increase their analysis and decision making abilities.


Rating:
Summary: A mixed bag.
Review: This book does a fairly lucid and impartial job of examining eight potentially controversial claims.
The best chapter is the one on placebos, which convinced me that my previous reasons for believing in a placebo effect were wrong, and then showed that it was still quite possible that placebo effects are real.
But much of the book is a good deal more forgettable. His discussion of homosexuality might strike a few rabid Lysenkoists as preposterous, but most educated people should find his answers unsurprising. And his approach isn't nearly as valuable when dealing with hotly debated topics such as global warming as it is when he is bringing overlooked controversies to our attention.