Thanks to Phil Alexander and Casey Manion.
The publisher sent me a copy of Give and Take by Adam Grant after I sent several emails asking for a review copy. I expected it to be the best book about psychology in many years and it is.
The book’s main theme is the non-obvious advantages of being a “giver” (someone who helps others without concern about payback). Grant teaches at Wharton, whose students apparently enter Wharton believing (or are taught there?) that this is a poor strategy. With dozens of studies and stories, Grant argues that the truth is more complicated — that a giver, properly focussed, does better than others. Whether this reflects cause and effect (Grant seems to say it does) I have no idea. Perhaps “givers” are psychologically unusually sophisticated in many ways, not just a relaxed attitude toward payback, and that is why some of them do very well. (more…)
Thanks to Bryan Castañeda.
Renata Adler’s two novels, Speedboat (1976) and Pitch Dark (1988), have just been reissued by New York Review Books. I was pleased to see a recent New York article about her. Here is my two cents:
1. Gone: The Last Days of The New Yorker (2000) is one of my favorite books. It can be summed up like this: Genius corrupts. I first came across it in the Berkeley Barnes & Noble. I couldn’t stop reading it. When I left the store hours later my scooter had a parking ticket.
2. Her libel lawsuit is described here.
3. She wrote a book about the Bilderberg Group called Private Capacity. It was announced then cancelled.
4. During a panel discussion televised on C-Span, she took a phone call. It appeared to be from her daughter.
5. For several years she taught journalism at Boston University. A student said she told great stories.
6. In a book review, she said that Woodward and Bernstein’s Deep Throat was made up. Apparently she was wrong about that.
7. During a dinner I had with Aaron Swartz last summer, he praised her article attacking Pauline Kael (“The Perils of Pauline”, 1980).
8. When her article about Kael came out, a friend of mine said, Now she’ll be known as the person who attacked Kael. My friend was wrong. She is better known as the person attacked by eight articles in the New York Times when Gone was published. One short non-best-selling book, eight negative articles from the most powerful pulpit on earth.
9. Gone and some books by Jane Jacobs were the only books I took to China. I also adore Totto-Chan but I suppose I have memorized it. I mostly read books by men, so I am puzzled that all my most favorite books are by women. A Chinese friend of mine stayed in my Beijing apartment while I was gone. Her English isn’t very good but she praised Gone, which she called Lost.
Thanks to Bryan Castañeda.
This book review of Spillover by David Quammen is quite unfavorable about Laurie Garrett, the Pulitzer-Prize-winning science journalist. Several years ago, at the UC Berkeley journalism school, I heard her talk. During the question period, I made a comment something like this: “It seems to me there is kind of a conspiracy between the science journalist and the scientist. Both of them want the science to be more important than it really is. The scientist wants publicity. The science journalist wants their story on the front page. The effect is that things get exaggerated, this or that finding is claimed to be more important than it really is.” Garrett didn’t agree. She did not give a reason. This was interesting, since I thought my point was obviously true.
The book review, by Edward Hooper, author of The River, a book about the origin of AIDS, makes a more subtle point. It is about how he has been ignored.
When I wrote The River, I did my level best to interview each of the major living protagonists involved in the origins-of-AIDS debate. This amounted to well over 600 interviews, mostly of two hours or more, and about 500 of which were done face-to-face rather than down the phone. Although the authors of the three aforementioned books (Pepin, Timberg and Halperin, Nattrass) all devote time and several pages to The River, and to claims that I definitely got it wrong, not one of them bothered to contact me at any point – either to challenge my findings, or to ask me questions. However, I have been contacted by someone through my website (a lawyer and social scientist) who asked me several questions, to all of which I responded. Later, this man read the first two of these three pro-bushmeat books and contacted the authors of each by email, to ask them one or two simple questions about their dismissal of the OPV hypothesis [= the AIDS virus came from an oral polio vaccine]. His letters to Pepin, Timberg and Halperin (which he later forwarded to me) were courteous and non-confrontational, and in two instances he sent three separate letters, but apparently not one of the authors could be bothered to reply to any of these approaches.
In other words, there is a kind of moat. Inside the moat, are the respected people — the “real” scientists. Outside the moat are the crazy people, whom it is a good idea to ignore. Even if they have written a book on the topic. Hooper and those who agreed with him were outside the moat.
Hooper quotes Quammen:
“Hooper’s book was massive”, Quammen writes, “overwhelmingly detailed, seemingly reasonable, exhausting to plod through, but mesmerizing in its claims…”
I look forward to the day that the Shangri-La Diet is called “seemingly reasonable”. Quammen and Garrett (whose Coming Plague has yet to come) write about science for a living. I have a theory about their behavior. To acknowledge misaligned incentives (scientists, like journalists, care about other things than truth ) and power relationships (some scientists are in a position to censor other scientists and points of view they dislike) would make their jobs considerably harder. They are afraid of what would happen to them — would they be kicked out, placed on the other side of the moat? — if they took “crazy” views seriously. It is also time-consuming to take “crazy” views seriously (“massive . . . exhausting”). So they ignore them.
Amy Chua wondered if all the pressure to practice (piano, older child, violin, younger child) she put on her two children was worth it. But then there were moments like these:
In a glass-windowed room overlooking the Mediterranean, Sophia played Mendelsohn’s Rondo Capriccioso, and got bravos and hugs from all the guests.
Which I found the most chilling sentence in the whole book. Her daughter’s recognition (“bravos and hugs”) made Chua very happy. But did it make Sophia happy? Chua doesn’t answer that question. She doesn’t follow the sentence I’ve quoted with “I could see how pleased she was” or “Years later she would say what a good time she had”. Nope, the chapter ends there.
The title comes from Andrew Montford’s new book Hiding the Decline (copy given me by author) about Climategate. From an introductory section:
When the figures were published the extraordinary lack of data underlying the blade of the Yamal hockey stick caused a minor sensation. In fact the high point at the end of the graph was shown to have been based on only four trees, and only one of these had the hockey stick shape. McIntyre dubbed it ‘the most influential tree in the world’.
Most of Hiding the Decline is about the inquiries that followed Climategate. I enjoyed reading about smug powerful people making fools of themselves and the fairy-tale-like consternation created by two unlikely events: 1. A non-scientist (Steve McIntyre) gets involved in the global warming debate. As in a fairy tale, McIntyre is free to speak the truth. In particular, he is free to question. Professional climate scientists cannot speak the truth for fear of career damage. 2. The release of the Climategate emails. As in a fairy tale, a sudden burst of truth about bad behavior previously hidden. (more…)
Do you know how dangerous prescription sleeping pills are? I didn’t, and I do sleep research.
I came across Dr. Daniel Kripke’s book Dark Side of Sleeping Pills while finishing yesterday’s post on undisclosed risks of medical treatments. I had written an almost-complete draft a year ago. One line in the draft said “undisclosed risks of sleeping pills” with no additional information. I couldn’t remember why I’d written that so I googled “dangers of sleeping pills” and found Dr. Kripke’s book. I was unaware the evidence was so strong. I asked Dr. Kripke to tell the story of how he came to write it. He replied:
It is almost a life-long story.
As a young psychiatrist, I learned that the American Cancer Society had done a questionnaire survey of a million people which showed mortality related to long and short sleep. [People who sleep less or more than average have higher death rates.] In 1975, I asked if they would collaborate with me on a more complete analysis of the data on sleep length and insomnia. As a control variable, we included analysis of their one question about sleeping pill use. To my surprise, it looked like sleeping pill use was a strong predictor of early death, while insomnia was not (if you controlled for sleeping pill use by insomniacs). (more…)
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