72 Scientific American, March 2021
RECOMMENDED
By Andrea Gawrylewski
COURTESY OF SCRIPPS INSTITUTION OF OCEANOGRAPHYKill Shot:
A Shadow Industry, a Deadly Disease
by Jason Dearen. Avery, 2021 ($27)Pharmaceutical-industry
regulation is not often featured
in the plot of murder myster-
ies—but that is exactly how
Dearen’s Kill Shot reads. In it,
the Associated Press investigative journalist traces
the disturbing story of a contaminated batch of
pain-relieving steroid injections that sickened nearly
800 people around the U.S. in 2012 and killed more
than 100. As a growing number of patients who
received the injections started to show signs of
fungal meningitis, the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention began to investigate. The source of
the botched drugs was a family-owned pharmacy
that grew into a lucrative business by exploiting a
loophole in U.S. drug regulations. The company’s
pharmacists were put on trial for murder and fraud,
but no verdict will bring back the lives of those
killed by deadly negligence. — Tanya LewisEinstein’s Fridge:
How the Difference between
Hot and Cold Explains the Universe
by Paul Sen. Scribner, 2021 ($28)
Although thermodynamics
has been studied for hundreds
of years, filmmaker Sen writes,
few nonscientists appreciate
how its principles have shaped
the modern world. “From sewage pumps to jet
engines ... to the biochemistry of lifesaving drugs,
all the technology that we take for granted needs an
un derstanding of energy, temperature, and entro-
py,” he writes. To elucidate this field—including Ein-
stein’s lesser-known contributions—Sen sums up
the history of thermodynamics, blending the biog-
raphies of key scientists with explanations of how
their work led to specific innovations. These figures
in lude pioneer Sadi Carnot, the first to de c scribe an
ideal heat-driven engine, and mathematician Emmy
Noether, whose theorems on the conservation of
energy vindicated Einstein. — Sophie BushwickThe Disordered Cosmos:
A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime,
and Dreams Deferred
by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein.
Bold Type Books, 2021 ($28)
“I used to think physics was
just physics, separate from
people,” writes theoretical
physicist Prescod-Weinstein.
“I was wrong.” In this eye-
opening book Prescod-Weinstein describes her
work studying particle physics, dark matter and
cosmology, as well as how that work is affected
by being a “queer agender Black woman” in
physics. She has faced abuse most of her col-
leagues have not—told by advisers she was not
smart enough to be a physicist and subjected to
racism and even physical assault from fellow re -
searchers. Somehow her awe at the cosmos re -
mained intact, and it illuminates this fascinating
tour of the universe, from cosmic inflation to the
physics of melanin. — Clara Moskowitz
How much does funding affect the course of scientific discovery? In this insightful book, science historian (and Scientific American columnist) Oreskes
examines the military backing that poured into oceanography programs during World War II and the cold war. The expansion of naval warfare created
a sudden need to better understand the deep sea. Oreskes shows that in some cases, that largesse enriched our knowledge—for example, the need to
study the effect of water density on sonar transmission led to a breakthrough in understanding deep ocean circulation. But military secrecy also prevented
discussions and publication of crucial ocean research; bathymetric data about undersea topography that would have been useful for the development
of plate tectonic theory were kept classified, for example. Overall, the book reminds us that science does not happen in a vacuum. — Andrea ThompsonScience on
a Mission:
How Military Funding
Shaped What We
Do and Don’t Know
about the Ocean
by Naomi Oreskes.
University of Chicago
Press, 2020 ($40)RESEARCH VESSEL Roger Revelle in the Arctic Ocean in
2007 on a mission to collect data on ocean circulation,
chemistry, physics and biology.