Skip to main content

Is this Wi-fi Organic? - Dave Farina ****

After expressing some doubts about one of 'Professor Dave's videos it only seemed fair to take a look at his book - and I was pretty much sold on this 2021 publication by the title - but it turned out to be considerably more than I expected. I had assumed it would be a book poking fun at ignorant pseudoscientific ideas, but in reality the biggest parts of it are solid and entirely serious introductions to chemistry, biochemistry and energy (plus a touch of quantum physics).

The reason for this eclectic mix is that Dave Farina feels that they provide the knowledge foundation required to counter much online woo, whether it's about things 'not containing chemicals', so-called alternative medicines or the random use of the word 'quantum' to try to make a treatment that is nothing more than a placebo seem more scientifically based.

In between the basic science chapters we do get into the dodgy claims, also taking on, for example, that marketing term 'organic' and various other unlikely ways scientific terms are misused (sadly we never do encounter that organic wi-fi). Farina emphasises the ridiculous distinction between 'natural' and 'synthetic' in chemical terms, pointing out the many dangers of nature and the fact that a chemical with identical structure is the same thing whether it is natural or synthetic in origin. He also does an effective job of demolishing the idea that there can be a product or treatment that does a detox.

Taking on all these examples of pseudoscience and 'natural'-based marketing is a well trodden path, but what's novel here is providing a fair amount of straight science to accompany it - I was particularly pleased to see the chemistry section, as the subject is woefully under-represented in popular science.

What I'm less sure about, sadly, is whether this will change any minds. You have to be interested in science to read those science sections, and Farina's regular suggestion that no sensible person would fall for alternative therapies and their ilk is unlikely to win over current believers. The weakest part of the book is when he oversimplifies the history of science. For example, he describes alchemy as pseudoscience, where it is the ancestor of chemistry with considerable overlap by the time you get to Robert Boyle. For that matter, Farina is (rightly) very positive about Isaac Newton's work, without pointing out the considerable time he put into alchemy.

This book is probably preaching to the converted - but it will do a very useful job for those who feel that pseudoscience is nonsense, but lack the science knowledge to back up their assertion.

Paperback:   
Kindle:  
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
These articles will always be free - but if you'd like to support my online work, consider buying a virtual coffee:
Buy me a coffee
Review by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Language of Mathematics - Raúl Rojas ***

One of the biggest developments in the history of maths was moving from describing relationships and functions with words to using symbols. This interesting little book traces the origins of a whole range of symbols from those familiar to all, to the more obscure squiggles used in logic and elsewhere. On the whole Raúl Rojas does a good job of filling in some historical detail, if in what is generally a fairly dry fashion. We get to trace what was often a bumpy path as different symbols were employed (particularly, for example, for division and multiplication, where several still remain in use), but usually, gradually, standards were adopted. This feels better as a reference, to dip into if you want to find out about a specific symbol, rather than an interesting end to end read. Rojas tells us the sections are designed to be read in any order, which means that there is some overlap of text - it feels more like a collection of short essays or blog posts that he couldn't be bothered ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Why Nobody Understands Quantum Physics - Frank Verstraete and Céline Broeckaert **

It's with a heavy heart that I have to say that I could not get on with this book. The structure is all over the place, while the content veers from childish remarks to unexplained jargon. Frank Versraete is a highly regarded physicist and knows what he’s talking about - but unfortunately, physics professors are not always the best people to explain physics to a general audience and, possibly contributed to by this being a translation, I thought this book simply doesn’t work. A small issue is that there are few historical inaccuracies, but that’s often the case when scientists write history of science, and that’s not the main part of the book so I would have overlooked it. As an example, we are told that Newton's apple story originated with Voltaire. Yet Newton himself mentioned the apple story to William Stukeley in 1726. He may have made it up - but he certainly originated it, not Voltaire. We are also told that â€˜Galileo discovered the counterintuitive law behind a swinging o...
Post a Comment
Read more

Ctrl+Alt+Chaos - Joe Tidy ****

Anyone like me with a background in programming is likely to be fascinated (if horrified) by books that present stories of hacking and other destructive work mostly by young males, some of whom have remarkable abilities with code, but use it for unpleasant purposes. I remember reading Clifford Stoll's 1990 book The Cuckoo's Egg about the first ever network worm (the 1988 ARPANet worm, which accidentally did more damage than was intended) - the book is so engraved in my mind I could still remember who the author was decades later. This is very much in the same vein,  but brings the story into the true internet age. Joe Tidy gives us real insights into the often-teen hacking gangs, many with members from the US and UK, who have caused online chaos and real harm. These attacks seem to have mostly started as pranks, but have moved into financial extortion and attempts to destroy others' lives through doxing, swatting (sending false messages to the police resulting in a SWAT te...
Post a Comment
Read more