The Icepick Surgeon

In Icepick surgeon Sam Kean looks for scientists who did bad things in the name of science. In doing so, he mostly tries to avoid the easy ways out: most of the chapters are about sincere scientists, who at least start out meaning well, not cartoon villains. And on the flip side, Kean makes clear that there is no justification for the sorts of harm inflicted by these scientists – he reminds us again and again that this is not how science advances.

Reading it, I was stunned at how many of the tales were tales about scientists who did bad things in the name of MONEY, not science: taking to piracy, slave-trading, even murder with the goal of raising enough money to continue doing science. I complain bitterly about the NIH and the silly hoops for grant-funding, but at least science is funded. So much of historical science was only for people who were already gentry and could self-fund.

I enjoyed this book quite a bit, the stories inside were fascinating and gruesome, while also getting into the moral complexity of using research as ill-gotten gains. The Nazis are the most obvious to come to mind here, but there were lots of shady research experiments done in the past. The story that stuck out the most to me was the one from Winnipeg regarding the David Reimer case- I live in Winnipeg and I had never heard anything about this. This story was absolutely horrifying!

I did have some problems with this book, though. The author did use outdated language a few times; It mostly didn't bother me too much because due to the context, I could tell that Kean was trying to keep the language “as it was”- I believe he used Indian after referring to a group that had Indian in their name and their stated goal was to “kill Indians”. While it's a term I would normally look down upon an author using today, I felt in the context to switch to “indigenous” would have felt awkward- but a disclaimer after the fact would have been nice, especially since many Americans still use the term colloquially, to help normalize it felt weird. The second irritating thing he did was to keep promoting his podcast. Such a weird thing to do. Maybe it's an audiobook thing only, and in the physical book, they are instead footnotes? Either way, it was jarring.

I recommend this book, but with some caveats. It can be pretty heavy, and it's possible the language may put you off it (or the constant podcast-advertising).

I thought this was really interesting and a good reminder that unethical science is bad for a multitude of reasons!

I listened to it on audio and there were some occasions when Kean plugs his own podcast - which is fine?! - but it was unclear while listening if those were footnotes or in the text itself. In the text itself that seems weird but maybe there was no other way to express those notes in the audio version. It just threw off the groove a bit.