Stuart Ritchie

One usually likes to think that scientists know what they’re doing. Here’s something that might shake your confidence. In bio-medical research, scientists often use cell lines. These are in vitro cells, originally taken from a human or animal donor, which can be experimented on to help develop new drugs or treatments. The problem is that, according to one review, in ‘at least 5 per cent’ of studies, the scientists have totally mixed up where the cells came from. This means that in at least one in 20 studies that were sent off for peer review the scientists were completely confused about the most basic element of their research. They thought, for instance, they were doing research on lung cells when they actually had pancreatic ones.

Scientists, it turns out, are really bad at statistics. Numerous studies show that a startling proportion of academics consistently misunderstand the statistics they’re using, and the conclusions that can be drawn from them. A computer algorithm that highlights basic statistical errors was recently set loose on a huge sample of published research papers in psychology  and found that almost half contained a mathematical mistake; 13 per cent had a serious screw-up that meant their reported results might have been completely wrong. If scientists — who use statistics all day to analyse their experiments — are so innumerate, what hope is there for everyone else? Enter Sir David Spiegelhalter, Winton professor for the public understanding of risk at Cambridge University.

The greatest of Bach’s 224 cantatas is BWV 109, ‘Ich glaube, lieber Herr, hilf meinem Unglauben’. Its subject — the title translates as Mark 9:24, ‘I believe, dear Lord, help my unbelief’ — is that strange cognitive dissonance of believing something yet not believing it at the same time. Daniel Dennett’s new book, From Bacteria to Bach and Back, is aimed at those who suffer from this intermittent unbelief, though not about God — Dennett is, after all, one of modern philosophy’s most prominent atheists — but about his specialist subject: evolution by natural selection. Of course, most educated people nowadays accept Darwin’s great insight.

Darwin came tantalisingly close to understanding them, 20th-century eugenicists obsessed over them, and with modern science, we are poised to control them as never before. Genes are a constant source of fascination, yet ignorance and misunderstanding plague almost every public discussion of their effects on our health and behaviour. How useful it would be, then, if there was a clear, accurate, and up-to-date pop science book on genetics, a book that recounted the history of genetic science and reflected on its implications for the future of medicine and society. This is the goal of the new book by oncologist-biologist Siddhartha Mukherjee. It is a lofty goal, and Mukherjee attempts it with lofty language.