Alex Boese

I found this book fascinating - occasionally discomfiting or even downright horrifying - but always interesting.

I wasn't sure of the contents when I picked it up, but was happy to find that it is full of specific accounts - complete with references - of experiments or studies. That each began with a short blurb written as a dramatisation or memory of the events in question was an excellent touch.

The layout, of grouped experiments in a chapter with a single theme, was easy to focus on and more enjoyable than if it had been more of a random jump from topic to topic - it also meant that often there were references, mentions, and influences shared between the accounts.

There are pictures included, and some of them - like the experiments they are there to illustrate - are humourous, or disquieting, or horrible. I appreciated the inclusion, though, even in the case of the horrible - it helps to get an idea of the scope of the experiment solid in my head.

There were a handful of experiments included here that I have come across, either by mention, or, in a couple of cases, in a more in-depth discussion than here, but that only served to make me enjoy it more - it is always nice to get multiple accounts of such things, and it was hardly as though there was much repetition present. (And I have quite eclectic reading and researching habits, in any case.)

If you enjoy odd science - much historical science, of course, though there was a nice blend of relatively recent with the older accounts - and don't mind that it occasionally takes you to worrying places, I recommend you give this book a try. It's quite thought-provoking - though they aren't always happy thoughts, and might not be suitably happy conversation for everyone.

Alex Boese has an engaging writing style, and the feeling that he is fascinated and engaged with the subject himself definitely comes across. (I was also relieved to read, in his introduction, that there is no mention of the Nazi experiments in the book; he had no intention to include them, he says, because he had no intention to make the book a catalog of atrocities, not to mention that they were not actual scientific research, but torture disguised as science.)

As well, I appreciated that he acknowledged there was no desire to trivialise or ridicule science or even the - often very odd - people who created, led, and, of course, published these experiments.

I'll close with a quote from the author's own introduction:

'The researchers who appear in the following pages-even the scariest and most eccentric ones-all share one virtue. They all looked at the world around them, and instead of taking what they saw for granted, they asked questions.'

Hear hear, I say.… (plus d'informations)