The Noble Lie: When Scientists Give the Right Answers for the Wrong Reasons

The Noble Lie: When Scientists Give the Right Answers for the Wrong Reasons

by Gary Greenberg
The Noble Lie: When Scientists Give the Right Answers for the Wrong Reasons

The Noble Lie: When Scientists Give the Right Answers for the Wrong Reasons

by Gary Greenberg

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Overview

Is drug addiction really a disease? Is sexuality inborn and fixed or mutable? Science is where we often turn when we can't achieve moral clarity. In The Noble Lie, acclaimed and controversial science writer Gary Greenberg shows how scientists try to use their findings to resolve the dilemmas raised by some of the most hotly contested issues of our time, from gay rights to euthanasia and the drug war. He reveals how their answers often turn out to be more fiction than science—and explores whether they cause more harm than good.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781620458648
Publisher: Trade Paper Press
Publication date: 09/01/2008
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 252
File size: 288 KB

About the Author

GARY GREENBERG has written about the intersection of science, politics, and ethics for many magazines, including Harper’s, the New Yorker, Wired, Discover, Rolling Stone, and Mother Jones, where he’s a contributing writer. His reporting has been widely reprinted and anthologized, including in The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2002.  He is also a practicing psychotherapist in Connecticut.

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Table of Contents


Acknowledgments     vii
Introduction     1
Addiction: Visions of Healing     25
Depression: In the Magic Factory     51
Sexual Orientation: Gay Science     79
Schizophrenia: In the Kingdom of the Unabomber     103
Brain Death: As Good as Dead     127
Persistent Vegetative State: Back from the Dead     157
Mortality: We'll All Wake Up Together     175
Afterword     207
Notes     215
Index     235

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"An impressive and fascinating round-up of pseudoscientific notions and the ways in which they have come to count as genuine illnesses. In each case he examines, Greenberg cites the strange and sometimes contradictory views that people struggling to clear up these questions often express. Laudably, he does not rest content with diagnosing paradoxes. Instead, he points out that these are truly hard problems, ones where it is not unreasonable for people to welcome any half-decent solution rather than living in total blindness."-New Scientist

"With his skepticism informed by a prewriting career as a psychotherapist, Greenberg casts his doubts into humorous form, often at his own expense, as when he describes participating in a clinical trial of fish oil's therapeutic value in treating depression. Alt-medicine fans will be informed and entertained by this engaging author."--Booklist

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