13 Things That Don't Make Sense

This book is really dated. The Pioneer anomaly has been solved, Homeopathy has been discredited, Major progress on neuroscience of free will just for example.

I'm pretty disappointed. I thought that I would be reading more about the cutting edge of science, but unfortunately that just wasn't the case. The first chapter on dark matter and dark energy was interesting, for sure. And some of the other chapters got me to think. But overall I was underwhelmed. The author had a formula where he would introduce you to the prevailing theory, introduce some research by some scientists who were a bit out there, avoid discussing counter arguments to those scientists theories, and then make it sound as if the majority opinion shunned those scientists. It almost comes across as a conspiracy.

Thing is, many of his points rely on the assumption that certain research is valid, despite the fact that no one has been able to repeat it. Also, there are some serious logical fallacies throughout the book. For example, Brooks claims that the WOW! signal must be from aliens because Occam's Razor says it would be so (i.e. the simplest explanation is most likely the correct one). He believes that because we can't figure out what caused the signal, it MUST be from aliens.

I don't recommend picking up this book, but if you do stick to a few select chapters and leave the rest alone.

I really enjoyed this book. In a world where most geographical frontiers have already been explored it's inspiring to read about the wild west of science where our knowledge is small and great discoveries are still to be made.

The author did a good job of interweaving the 13 things so the book felt like a single work and not 13 distinct essays. There are interesting humans elements to the book. It's fascinating how the careers of so many scientists were affected by their ‘discoveries.' The final chapter on homeopathy, the one I almost skipped because the topic seemed like an open-and-shut case, surprisingly turned out to be the most interesting. I also really enjoyed the discussion on dark matter and the way that single topic was interwoven throughout the book.