When Science Goes Wrong

Science is the world's new religion" but what happens when it goes terribly wrong? An innocent young black man is convicted of rape and sent to prison for 25 years on the basis of 'infallible' DNA evidence - which turns out to be completely bogus. A long-distance runner's Parkinson's Disease is treated with revolutionary neuroscience techniques, which leave a foetus growing in his brain. A study into why children stutter ends up ruining their lives when scientists deliberately introduce speech impediments, and, to their horror, find they are permanent. British neuroscientist Simon LeVay explains how elementary mistakes, miscaculations and simple bad science sometimes lead to death (when anthrax spores escape from a lab, or a nuclear plant explodes) and other times to expensive farce (when a tiny data error sends a space probe hurtling to oblivion, or when an 'impossible' hurricane wreaks havoc across the UK). Baboons on ecstasy, death-by-volcano and the failure of gene therapy to perform as advertised also feature in this authoritative and entertaining study of the limitations of science.