State of Fear - by Michael Crichton

State of Fear is a novel that has changed my perspective on charity organizations and the validity of scientific studies. The novel itself is a thrill ride where a bomb is always about to go off on the next page. It has been a while since I have read a book where I have been so caught reading.

Weaved in this story Crichton shows us how charity organizations have little oversight, especially when compared to for profit corporations, and how this lack of oversight can lead to misinformation, abuse of funds, and even terrorism. I hereby pledge to be much more cautious before donating another dollar. In economic exchanges of value for value, there is a kind of inherent oversight that is lost when you just give your money away, not knowing exactly how it is going to be spent.

Crichton's other focus of the book is the validity of scientific studies where he suggests that science experiments be conducted in a double blind fashion. That is to say that one party desires an experiment, another designs the experiment, and a third carries it out. This prevent bias.

Strikingly, Crichton tells of a scientific test where two labs are given genetically modified mice. One lab is told the mouse is bred to be faster, the other lab is told the mouse is slower. The labs carry out experiments and confirm the assumption in both cases. The catch, however, is that the mice are genetically identical. Proving that scientists working to route out all bias are still subject to some bias when they know the assumptions of the experiment.

One answer to this problem is to implement double blind experiments discussed earlier, however, other options could also be proposed.

The two themes of charity abuse and scientific validity center on the issue of global warming where Crichton points out few terms are defined, much policy is based on speculation, and there is a wide array of disagreement in the scientific community. In other words, it is impossible to know for sure what is happening.

The book was also a great eye opener on ecology. How diverse the world is, and how much it changes, even without human intervention. Forests and the air we breathe all would change even without human hands.


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