When Science Goes Wrong

by Simon Levay

  SIMON LEVAY is a British-born neuroscientist who has served on the faculties of Harvard Medical School and the Salk Institute. He is best known for his research into the biological basis of sexual orientation, and he has written or co-authored eight previous books. He lives in West Hollywood, California.

  When Science Goes Wrong:

  Twelve Tales From The Dark Side Of Discovery

  Simon LeVay

  Monday Books

  www.mondaybooks.com

  © Simon LeVay 2009

  First published in the USA in 2008 by Plume, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc

  First published in the UK in 2009 by Monday Books

  The right of Simon LeVay to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  Excerpt from Biohazard by Ken Alibek Copyright (c) 1999 by Ken Alibek. Used by permission of Random House.

  All rights reserved. Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 978-1-906308-08-7

  Typeset by Andrew Searle

  Printed and bound by TBC

  Converted to eBook by ebookgenie.co.uk

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  Contents

  Contents

  Preface

  NEUROSCIENCE: The Runner’s Brain

  METEOROLOGY: All Quiet on the Western Front

  VOLCANOLOGY: The Crater of Doom

  NEUROSCIENCE: The Ecstasy and the Agony

  ENGINEERING GEOLOGY: The Night the Dam Broke

  GENE THERAPY: The Genes Of Death

  NUCLEAR PHYSICS: Meltdown

  MICROBIOLOGY: Gone With The Wind

  FORENSIC SCIENCE: The Wrong Man

  SPACE SCIENCE: Off Target

  SPEECH PATHOLOGY: The Monster Study

  NUCLEAR CHEMISTRY: The Magic Island

  EPILOGUE

  Sources

  MORE FROM MONDAY BOOKS

  SICK NOTES:

  Preface

  MOSTLY, WE HEAR ABOUT science’s triumphs – the wonder drugs, the Moon landings, the ever-faster computers. But for every brilliant scientific success there are a dozen failures. Usually these involve no more than some wasted money and a blank spot on someone’s CV. Once in a while, though, science doesn’t just fail – it goes spectacularly, even horribly, wrong. And that makes for a great story.

  This book is a collection of twelve such stories. They are linked by the common thread of scientific failure, but in other respects they are quite diverse. I wanted, in the first place, to range over many different kinds of science. Some of the chapters relate to explorations within the basic sciences, such as nuclear chemistry, volcanology and neuroscience. The majority, however, focus on the applied sciences, because it is when science serves human ends that the opportunities for truly memorable screw-ups are most likely to arise. These sciences include medical research, forensic science, meteorology, microbiology and psychology. One of the stories deals with an engineering failure, but it was a failure rooted in scientific error.

  In addition, I wanted to illustrate the rich variety of ways in which the scientific process can go awry. Failures, disasters and other negative outcomes of science can result not only from bad luck, but also from the failure to follow appropriate procedures or to heed warnings, from confusion of units, from ethical breaches in the treatment of human subjects, from the pressure to get quick results, from excessive ambition or financial greed, from the failure to think broadly enough about the consequences of one’s work, or from fraud. Or even from a couple of mislabelled bottles. The stories in this book illustrate the consequences of many of these factors, acting alone or in diabolical combination.

  This book is not an attack on science. I am a scientist myself, and I consider science to be one of the most beautiful, challenging and worthwhile activities that humans can engage in. The events described in this book are no more the story of science than plane crashes are the story of aviation. If I thought that the publication of this book would bring the entire cavalcade of science to a jangling halt – or even impede its progress in the slightest degree – I would not have written it.

  The book is also not intended to be a complete or academic survey of scientific failure. There are plenty of sciences that escape mention in these pages, plenty of failure modes that I don’t discuss, and plenty of errors more laughable, accidents more tragic, and wrongdoings more egregious. Rather than trying to be comprehensive, I have followed the advice offered to the historian by Lytton Strachey in Eminent Victorians: ‘He will row out over that great ocean of material, and lower down into it, here and there, a little bucket, which will bring up to the light of day some characteristic specimen, from those far depths, to be examined with a careful curiosity.’

  In keeping with this approach, I have not arranged my ‘specimens’ into any logical order, based for example on their historical sequence, the scientific disciplines they relate to, or the modes of scientific failure that they exemplify. Instead, I have laid them out on the deck in what I hope is an agreeable pattern, juxtaposing light and dark, new and old, innocent and malevolent. If they coalesce into a larger picture, so much the better.

  It is customary in a book of this kind to thank one’s sources, but I do so with particular sincerity in this case because some of the people I interviewed were agreeing to talk about episodes in their lives that they would probably rather forget. They had little to gain from reliving those episodes, and I thank them for doing so.

  This book is not just about scientific error and wrongdoing, however; it is also about bravery in the face of danger, endurance in the face of suffering and loss, intelligence and persistence in the search for causes, and even sometimes about the right way of doing science. Some of my interviewees exemplify those traits, and I thank them sincerely too.

  The complete list of the people I interviewed is as follows: Ken Alibek, Ph.D., Nicoline Ambrose, Ph.D., Colin Blakemore, Ph.D., Oliver Bloodstein, Ph.D., Arthur Caplan, Ph.D., John Casani, Ph.D., Bernard Chouet, Ph.D., Rick Doblin, Ph.D., Raymon Durso, M.D., Robert Erickson, M.D., Michael Fish, Rebecca Folkerth, M.D., Curt Freed, M.D., Paul Gelsinger, Bill Giles, Jack Green, Ph.D., Kenneth Gregorich, Ph.D., Charles Grob, M.D., Jeanne Guillemin, Ph.D., Peter Gumbel, Stephen Hanauer, Ph.D.(died May 21, 2007), Anita Hart, Robert Iacono, M.D. (died June 16, 2007), Steve Jolly, Ph.D., Thomas Jung, Ph.D., Walter Loveland, Ph.D., Ewen McCallum, M.Sc., Matthew Meselson, Ph.D., Victor Ninov, Ph.D., George Ricaurte, M.D., Ph.D., Richard Schwartz, Ph.D., James Slosson, Ph.D. (died April 28, 2007), William Thompson, J.D., Ph.D., Sam Thurman, Ph.D., Don L. Truex, D.D.S., Kay Truex De Justo, Inder Verma, Ph.D., and Charles Wood, Ph.D.

  There were also people who played key roles in the events described in this book but who declined to speak with me, or who did not respond to repeated requests for an interview. I have attempted to describe their actions and represent their viewpoints as accurately and fairly as possible by reference to their published writings or statements, news reports, or information provided by other interviewees. Any failure to do them justice represents a shortcoming in this book that I regret.

  I am grateful to Christian Wehrhahn, Ulrike Seibt, Kerry Sieh, and my brother, Benedict le Vay (author of the Eccentric
Britain series and Britain from the Rails), for reading and commenting on portions of the book. Ben also helped develop the book’s concept, and my agent Andrew Lownie helped turn that concept into a proposal for a saleable manuscript. So all I had to do was write it.

  NEUROSCIENCE: The Runner’s Brain

  MORGUES ARE SPOOKY PLACES at the best of times. Even during the day, when knots of chattering medical students gather round the brightly-lit dissecting tables and senior pathologists poke at ruptured aortas or cancer-ravaged livers, they offer uncomfortable reminders of our own mortality. Not just the sight of the dead and the disorders that killed them, but also the odour – if not the odour of death itself, then the acrid fumes of formalin, the preservative that keeps death’s putrefaction at bay.

  At night, it’s worse. And it was night – the middle of the night – as Rebecca Folkerth stood next to a table in the morgue at the New England Medical Center, Tufts University’s teaching hospital on Tremont Street in downtown Boston. It was on a weekend in the late winter of 1991. Bundled against the cold, a few late-night revellers were still strolling the streets outside, looking for all-night Chinese restaurants or checking out the attractions of the Combat Zone, Boston’s always-open red-light district. But inside the morgue, all was quiet, and Folkerth was alone.

  Well, not quite alone. For company she had 53-year-old Max Truex, whose brain she was removing.

  Folkerth was a pathologist, but not a senior one. In fact, the blonde 32-year-old had just taken her boards – the examination that qualified her in the sub-speciality of neuropathology – a few months earlier. She hadn’t yet accumulated the portfolio of macabre experiences that make pathologists such entertaining dinner guests, but this night would get her off to a good start. As she looked at Truex’s brain, she blinked, looked again, and said to herself, ‘What the hell is this? This is creepy!’

  Max Truex was born in Warsaw, Indiana, in 1935. His father, Russell, was a locomotive engineer with the Pennsylvania Railroad. Although he drank too much, Russell was a good family man and a reliable provider for his wife, Lucile, and their three sons, Gene, Max, and Don.

  Gene was four years older than Max, so there was always a certain distance, an unquestioned division of authority and obedience, between them. With Don it was different. Don was born only a year-and-a-half after Max. What was worse, Max grew slowly, so already by the time he was six Don had caught up with him in stature. When I visited Don in 2005 – he’s now in his late sixties, a practising dentist in Santa Barbara, California, and a running, cycling, and general fitness enthusiast – he told me that the height issue was a major factor in their relationship. ‘It was a real sore point for him,’ he said. ‘When we were youngsters, it was a fight every day. Our next-door neighbour said she thought we would never grow up, because one of us was going to kill the other.’

  But it wasn’t either Max or Don who failed to grow up – it was their older brother, Gene. When he was 16, and the younger boys were 12 and 11, the three of them were driving in the family car, with Gene at the wheel. At an intersection they collided with a dump truck, and Gene was killed.

  After this tragedy, Max found himself suddenly and unexpectedly in the role of eldest son, yet with a younger brother who was now several inches taller than he was. What saved the two boys from mutual destruction was sports. Gene, before his death, had already been running the mile in high school, and now the two younger boys followed his lead, taking to running and other sports with fierce dedication and competitiveness. And in the process they became good friends.

  Although there are exceptions, taller runners usually excel at sprinting, while smaller runners do better in endurance events. At a final height of 5ft 5in, and a weight of 9st 3lb, Max Truex was very similar in stature to Ethiopians like Haile Gebrselassie, who utterly dominated world competition at 10,000 metres during the 1990s, or Kenenisa Bekele, the current world record-holder at that distance. But back in 1950, no one had set eyes on an Ethiopian runner, so Max’s modest size drew people’s attention. It encouraged them to develop an affectionate or protective attitude toward him, as if they saw him as a permanent child.

  There were other traits that had the same effect. Although the Truexes are French in ancestry, Max had a broad, Slavic-looking face that seemed to carry a fixed, somewhat childish smile, even when he was running. And as he ran, he ‘skipped’ – he would frequently and erratically switch his stride, as if out of sheer playfulness. Indeed, he was naturally good-humoured. For all these reasons, people called him Maxie and liked to take him under their wing. Later, when newspapers started recording his feats, they would refer to him with patronising titles like ‘The Little Strider.’ They described him as ‘spunky’, as if his small stature was a natural handicap that only grit and determination had overcome.

  In high school, Max Truex was a star athlete – he won the state cross-country championship and set a national interscholastic record for the mile. On account of his performances Truex was actively recruited by several universities, and he finally accepted a track scholarship at the University of Southern California, where he was drawn by the warm climate and the school’s high ranking in athletics.

  One of the people who was involved in recruiting him was USC’s assistant track coach, Jim Slosson, who became a lifelong advisor and friend to Truex. Under Slosson’s tutelage, Truex quickly came to focus on the long-distance events – the 5,000 and 10,000 metres – where his remarkable powers of endurance counted the most.

  Success came quickly. In June of 1956, at the age of 20, Truex won the 10,000 metres at the US Olympic trials, thus guaranteeing him a berth on the Olympic team. In October of that year, one month before the Games, he set his first US national record, in the 5,000 metres. (He was to set four more records in that event over the following six years.) Unfortunately, he suffered a muscle injury shortly before leaving for the Olympics, which were held in Melbourne, Australia; he competed in the 10K but did not do well.

  At USC, Truex was a member of the Air Force Reserve Officers Training Corps, so in 1958, after graduating, he joined the Air Force and served for four years as an officer at Oxnard Air Force Base in California. This base was a hotbed of athletic activity – the athletes were given all the time they needed to train and compete. In 1959, Truex set a new US indoor record in the two-mile event. Then, in the following year, he was the highest-placed American in the 10,000 metres race at the US Olympic trials, again guaranteeing himself a place on the Olympic team.

  The 10K race at the Rome Olympics, in September of 1960, was probably the high point of Truex’s running career. He didn’t win – in fact, he only finished sixth – but his time of 28 minutes and 50.34 seconds took eight seconds off the existing US record and was a performance which put the United States on the distance-running map for the first time. Just a week after the Rome Olympics, Truex iced the cake by setting a new US record in the 3,000 metres.

  Truex quit competitive athletics in 1962, when he left the Air Force and entered law school at USC. He didn’t quit running, however. He ran all through his three years at law school, and he ran while he was working as an attorney, first in private practice in Orange County and then in the legal office of the County of Los Angeles. He lived in an apartment near Universal Studios: during that period he ran five, six, or seven miles daily along a footpath next to the Hollywood Freeway. He didn’t need the spur of competition, he just loved running and the sense of fitness that went with it.

  ‘I told him I thought it was unhealthy to run along the freeway,’ Jim Slosson told me in a 2005 interview, and indeed it must have been. Los Angeles at that time had some of the worst air pollution in the country. Truex was breathing in a truly evil brew of toxins, including carbon monoxide, particulates, ozone, and lead from automobiles on the freeway, as well as industrial chemicals such as the pesticide DDT, which was being manufactured with carefree abandon by the Montrose Chemical Corporation at its plant on Normandie Avenue. Although now banned, residues of the wi
nd-born DDT dust can still be found in soils miles from the plant.

  Even during Truex’s competitive career, there were several occasions when his running had caused him acute health problems. He had to drop out of at least three races on account of exhaustion caused by some combination of excessive heat and air pollution. The worst occasion was in 1961, while he was competing in the Corrida de São Silvestre, a traditional 15-kilometre race that is held every New Year’s Eve in São Paulo, Brazil. Although the race took place at night, it was oppressively hot and humid. Truex was in the lead, immediately behind a phalanx of motorcycles and television trucks that belched the combustion products of cheap South American gasoline. He suddenly collapsed, and the next thing he knew he was in the hospital, hooked up to an IV but losing fluids faster than they could be pumped in. By the time he got on a plane back to the United States, he was fifteen pounds lighter than when he set out.

  In spite of his chronic exposure to pollutants and heat stress, Truex remained in apparent good health during his early professional years. He enjoyed his work as an attorney, often appearing in court to argue real-estate and land-use cases on behalf of the county. And in 1973 he married.

  I recently met Truex’s widow, Kay Truex De Justo, in Fresno, California, where she lives with her present husband, Michael De Justo. She is in her late 50s, a trim-looking, well-preserved brunette with a precise, no-nonsense style of speech that may reflect her educational experience – she was in graduate school in English at both USC and Massachusetts’ Brandeis University, although circumstances prevented her from obtaining a doctorate at either institution.