The best books about science that should inform public policy

I love this book because its exposé makes me indignant about a handful of rogue scientists who created an industry of science denial in the service of polluting industries and political ideology. They amplified their voices by setting up dozens of “astroturf think tanks” around the U.S. to reinforce their flawed arguments opposing regulation of companies contributing to the dangers of tobacco smoke, acid rain, ozone layer depletion, and climate change.

I see their playbook to sow doubts about well-established science at work today in all sorts of politically motivated science denial and the spread of viral misinformation. 

I love this book because it turns the most impactful science discovery of the 21st century–CRISPR gene editing–into a page-turner. Isaacson combines a biography of Jennifer Doudna, who shared the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Emmanuelle Charpentier, with lucid accounts of the science and sequence of research breakthroughs that underlie CRISPR editing, as well as the intrigues and jockeying among powerful scientists and personalities vying for prizes and patents on the technology.

I came through this book to appreciate the enormous potential of CRISPR gene editing for good (curing hereditary diseases) and not-so-good (designer babies or, in the words of Vladimir Putin, “a soldier, an individual who can fight without fear or compassion, mercy or pain”). CRISPR promises to make human selection as important as natural selection in the evolution of many species, including humans.

I love this book because the author debunks myths about sex and gender promulgated by both the political left and the political right. Soh surveys recent biological research on brain and fetal development that demonstrates that sex and gender identity are not identical; they are distinct biological traits developed at different stages of pregnancy. Sex is determined by reproductive organs normally formed within the first trimester.

At the same time, gender identity resides in the brain, whose development is influenced not only by chromosomes but also by exposure to hormones during the second trimester and all the way up to birth. Male and female brains are wired differently. Gender is not simply a “social construct,” as many social scientists claim. My understanding of many issues relevant to the contentious politics regarding gender and transgender rights has been influenced by this book.

I love this book because it reveals that we are all creatures of neuronal habit, which brainwashers exploit to their own benefit. The neurons that trigger most frequently tend to dominate our thoughts. I see how the brain science revealed in Taylor’s book helps to account for our current Age of Misinformation.

With advertiser-click business models, social media allows would-be brainwashers to repeat and spread their messages beyond their former wildest imaginations. They need only plant a misinformation seed to see it spread virally by users whose neurons have been preconditioned to accept and like the message. I feel that social media regulations are needed to mitigate the creation of echo chambers in which brainwashed messages sow political polarization that threatens to make nations ungovernable.

I love this book because Perlroth chronicles the proliferation of cyberweapons, which began in the hands of mischievous young hackers exploiting vulnerabilities in widely used software. Once some of those hackers joined the NSA, their tools were developed into sophisticated weapons to undercut technological developments in enemy states like Iran.

Once NSA’s hacks leaked to the wider world, they spawned an arms race and fueled rampant criminal ransomware attacks on vulnerable institutions. Informed by Perlroth’s book, I see a future in which dwindling human fertility and the ballooning costs of advanced weaponry will enhance the military role of cyber-attacks, leading to Mutually Assured Cyber Destruction, in which many countries have cyberweapons deeply embedded in the critical infrastructure of their adversaries, just waiting to activate them.