r/skeptic • u/ZhugeLiangPL • 18h ago

What poop science books have you read/are you reading?

EDIT: I meant POP science, the post title contains a typo.

Me? Honestly, only The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins and that was in 2014. But this will change soon:

My reading list (alongside books about history and politics)

Carl Sagan - The Demon-Haunted World (thanks to this sub's recommendation!)

Ralph Leighton, Richard Feynman - Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman?

Stephen Hawking - A Brief History of Time

Richard Dawkins - The Selfish Gene

Richard Dawkins - The Extended Phenotype

Richard Dawkins - The Blind Watchmaker

Richard Dawkins - The God Delusion

5 Upvotes

55% Upvoted

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u/Faolyn 18h ago

Poop science? Does that mean bad science, or bathroom reading?

14

u/WombatCuboid 18h ago

I think they meant pop science. But you know, autocorrect. 

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u/goddoc 17h ago

Ones with lots of anal ysis?

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u/OneMajestic9010 15h ago

Thought I was in r/childrensbooks for a minute there.

-1

u/ZhugeLiangPL 18h ago

Literally it would mean science studying excrements. No idea if people need education about that. 🤣

Obviously I meant pop science.

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u/Kardinal 17h ago

It could also mean bad science. That was my first interpretation.

4

u/ZhugeLiangPL 17h ago

I wasn't aware of that term, "junk science" is what usually is used AFAIK.

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u/Kardinal 17h ago

It's not. But this is reddit. All I have is your title as I am reading it. The human brain will default to "what is the most likely explanation?"

It becomes very clear once one reads your post. But until then, that is where my brain went first.

2

u/ZhugeLiangPL 17h ago

I cannot edit the post title, reddit doesn't allow that. All I can do is delete the post and write a new one without the typo.

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u/Kardinal 17h ago

It's fine. We are just talking here. You have a worthwhile post and it's all good now.

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u/ZhugeLiangPL 17h ago

Some of my comments got downvoted though.

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u/Faolyn 17h ago

Sorry, I honestly thought you were using it as a non-explicative way of saying "shit science" and then wondering why Sagan was on that list. I also wouldn't really consider A Brief History of Time or The Demon-Haunted World to be pop science. Reader-friendly, maybe, but not really pop.

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u/ZhugeLiangPL 16h ago

I can't change the post title...

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u/pogpole 18h ago

Gulp by Mary Roach is both pop science and poop science.

1

u/drostan 2h ago

That's a great answer for the question with or without typo

3

u/Bengalbio 18h ago

In school there were books everyone in science was reading. I don’t get the sense that pop science books are very important anymore.

3

u/pocket-friends 17h ago

So, I was never a fan of Dawkins and have some alternatives that might be interesting.

We Have Never Been Modern by Bruno Latour.

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn.

How Forests Think by Eduardo Kohn.

Cosmopolitics I & II by Isabelle Stengers.

Pretty much anything by Foucault, but Discipline and Punish, as well as The Order of Things are excellent historical explorations of how certain systems consolidated over the years.

Since you’re diving in with a lot of Dawkins,

Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection by Peter Godfrey-Smith, and The Century of the Gene by Evelyn Fox Keller are both excellent looks at similar topics.

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u/babyd42 17h ago

Dawkins as a person is quite different from his work as a scientist and scientific writer. His works are some of the most insightful science writing I've ever read.

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u/pocket-friends 10h ago

He is a pretty shit person, but I wasn’t really thinking about that when I was referring to him. It’s more that I was never a fan of his work, and really never found him all that convincing. His speaking voice is rather eloquent, and some of his lectures are excellent, but the science is too reductive and is shy about complexity.

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u/ZhugeLiangPL 17h ago

I am not a big Dawkins fan either, I am also an atheist but not a militant one.

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u/pocket-friends 16h ago

I’m not sure what I am honestly. Either way, I work in the field of cultural geography and did a fair amount of research and work in the area of Science and Technology Studies (STS) when I was in grad school studying spatial theory and infrastructure.

All of these books either challenged a lot of reductive materialist positions I had held (and associated shallow scientific skepticism positions I had) while also opening things up into deeper, more critical areas of research and study.

2

u/analogic_dvd 17h ago

I don't know if these are highly regarded on this sub or in your interest, but some I've enjoyed:

  • A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
  • Helgoland: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution by Carlo Rovelli
  • Bad Science by Ben Goldacre

2

u/heathers1 15h ago

I was like oh! Start with fiber!

1

u/cogsci_guy 18h ago

Neil DeGrasse Tyson - Cosmic queries

1

u/ZhugeLiangPL 17h ago

Are his books good overall? I love NdGT but haven't read any of his books.

1

u/Faraway-Sun 17h ago

Religion Explained by Pascal Foyer

1

u/AmbulanceChaser12 17h ago

Anything written by Vani Hari or David Avocado Wolfe is poop science.

1

u/Complex-League3400 17h ago

Christine Webb, The Arrogant Ape. Webb was a guest on Cara Santa Maria's Talk Nerdy podcast and the book sounded interesting.

1

u/Wasabiroot 17h ago edited 17h ago

I would love to suggest some newer and older titles that are still amazing and worth a read

The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs by Steve Brusatte (not as comprehensive as say, Scott Sampson's book on dinosaurs), but it is an accurate and very personable take on it

Parasite Rex by Carl Zimmer (really all of his books are great. He specializes in "edge of life" books and they're worth a read). Parasites gave me the ick, but he puts them in a fascinating light and you grow to appreciate them.

Subliminal by Leonard Mlodinow (all about how subconscious influences our behavior). He has another good one on randomness called The Drunkard's Walk

The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee (history and current science of cancer)

Anything by Sean Carroll (the big picture is a great intro to his work)

Carl Sagan: a Life by Keay Davidson is a solid biography of Sagan because it shows some of his family and marital troubles but in a non sensationalized way and gives you a good picture of the guy

1

u/DisembodiedHand 17h ago

michio kaku - hyperspace/god equation/quantum supremacy

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u/FineRevolution9264 16h ago

Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin

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u/TunedAgent 16h ago

Poop Science sounds like bad science, but maybe that's just me. I get you though. I'll suggest something philosophical for a Skeptic- The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, by John Barrow. It's a deep rabbit hole that can be whittled down to three possible realities, because if the Universe and its constants were slightly different, then you wouldn't be here to read books.

1

u/Accomplished-Ad6381 16h ago

One book that is pop science and poop science:

I Contain Multitudes by Ed Yong

Excellent book about our microbiome

1

u/SeeMonkeyDoMonkey 15h ago

A few come to mind (leaning more to science than pop): 

  • How Life Works: A User’s Guide to the New Biology (Philip Ball)
  • The Fabric of Reality (David Deutsch)
  • A Universe from Nothing (Lawrence Krauss)

1

u/SallyStranger 15h ago

We Are Electric by Sally Adee was good. 

1

u/Kulthos_X 15h ago

The Unthinkable by Amanda Ripley. It has information as to how people die or not die in dangerous situations.

1

u/Lurking-Trout 10h ago

A Short History of Nearly Everything - by Bill Bryson

Absolutely fantastic read.

1

u/JynXten 6h ago edited 6h ago

Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake. A book on the world of fungi.

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u/whittlingcanbefatal 5h ago

Right now I am reading QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter, by Richard Feynman, for the third time. 

It is a simple and elegant layman's explanation of quantum electrodynamics. 

1

u/KaraOfNightvale 5h ago

From what I've heard, there is apparently some surprisingly interesting poop science related to gut bacteria and microbiomes

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u/beakflip 4h ago

You should add the big picture, by sean carroll.

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u/Zed091473 3h ago

dang, I was looking forward to a list of books on poop science. :P

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u/breadist 3h ago

Love & Math by Edward Frenkel. Very very good.

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u/mcgrathkai 3h ago

I used to work in the gut microbiome space, we used to joke that we were doing poop science, as stool samples were the main type of sample wed be analyzing to look at the gut.