When Science Goes Wrong by Simon LeVay is an entertaining look at 12 cases of mistakes by scientists and engineers throughout the past 80 years or so. These range from meteorological to gene therapy to nuclear physics.

LeVay does a good job at telling each of the stories in a journalistic fashion. Though he does tend to lean towards a particular viewpoint (as most journalists do whether they like it or not), I don't feel like that viewpoint is being forced upon me. In some cases, I feel like the scientist at fault should lose his job or even go to jail. In other cases, it's just unfortunate what happened.

The stories span a range of sciences. As such, it has great potential to be confusing. But aside from one chapter that even the author seemed to have trouble with, the book does a great job explaining each of the cases. I'm no scientist and I think I could explain most of the stories after reading the book. If anything, LeVay may have gotten too long-winded in explaining the stories behind each mistake rather than cutting to the chase.

I found When Science Goes Wrong to be a nice break from novels. It felt like 12 tales of disasters that you might hear about on a Discovery or Science Channel show. So for all you science nerds out there, this is a cheap ($6 on Amazon) and easy read.

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