Dancing Naked in the Mind Field

Description

The Invention of PCR -- The Big Prizes -- A Lab Is Just Another Place to Play -- Fear and Lawyers in Los Angeles -- The Realm of the Senses -- I Think, Therefore I Wire -- My Evening with Harry -- Intervention on the Astral Plane -- Avogadro's Number -- Who's Minding the Store? -- What Happened to Scientific Method? -- The Attack of the Loxosceles reclusae -- No Aliens Allowed -- The 10,000th Day -- I Am a Capricorn -- The Age of Nutritional Obsession -- Better Living through Chemistry -- Case Not Closed -- Have Slides Will Stay Home -- Am I a Machine? -- Professional Biochemistry -- The Age of Chicken Little.;Here is a multidimensional playland of ideas from the world's most eccentric Nobel-Prize winning scientist. Kary Mullis is legendary for his invention of PCR, which redefined the world of DNA, genetics, and forensic science. He is also a surfer, a veteran of Berkeley in the sixties, and perhaps the only Nobel laureate to describe a possible encounter with aliens. A scientist of boundless curiosity, he refuses to accept any proposition based on secondhand or hearsay evidence, and always looks for the "money trail" when scientists make announcements. Mullis writes with passion and humor about a wide range of topics: from global warming to the O.J. Simpson trial, from poisonous spiders to HIV, from scientific method to astrology. Dancing Naked in the Mind Field challenges us to question the authority of scientific dogma even as it reveals the workings of an uncannily original scientific mind. From the Trade Paperback edition.