The Theory That Would Not Die: How Bayes' Rule Cracked the Enigma Code, Hunted Down Russian Submarines, and Emerged Triumphant from Two Centuries of Controversy
Sharon Bertsch McGrayne is the author of highly-praised books about scientific discoveries and the scientists who make them. She is interested in exploring the cutting-edge connection between social issues and scientific progress – and in making the science clear and interesting to non-specialists. Thus, her first book dealt with changing patterns of discrimination faced by leading women scientists during the 20th century. Her second book portrayed a group of chemists and the interplay between science, the chemical industry, the public’s love of creature comforts, and the environment. Her latest book tells how an 18th century approach to assessing evidence was ignored for much of the 20th century before – in an overnight sea change – it permeated our modern lives.
McGrayne is now working on a book with Rita Colwell, former director of the National Science Foundation. Its working title is:
What I Really Think
by Rita Colwell
with Sharon Bertsch McGrayne
McGrayne's work has been featured on the Charley Rose Show and reviewed in The New York Times Book Review, Nature, The London Times, Physics Today, Significance, The Lancet, JAMA, Chemistry and Engineering News (C&EN),
Simple Bayesian Problems: The Sally Clark Case
Starting in , four British mothers were arrested for murder because two or more of their infants had died in their cribs. Three of the mothers were convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. Yet by , all four mothers were declared innocent of crimes that had never occurred. Bayes’ rule could have cleared them.
Sally Clark, a lawyer who lost her first son at 11 weeks and her second at 8 weeks, was convicted in A prominent pediatrician, Sir Roy Meadow, had testified for the prosecution about Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, known as SIDS in the U.S. and cot death in Britain. Citing a government study, Meadow said the incidence of one SIDS death was one in 8, in a family like Clark’s–stable, affluent, nonsmoking, with a mother more than 26 years old.
Then, despite the fact that some families are predisposed to SIDS, Meadow assumed erroneously that each sibling’s death occurred independently of the other. Multiplying 8, by 8,, he calculated that the chance of two children dying in a family like Sally Clark’s was so rare–one in 73 million–that they must have been murdered.
A Bayesian analysis would have shown that the childr
LISTEN TO MCGRAYNE'S BBC RADIO INTERVIEW
"THOMAS MIDGLEY -- A CAUTIONARY TALE"
Prometheans in the Lab: Chemistry and the Making of the Modern World
Leblanc, Perkins, Rillieux, Haber, Carothers—these are not the household names of science, yet they are just a few of the chemists responsible for household products and innovations that quietly make our lives easier, cleaner, and more pleasurable. Soap, sugar, colorful dyes, clean water, safe refrigeration, and powerful cars—how many of us would choose to live without them? We take them for granted, yet behind every chemical product is the fascinating story of a scientist and a breakthrough discovery that solved a critical social problem. Acclaimed science writer Sharon Bertsch McGrayne tells the story of the chemical revolution through the lives of the people who created it, taking the reader on a whirlwind tour of history through epidemics, wars and revolutions and through scandal, scientific intrigues, moral dilemmas, and personal tragedies.
With an even hand, McGrayne explores not only the humanitarian and scientific upside of each pivotal discovery but also their sometimes devastating effects on the environment
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