Not a gram of boring

About the book of Asi Kazantseva , published on the final of the "Enlightener", says Georgy Rurikov , an employee of the Institute of Problems of Ecology and Evolution named after A. N. Seversov (IPE) RAS.

Someone is wrong on the Internet! " - A popular meme, referring to barren verbal battles and taken by Asya Kazantseva as a title of her second book (readers known as “Pink Kazantsev” - for the color of the cover). There are such burning topics that do not allow too much to pass by ... and arise constantly, pop up again and again; It would seem that so much is said, so much is written, you can already figure it out, but everything is repeated again and again.

Twelve chapters of the Asina Book - twelve topics, each of which deserves the book, but for many they are written, and not one at a time ... Why do you need another one? And why, under one cover, all these different questions are reduced under one cover - from the effectiveness of homeopathy to comparing the moral qualities of believers and atheists?

There is such a genre - the exposure of myths. Here, for example, Alexander Pankchin, laureate of last year’s “Enlightener”, villages and wrote an excellent book (“Summer of Biotechnology”), which is popular with a scientific point of view on what genetic engineering is, what are potential risks of using GMOs and some related topics. The fifth chapter is devoted to these issues in the Asina Book. But Asina, the book does not duplicate Panchin, does not retell, does not resort, does not polemize with it - it is a little different. The book of Panchin, even in Zagolovka, is declared as “Guide to combat myths”, and Kazantseva is “scientific research of controversial issues”. Not answers to controversial questions, but research of controversial questions. This, in my opinion, is a very important nuance, and this distinguishes Asina a book from many other popular science works (which are now many).

The chapters are grouped in three sections, and Asya in the preface herself warns that “the book turned out to be heterogeneous: the first chapters ... - more boring and rich in information; The last chapters ... - more frivolous and contain more copyright assessment judgments ... ". So, I confirm heterogeneity. Benebility - in no case: just the first chapters are read as an exciting detective precisely due to clarity and saturation with specifics. For the only presentation on the four pages of the principles of the work of our immune system, the author must be erected a monument-this is the most remarkable text in its intelligibility in the immunology that I have ever seen.

The second section - all things are equally definite, but less original. It is felt that the author does not have much her own blanks here, and she doesn’t really want to repeat it already written by someone. There are quite a lot of phrases such as “In general, it is better to read about this with Markov, Panchin, from Sokolov” ...

The third, “frivolous” section is chapters that leave a slight feeling of some confusion and understatement. Probably just the topics are chosen such that it cannot be otherwise. But in contrast with the first part, they cause some discourability, it really turns out. Accents are strangely placed: for example, in the chapter about “natural products”, almost half for some reason is dedicated to global warming, and half of vitamins. Honestly, it does not leave a feeling of some kind of incompleteness ...

However, the author actively pretends to be "not a bug, but a feature." And, frankly, I want to believe. “The chapter that I am writing now reflects a certain intermediate stage of my own reflection. Sorry to use you in order to think about you, but not still to broadcast with a smart look, as if I am a guru from the same song Mike Naumenko. ”

The book ends with very curious ... um, section. Something like an obsession. It is called "a short course of searching for truth." It contains an important call - to critically perceive any information: “... I sincerely want ... so that people are inclined to doubt the information that they receive, and would not experience serious difficulties when trying to double -check it.”

Here, in my opinion, the key to the correct understanding of the Asian book: in it we need to look not for answers, but the solution algorithms. And this, in my opinion, is a very correct message. How much he will find a response and will understand the readers is a separate question. People are too often inclined to read books to get ready -made answers for themselves. Professional scientists, of course, are accustomed to critically perceive information, but the book of Kazantseva, of course, is not for them. At the same time, a significant part of the consumers of the scientific scientist-especially in such a relaxed genre as Asin-usually expects something like “Now a smart specialist will explain everything on our fingers, and we will wrap it on a mustache.” But the specialist, after all (especially if he takes up such a variety of topics) can be mistaken, and he himself is not safe from one -sidedness and subjectivity. So object! "Parify if you can!" - As the heroine of the film "Pokrovsky Gate" said.

Asya herself writes in the postpartum: “If my book features some indignant reader to immerse yourself in reading scientific publications in order to argue with reasonably that I do not understand anything, it will be an excellent result, he will completely arrange me. Even in that unlikely case, if this person achieves success and does not leave a stone on a stone from my book. ”

Paradoxical phrase! Well, how, in fact, the author can consider excellent the result in which they will not leave stone on the stone from his book? To teach readers to critical thinking, and even on the material, so tightly overgrown with indestructible myths, is an ungrateful occupation, and I'm not sure that Assy took it right and it happened. But an important step is taken, and many thanks to the author that she is trying to move in this direction. There is something to think about and what to work on.

Georgy Rurikov