Okay, so recently I’ve moved. And now that unpacking is no longer my only form of exercise (try doing it for a weekend – 12 hours at a time – for two and half days – and you will see what I mean), I am back to reading while I ride the exercise bike. My new library has, nicely, labeled all the Christian fiction with these little ‘inspirational’ stickers, so I can avoid reading those. Not that I am opposed to Christians writing (or reading) fiction. I just find that, in general, they are not very good at writing it. Keep in mind, this is coming from someone who was only allowed to read people like Jeanette Oke and Laura Snelling growing up. So I know what I’m talking about. George MacDonald is one of my exceptions, but I didn’t come across him until college, and he’s hard to find (in the original), except on Project Gutenberg, and I’ve gone through most of those already.
So, I’ve recently come across this genre, which I think I will call pseudo-scientific fiction. An author decides to write a novel and include lots of science in it. Being a scientist, this appeals to me. What doesn’t appeal to me is that they botch the science and get away with it, and get lots of great reviews. Also, they seem to have a tendency to bash science while they’re at it. Why do I still have high levels of expectation? Maybe I have been reading too much Polkinghorne? Or Krakauer. I don’t know.
So two of my latest reads which made me pedal so hard the bike almost went through the window (good for calories; bad for blood pressure): The Family Tree (Carole Cadwalladr) and The Canopy (Angela Hunt). Let’s start with The Family Tree. Basically you old Nature vs. Nurture argument. Enter 30-something woman (Rebecca) married to brilliant geneticist. Woman has a problematic past, which includes parents that fought, strange siblings, and grandparents that were first cousins. Okay, so who doesn’t have that (well, maybe not the first-cousin grandparents)? Apparently, her husband, who is set up as her foil with the ‘perfect’ nuclear family, nice parents, and scientific background, believes that we are only the sum of our genes. The husband believes only nature, while Rebecca wants only to believe nurture. The author spouts out lots of science, including diagrams and graphs to make it seem more real (although the diagrams are not helpful, but distracting, and are not actually scientific diagrams from any actual text). Furthermore, she gets several points wrong concerning the science, including one which is crucial to the plot. According to her scientific world, blue-eyed parents can produce a brown-eyed child if there is a brown-eyed grandparent. Rebecca, working through her past with her cousined-grandparents, is surprised to learn that her maternal grandmother loved someone else. Someone else with brown eyes. She thinks that her mother is from a different father than her aunt, because of her sister’s brown eyes. In her mind, all her grandparents have blue eyes, although one of them has brown eyes. Both of her parents have blue eyes. Here’s the thing though: in the world we live in, blue-eyed parents only very rarely have a brown-eyed child. But this is never ever discussed in all the genetic verbage of the book. It’s just assumed that we know nothing about this and neither do any of the other people in the book (including the geneticist).
This is the thing about eyes: eye color alleles are additive (for more information, I suggest looking at this websites: The Genetics of Eye Color and Eye Colors) Dominant and recessive are only part of it (AaBb, all that). The more dominant (capital letters) you have, the more brownish your eyes get. The more lowercase letters you get, the more blue your eyes are. Most people have a mix. Which is where we get dark blue, green, light brown, etc. It’s a spectrum. So: aabbccdd is the lightest blue, while AABBCCDD is the darkest brown. But AaBbccdd is also blue, just a little darker. And aAbbCcdd is also blue. Etc. And if two people with blue eyes have children, their children can usually only have blue eyes. They don’t have enough capital letters, no matter how you mix them, to make a brown-eyed child. At most, they could make a child with green eyes. Maybe, if they both had really dark blue eyes (but usually this happens when a brown-eyed and blue-eyed person have kids).
There’s something else that bother’s me about this book. The author/Rebecca defines the Scientific Method as this:
1. Observe. Examine the details. Note the facts. Detail. Scrutinize.
2. Hypothesize. What theory could account for the fact?
3. Experiment. Test your hypothesis.
4. Evaluate the results.
Now, that’s somewhat accurate. But no hypothesis is called a theory until after years and years of evaluation. Futhermore, in the novel, Rebecca insinuates that the scientific method is a bit cyclical, in that scientists use it to test what they already know, so that they can confirm what they already know. But she, Rebecca, does not need this, because she obtains “knowledge from experience alone.” But what she is missing is that the scientific method should also be used for predicting future actions/events, etc. If the hypothesis works, it should not only be able to explain what happened, but predict what future events (for what it’s explaining) will be like. Otherwise it’s not very useful.
Okay, I guess I’m done ranting about it now. But if you’re going to write a good novel and include science, at least get your facts straight. I don’t even have time to go into the other novel here, except to say that it’s a Christian fiction book with an agenda (evolution = evil). If you want a wonderful scientific (and story) to read, let me suggest Kingbird Highway by Kenn Kaufman.
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