Reviews with content warning for Suicide - The Icepick Surgeon: Murder, Fraud, Sabotage, Piracy, and Other Dastardly Deeds Perpetuated in the Name of Science

A fascinating yet disturbing read. I enjoyed it a lot but some chapters were so graphic it nearly made me gag. Overall great page turnability for non fiction!

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mfrisk's review

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challenging dark informative slow-paced

3.0

I’ve been reading a lot more this year and getting through books quicker especially those I’ve enjoyed. However, this read took me several months to finish.

I note this because while I find the overall subject interesting and also important in terms of the fields of science, medicine, and fields which intersect with these areas I don’t feel like these stories were given the appropriate weight and critical lens. As many reviewers mention inappropriate terminology is used for a variety of marginalized populations within this book and I often felt the author was trying to get a laugh out of us (the readers) more than they were working to connect the story to their larger point of morality and ethics. The podcast plugs were annoying but not as egregious as the lack of depth certain stories were given when they covered very sensitive topics. It may not have hurt for their to be additional commentary from other folks especially in stories where marginalized populations were involved and that was only touched on a surface level. I’ve listened to the podcast as well after reading some stories in this book and it has similar issues seen in this book.

Also want to add this book could have used a more central defining element or at least narrowing down to specific field or some other way to make this more focused. It often was confusing that the stories felt so disconnected and the conclusion doesn’t quite pull together the ideas enough.

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monstersinspace's review

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emotional informative reflective fast-paced

3.5

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chloethonus's review

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dark informative lighthearted relaxing sad medium-paced

4.75

This was a great book, a very interesting collection of scientific ethics being set aside and how it has gone very wrong. Allows us to see scientists as humans rather than unquestionable gods who can do no wrong, but also acknowledges that we cannot fully discredit scientists as a whole and should instead be skeptical and read scientific media critically. I learned a lot of interesting stories that range from questionable ethics to outright murder. Some content is quite shocking, and for the faint of heart there are mentions of psychological torture and in some cases extreme physical harm coming to people.

My only critique is some outdated language like calling Native Americans "Indians" and the prologue about Cleopatra being very clumsy. The prologue is made up of information that can't be proven which is a questionable start for this book. The language, however, bothers me more. Native Americans should be respected and referred to using proper terms that do not have to do with the entirely unrelated nation of Indian. Native American, indigenous peoples, tribe name, there are a lot of options.

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