Dancing Naked in the Mind Field by Kary B. Mullis (PDF)

Description

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.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐I LOVE this book. I have read some chapters 4-5 times and will read them again and again.One of my core values is being: genuine. Kary writes from a real and honest place- he is also funny! He is so genuine. I feel like reading his book is like having a conversation with him. I believe he is one of the most brilliant minds- of someone who could not be bought off but someone who is truly honest and curious.I enjoy Kary’s curiosity- asking and exploring without preconceived opinion.This book should be required reading in High School- one should learn to question and critically think. This book shines a light and requests the reading to also start questioning. I have bought several copies because I keep thinking of people to send a copy to.I am Thankful Kary Mullis wrote this book. I hope you enjoy it too.

⭐This 1998 book is a collection of essays and amusing anecdotes, which are reminiscent of Feynman’s “Adventures of a Curious Character”. The author, Kary Mullis, who died last year, won the 1993 Nobel prize in Chemistry for inventing PCR (polymerase chain reaction), which is very much in the headlines today due to the current COVID-19 pandemic. The 22 chapters cover a wide-ranging number of topics but an underlying theme can be found in 4 of the chapters. The key point of these 4 CHs is that science is increasingly corrupt (in a way, science is a victim of its own success) and society now accepts “scientific pronouncements” like it once did religious edicts. Unfortunately, the public isn’t aware that ~50% of science/medicine is WRONG, i.e. we should never blindly believe the so-called “experts”.1) “What happened to the Scientific Method”:Mullis says science was originally done by amateurs who were driven by curiosity. But the spectacular success of science has led to it becoming an industry (esp. medicine which is the most corrupt field) where money matters more than scientific truth. Science, though, was successful in the first place because it was based on verifiable evidence, not dogma like (increasingly) today.Mullis dismisses ozone hole depletion (due to freon), global warming (due to human CO2) and the AIDS crisis (due to HIV) as scientific hoaxes meant to generate high funding. He says scientists shouldn’t bother us with such concerns unless they have REAL (verifiable) evidence. Scientists who perpetuate these hoaxes aren’t necessarily “lying”- some of them truly believe in their cause- despite the lack of evidence- due to Group-Think and self serving BIAS. In this scenario, NASA was facing an uncertain future in the 1980s so they “invented” human- caused global warming in order to justify their existence. (Mullis doesn’t “deny” global warming- he denies a human-role in it because natural variation has historically been so extreme.) Likewise, the CDC had become irrelevant by the late 1970s and the “AIDS crisis” gave them a new lease on life even though HIV has never been proven to cause AIDS.Mullis’ point seems even more relevant today: the vast majority of scientific/medical funding is wasted- e.g. most of the funding for cancer, autism and Alzheimer’s, etc. is spent on USELESS genetic studies in mice that will never lead to any effective treatment- only more mice studies! The problem is made even worse by the diminishing returns of scientific investment. The “easy” problems were solved long ago and the remaining ones (like understanding the natural causes of climate change and the human genome) may simply be beyond our comprehension. (E.g. human DNA is comprised of 3 billion base pairs- only 2% of which are genes- the rest is either “junk DNA”- a notion which Mullis also dismisses- or has some other purpose like epigenetic modification. So the genome is barely understood today and perhaps will remain so indefinitely.) Science therefore has to resort to HYPE (AI, quantum computing, etc.) and HYSTERIA (AIDS, global warming and now COVID-19) in order to increase funding. In reality, the end of Moore’s law means that scientific and technological progress will likely stagnate.2) “Case not closed”:Mullis says he became a “HIV-denialist” only after learning there’s no proof that HIV causes AIDS (which remains the case today). Mullis says HIV has become a “cash cow” for the medical industry and many patients are dying from the “treatments”, not HIV. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent on the HIV=AIDS dogma. (I bought this book in the first place because I recently read “Virus Mania”, which has numerous quotes from Mullis about HIV and PCR.)3) “Age of Chicken Little”:Mullis dismisses global warming as a ploy to attract more funding. He notes that natural variation accounts for both global warming and inevitable global cooling (the coming ice age). I wish I’d read this book years ago because it could have saved me a lot of grief. Back in 2006, I saw Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” and I became a CO2 alarmist. After years of worry, I became a CO2 skeptic because I finally realized what Mullis already knew back in 1998: there’s no proof that human CO2 drives climate (computer models are NOT proof) and natural variation explains everything. There’s no reason to expect natural variation to be hospitable to us: the 1930s were arguably warmer than today and had the Dust Bowl; the 1870s had severe multi-year droughts in which up to 50 million people died! So Mullis was right- CO2 hysteria is driven by scientists who want funding. It’s also driven by socialists who use it to justify their political agenda and it’s become a substitute religion in an increasingly secular world (especially for the intellectual “elite” who tend to be militant atheists).4) “Realm of the Senses”:Mullis criticizes particle physics and cosmology for increasingly being overly speculative and useless fields (that can now never be experimentally verified). He suggests that 90% of scientific funding should be focused instead on detecting/preventing another meteorite strike like the one that killed the dinosaurs. In fact, there may even be some urgency to this: in “Our Cosmic Ancestry in the Stars”, Wickramasinghe, an astronomer who worked with Fred Hoyle, hypothesizes that Earth is struck by comets every ~1500 years, which cause widespread damage and climate shifts. He predicts another strike in ~2040. (This may be junk science as well but at least it makes a verifiable prediction.)In these 4 chapters, Mullis not only identified the KEY problem of our modern age, he also found the FIX: give scientists something USEFUL to do to keep them out of trouble! Unfortunately, this key insight is dismissed by most readers because Mullis also confesses to being open to UFOs, astrology, and astral travel and admits to heavy drug use.Related reading: Virus Mania, Real Inconvenient Truth, Lost in Math.

⭐Kerry was a wise man, until he step foot in a hospital. Like many of our doctors now a days, they magically pass away after telling the truth. The PCR test is worthless for telling you if your sick, that’s not what it was made for. Run it at enough cycles and you will find anything in anyone. You have a few CANCER cells, a few FLU cells, a few COOF cells in you, AT ALL TIMES. So, if you search hard enough you will find them. This does NOT however tell you if your immune system has been overrun by them. The COOF (DIVOC) is such a scam…. 😉 Are you waking up yet? If not, read this book.

⭐This book, Dancing Naked in the Mind Field, was so enthralling that I almost read it through literally in one sitting after randomly flipping it open and sitting down to finish the paragraph I first set my eyes on. I came to Amazon excited to give it a positive review and was surprised to find the high number of negative reviews. As far as I can tell, many of the negative reviewers don’t understand the author or the point of this book.Reviewers who describe Mullis as a sloppy, irresponsible scientist who just got lucky need to reflect on the fact that he was recruited by Cetus (the company he was working at when he developed PCR), which also saw fit to put him in charge of a research team. This was all before the Nobel prize; he was making traditional professional progress without celebrity.One of the things that’s clear from the book is that Mullis has a deep life-long concern with systemic power structures and the way they warp both our lives and scientific research. So, for example, critics of his views on HIV/AIDS fail to see that he took a position on the topic after one of his friends was ostracized from the professional community for having the “wrong” views in the early days when AIDS research was new and less settled. The same is true of the OJ Simpson trial, which excited Mullis less because he thought so highly of OJ than because he wanted a chance to take down the enormous and overwhelmingly powerful bureaucracy of the LA prosecutor’s office. Likewise, astrology is less about whether the stars affect our personality than about the largely unscientific and ineffective field of mental health.The other face of Mullis’ anti-institutional views is a type of humanism, which leads him to say things that, frankly, make perfect sense to me. NASA spends huge amounts of money on the shuttle program and international space station. What the heck are we getting out of it? Why don’t we focus first on figuring out how to protect ourselves from natural threats (like the decimation of life from an asteroid impact) before figuring out how to set up a Mars colony. A Mars colony might be exciting, but it’s not very practical and isn’t doing anything for the man on the street. At one point, he suggests we might just be better off with priests of medieval religion than with priests of modern science. This is similar to the criticisms Nassim Taleb has been making of our priests of Wall Street, and I think it makes sense.The writing is fast-moving and humor-filled, although inconsistent. I don’t know who came up with the clunky title, but most of the book is wittier. He discusses the fact that his wife Nancy encouraged him in writing this book and then edited it. Some parts about PCR are dumbed down versions of his Nobel Prize lecture, so I suspect his wife encouraged him to write something that would be accessible to the general public but still get across his message that we should turn off the TV, do good science, and enjoy the ride.

⭐What a fun book and very informative in a understandable way. Sorry I’ve waited so long to read it. I love the writing style. It shows the human side of a great scientist.

⭐Such a good book full of a variety of insights and experiences.

⭐Kary Mullis was thinking outside the box in the best sense. He was acutely aware of the state of science and did not take any other person’s authority for granted. He demanded scientific proof.This autobiography is an easy read, but will make most sense to a scientifically educated readership. Others may perhaps mix up scientific principles with personal opinions.I do not share Mullis’ attitude to drugs, yet I cannot see that his conduct damaged his reasoning. In this highly enjoyable text he is advocating intellectual honesty. Fabula de te narratur…

⭐What a thoroughly interesting, very witty and thought provoking book. Many of the chapters flit between random anecdote and scientific challenge, but remain connected by the wry scepticism of the author of much of what we could consider as ‘accepted wisdom’ in the modern world. Highly recommended for those independent thinkers out there.

⭐What a great man. If only the scientific and academic world had more people like Kary. Truly a free thinker and with a moral backbone that is sadly lacking in most of the establishment. Science snd academia need a total overhaul. Individuality, free thinking and constant questioning and testing of theories without fear of reprisal is essential. Kary Mullis is a very sad loss to the world.

⭐Kary Mullis won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1993 for developing polymerase chain reaction to the point where it became usable in biotechnology. `Dancing Naked in the Mine Field’ is his famously unconventional autobiography, published in 1998.Mullis is a 3x married, life-loving surfing fanatic and out-of-the-box thinker. The book is less a chronological autobiography than a series of entertaining, thoughtful and often hilarious essays on subjects as diverse as hallucinogenic drugs (which Mullis synthesized himself and without which he claims he would have never developed PCR); the OJ Simpson trial at which he was present and prepared to be called as an expert witness, and astrology which he studied and became convinced was at least as valid an indicator of personality characteristics as any branch of psychology, which he regards mostly as useless bunk.Mullis’ more controversial scientific ideas include the conviction that AIDS is not really a single disease but a multi-factoral immunological disorder in no way related to HIV, which has never been proven to exist (presence of antibodies in nature are NEVER indicative of disease, claims Mullis); that man-made climate change and ozone-layer depletion are myths perpetuated by the scientific community to ensure the continuation of their research grants; cholesterol in the blood has no relation to elevated risk of heart disease, and chemotherapy drugs have either zero or marginal benefit for cancer sufferers, but great benefits for the manufacturers.DNITMF is a very entertaining read from an outspoken but undoubtedly brilliant maverick. Mullis’ writing style is racy, literate and humorous. His personal experiences include effectively diagnosing and curing himself of a brown recluse spider bite, astral travelling, and experiencing a `missing time’ alien abduction-type event at his cabin in the Northern California backwoods, about which he is honest but philosophical:”It’s what science calls anecdotal, because it only happened in a way that you can’t reproduce. But it happened.”The author also recounts time he spent with the Emperor and Empress of Japan following his award which catapulted him overnight from obscurity to global celebrity, and the effects such sudden celebrity can have on the lives of those caught by it unawares. All in all it’s a most unusual book, entertaining and well-written. Recommended for the curious, who might be looking for something a bit different.

⭐Everyone in the world, but especially in the US should read his chapter on Climate Change.

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