James Paddock Collman

[My review published in the Journal of Chemical Education]
When I ask students in non-majors chemistry classes
what (if anything) they think they would like to know about
chemistry, the responses nearly always focus on the subjects
of Naturally Dangerous. Most of them want to be able to
make sense of mountains of conflicting information about
nutrition and health. A smaller number have concerns about
environmental issues, but almost none of them express interest in the topics taught in traditional introductory
courses. Teachers using Snyder’s The Extraordinary Chemistry of Ordinary Things or the ACS’s Chemistry in Context
and Chemistry in the Community increasingly are asked to
lead students through topics that are considerably less unambiguous than the gas laws. James Collman, an award-winning professor of chemistry at Stanford, aims to provide the
common-sense perspective of a chemist to the public dialogue about the food supply, vitamins and minerals, herbal
remedies, cancer and the environment, global warming, acid
rain, ozone, and radiation. It is a wide-ranging and largely
informal presentation. While there are no footnotes, references to further reading for each chapter and a glossary are
provided at the end. A nice collection of cartoons enlivens
the text.
Collman’s intended audience is the general public—as
he says, “intelligent, curious nonscientists”. He lives up to
the letter of the promise he makes in the preface, to avoid
mathematics, molecular formulas, and long chemical names,
but I think that he still somewhat overestimates the scientific literacy of the average person. I would say that the level
of his writing is a little higher than that of Scientific American. If it is a little too challenging for some, it should be
just perfect as a resource for the readers of this Journal, who
will find it a valuable source of information for teaching
about the connections between chemistry and society. I enjoyed reading it, and I will keep a copy on my shelf.
Collman does an excellent job on the most important
topics. He points out, for example, that “Health Food Store”
may be an oxymoron, that just because a food is “organic”
or “natural”, it is not necessarily safe, and that herbal medicines are largely unregulated by the FDA. I particularly like
the way he handled the controversy about genetically modified food. He points out that, by the end of 1999, 30% of
the U.S. corn crop and 55% of the soybeans were genetically engineered varieties, and that genetic engineering is
used to produce insulin, plasminogen activator, and several
vaccines. He points out that “there is no well-founded scientific evidence that genetically modified foods do any
harm”. Collman believes that labeling of these products is
a reasonable compromise between banning them and deregulation. This is typical of the way that he consistently describes both sides of controversial subjects, allowing the
reader to come to his or her own conclusions, with the relevant scientific information at hand.
A chapter of particular interest to teachers and students
of chemistry is “Nature Is Elemental”, wherein the roles that
many of the elements play in human nutrition are described.
There, and elsewhere in the book, Collman emphasizes that
many chemical substances are harmless or even beneficial
in small quantities but toxic in larger doses. This simple principle, which seems beyond the ken of the news media, helps
to bring perspective to many controversial subjects, from environmental contamination to nutritional issues.
While I like the informality of the book, I found the
author’s relatively frequent personal references somewhat disconcerting. Whether the author likes charbroiled steaks or
will buy his next car with air bags is largely irrelevant to the
questions at hand. I also wish that he had left out about
90% of his exclamation points. Sometimes the reader should
be expected to come to his own conclusion that a phrase,
word, or paragraph is worthy of exclamation. These are minor quibbles about a book worthy of addition to many bookshelves.… (altro)