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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Elephants (And Psychologists?) On Acid, 11 Oct 2008
Elephants On Acid is made up of surprisingly entertaining, interesting content in a witty, humorous tone. I say surprisingly because I was not expecting a book that has apparently sold very well to have experiments that are well-picked and really well researched, in my opinion, as two of them were ones I studied in my AS-level psychology class, and the book went into more detail than my teachers did. Which might be a sign of bad teaching rather than a very well researched book but let's assume that's not the case.
There are ten chapters with each chapter's experiments being grouped together under a theme - For instance death, the senses, sleep, sex. Some experiments last only a page or two but others go on for a few more than that, and there are clever headings separating them from one another. There are the more well-known experiments (Such as Zimbardo's prison experiment), the experiments whose after-effects seem pretty well-known (Does Mozart make babies smarter?), the totally obscure (cockroach racing, anyone?) and the things everyone wonders about (Coke or pepsi?).
Personally, I feel that the first chapter is ill-placed as it's heavy on the animal decapitation and I think that might put some people off, for all the content is very interesting in its own disturbing way. So I say, preserve! I won't lie, there is some more decapitating etc to come post the first chapter. However, it's much more spread out and easier to take post chapter one as it's liberally overweighed by experiments ripe with whimsy, oddness and genuinely interesting (non-violent!) insights into human and animal behaviour.
It sounds corny, but I don't want this book to end, as while I know I can look more experiments up online or at the library they won't be grouped together so cleverly, infused with Boese's easy, clever sense of humour nor preceded by a short, fictional account based on the next experiment to be looked over. If you're interested in psychology, want a bit of a quirky read or something that you can pick up and put down without losing track of what's going on I say, buy it! If nothing else you'll pick up a few amusing tales to tell in awkward silence and the sense that, really, are psychologists really anything more than a bunch of smart children with access to some handy equipment and a scientific journal?
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
great read, 1 Jan 2009
This book is a really great read. I got it at christmas and read it over a couple of days when travelling - for which it was a perfect companion. It provides summaries of a whole range of experiments conducted between about 1800 and the late end of the 1990s. Each experiment is covered in about 2-3 pages and they are grouped together in ten separate themes. These cover all sorts of topics from how long a head can be kept alive after decapitation, to whether the females in a bar become more attractive as closing time approaches, and how many men interrupted in the street accept an offer of sex from an attractive woman compared to how many women accept the same offer from an attractive man (guess what the answer to that is?). Some of the experiments are disturbing, but many of them are amusing. The balance is just about right to keep you reading through the disturbing stuff with the promise of amusement to come. The tone of the author in describing the material is just right. Most of the experiments described are psychological rather than biological investigations.
Lots of these bizarre experiments particularly from the 1930s until the 1970s are performed on very small samples (occasionally the researchers own children!) and in some cases include procedures that are ethically outrageous. You will more than occasionally be dismayed that doing this stuff was actually legal. As such I think this book would be a fantastic undergraduate additional reading text for science ethics courses as it really emphasises why we currently have and need ethical review boards to oversee science proposals before experiments can be performed. Don't let that put you off though. This is as far from a boring undergraduate textbook as you are likely to get.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Good fun with a few lessons attached too, 1 Sep 2009
Science can be fun. I've seen this book everywhere--it's number 2 in the book chart at a certain large book, magazine and stationery selling chain at the moment so I picked it up in 2-book offer. I'm glad I did. I whizzed through it and thoroughly enjoyed the way the neat little scientific stories are explained. Perfect if you want to learn a little but have some fun alon the way.
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