Human Errors: A Panorama of Our Glitches, from Pointless Bones to Broken Genes

by Nathan H. Lents

when you think about the pestilence that our species’ way of life invites, it’s really kind of amazing that human civilization made it off the ground at all.

Graves’ disease can now be viewed as an example of science triumphantly solving a problem that our own bodies cause—although

While the actual cause of lupus is poorly understood, the initial trigger is believed to be a viral infection. What kind of virus it is—and why the infection screws up the immune system permanently—is anyone’s guess.

To call the immune system poorly designed would be an insult to the millions—nay, billions of battles that it wins for us each and every day of our lives. But to call our immune system perfectly designed would be equally inaccurate.

one thing we know about immune system function is that it requires a lot of practice to work well. This is why most vaccines are not given to children immediately at birth. Their immune systems just aren’t ready. It’s not that vaccines harm infants; they just don’t work.

Rates of cancer in the human population are skyrocketing. This is largely (though not solely) a function of people simply not dying of other things and thus living long enough to get cancer.

cancer is essentially a disease of cell-growth control.

“The capacity to blunder slightly is the real marvel of DNA. Without this special attribute, we would still be anaerobic bacteria, and there would be no music.”

What we see is not the world as it is now but as it was about one-tenth of a second ago. The delay is due to the maximum frequency that neurons can fire.

Part of the reason dogs and cats show little interest in television is that their retinal neurons work so much faster than ours that they actually see the flashes, which must be awfully annoying.

Even when people know that their brains tend to get something wrong, and even when they’re given all the information needed to get things right, there are some mistakes that they’ll just keep on making.

there is at least three decades of research proving that eyewitness identifications are extremely biased and often mistaken, especially when it comes to violent crimes.

In bird colonies, nest location often correlates with social rank, and there is the equivalent of a bustling real estate market complete with attempted evictions and robberies.

The reason that anecdotes are so much more powerful than data is once again that our minds are trapped in the world of finite math and small numbers.

brains are extremely energy-hungry and thus place intense demands on organisms to acquire enough calories to support them.

By all accounts, Adolf Hitler was a generous and gentle partner to Eva Braun even as he ordered the senseless slaughter of millions.

There are species that can run faster, climb higher, dig deeper, or hit harder, but humans are special because we can run, climb, dig, and hit.

Now that we are solving so many of our problems with technology instead of biology, it’s no surprise that our bodies are not exactly in tiptop shape.

life not only can evolve but will evolve on a lifeless planet when the temperature and chemical composition are right.

just in our local neighborhood of the Milky Way, we know that there are hundreds of thousands of planets in the sweet-spot range of temperatures necessary to sustain the kind of chemistry we see on Earth.

Add to these dangers the very good chance that a pandemic could strike at any point.