Window on Whitehead: Freakonomics and freakobiology

Surprise!

That’s the promise of Freakonomics, which appeared on the bestsellers list in 2005 and can still be found there. The book’s subtitle is “A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything.” Aside from “everything,” it delivers on its promise.

The book covers the work of Steven Levitt, who takes a clear-headed look at what actually correlates among certain demographic and economic data. For instance, he and his colleagues find that Head Start participation doesn’t seem to affect school performance, baby names trickle down from higher- to lower-income families, and gang members live with their mothers because most of them are making almost nothing.

You can also find other such books by economic theorists on bestseller lists, all with their own neatly packaged surprises. One of the best is The Black Swan, which explores “The Impact of the Highly Improbable” on decision-making. The title example is from biology: European biologists confidently predicted that all swans must be white … until Australia was explored.

But you don’t see bestseller books about basic biomedical research, although we’re awash in its surprises. Why is that?

Clearly everyone expects surprises in biology. That’s one aspect that’s constant, whether you’re a toddler at a zoo, an elementary school child gazing through a microscope at an amoeba, a high schooler joking over praying mantises and their distressing sex-with-a-snack practices, or an adult marveling at the epic journeys of the tundra swan. But molecular biology and its closest buddies in the life sciences can be a hard sell for the public.

One issue is that the molecular scale of the research is hard to grasp. We’re talking about molecules that might be about 100-millionth the size of a swan.

Another is the sheer complexity of the processes under study. How dramatic is it to find one more player in a molecular pathway that already has more players than the New England Patriots—even if that pathway makes you prone to a certain genetic disease or the proud possessor of beautiful brown eyes?

Well, there’s a shortcut to seeing what’s really surprising: watch for the advances that take aback the scientists themselves.

There’s a big one in this issue’s cover story.

Last year, Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University reported stunning work in creating embryonic stem cell-like cells from the cells of adult mice. “This is at least as startling as Dolly,” the cloned sheep, comments Whitehead Member Rudolf Jaenisch.

This year, Jaenisch’s lab was among three that confirmed and advanced those findings. By activating a mere four genes, you can turn a mouse skin cell back into a state that seems indistinguishable from an embryonic stem cell.

Who knew?

As always, it’s anyone’s guess as to which biomedical discoveries may trickle down to the clinic and when. But for all of us, scientists and especially nonscientists, the surprises are just beginning. We may see some results in clinics, and maybe even bookstores, sooner than we expect.