Dancing Naked in the Mind Field - Kary Mullis

In some ways, this book has not aged well. But in others, it is timeless. It's a quick and fun read, and I think worthwhile especially if you disagree with Kary Mullis' 20-year-old positions on AIDS and climate change.

Kary Mullis is a Nobel Prize winner, and this book is almost entirely not about that. He gets it out of the way in the first couple of chapters, so that he can focus on the point of the book: question everything! That doesn't mean that you don't have accept things, but that you shouldn't believe anything just because someone (especially someone speaking from authority) says so.

This is not a new message, of course. But Mullis spends quite a lot of time demonstrating how, by getting one's ego out of the way, and playing around with ideas, you can think up some neat things. This also leads him to question whether or not HIV is the cause of AIDS, and similarly whether global climate change is real. When this was written in 1998, he was unable to find adequate scholarly sources to back up either claim. Unfortunately, it seems that, as he aged, he may have fallen into his own trap, of dogmatically sticking to his beliefs without supporting evidence. So, this book provides ample evidence that one should have an open mind, and that it's still possible to get trapped in the ideas your open mind serves up.

All in all, I think this is a worthwhile, interesting read. And, you'll enjoy it more if if you can check your own deeply-held beliefs at the front cover.