The book consists of 44 chapters, all but one reprinted from earlier writings, together with newly written introductions. The individual topics are diverse: sociobiology, Marxism, molecular evolution, genetic engineering, XYY individuals, the IQ controversy, human behavioral genetics, the Asilomar Conference, Science for the People, Jim Watson, E.O. Wilson, Erwin Chargaff, Carl Sagan, Ezra Pound, Jeremy Rifkin, Sheldon Krimsky and more.
Yet there is a unifying theme— that science can be objective and suffers when it is politicized. Davis worries about the "moralistic fallacy"—the illogical effort to derive an "is" from an "ought"—as the converse of the naturalistic fallacy.
Several of the essays deal with the controversy over maintaining the Harvard Medical School's high academic standards while filling minority quotas. Davis questioned a student's being awarded a diploma despite having failed the National Board exams five times.
In one essay discussing the shutdown of a Harvard longitudinal study of XYY children, ...
