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

By Nathan H. Lents

A biology professor’s illuminating tour of the physical imperfections—from faulty knees to junk DNA—that make us human. ¶“A funny, fascinating catalog of our collective shortcomings that’s tough to put down.”—Discover ¶ We humans like to think of ourselves as highly evolved creatures. But if we are supposedly evolution’s greatest creation, why do we have such bad knees? Why do we catch head colds so often—two hundred times more often than a dog does? How come our wrists have so many useless bones? Why is the vast majority of our genetic code pointless? And are we really supposed to swallow and breathe through the same narrow tube? Surely there’s been some kind of mistake? As professor of biology Nathan H. Lents explains in Human Errors, our evolutionary history is indeed nothing if not a litany of mistakes, each more entertaining and enlightening than the last. The human body is one big pile of compromises. But that is also a testament to our greatness: as Lents shows, humans have so many design flaws precisely because we are very, very good at getting around them. A rollicking, deeply informative tour of humans’ four-billion-year-and-counting evolutionary saga, Human Errors both celebrates our imperfections and offers an unconventional accounting of the cost of our success.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: May 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781328974679

Nathan H. Lents

NATHAN H. LENTS is a professor of biology at John Jay College, CUNY and the author of Not So Different: Finding Human Nature in Animals. He has appeared as a scientific expert in a range of national media, including The Today Show, NPR, Access Hollywood, 48 Hours, and Al Jazeera America. He lives in Queens, NY.  

Reviews for Human Errors

[paul_s-289480 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Reads too much like a trivia book.

[liscarey · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Nathan Lents gives us a lively and interesting look at some of the major flaws of the human body--starting with our eyes, and working downward. Our lenses are backwards. Our wrists and ankles have extra, unnecessary bones that serve no real function. We have a variety of genetic diseases, more than most other species, and they don't get effectively selected against for a variety of frustrating reasons. Once a gene acquires a mutation, it tends to accumulate more mutations. Once that happens, the problem can't be fixed by another single mutation of the kind that caused the original problem. The deletion of our ability to manufacture our own vitamin C, like most mammals, got deleted in a common ancestor of primate species long ago. It wasn't selected against because all the early primates lived in the midst of a vitamin C-rich food supply. That mutation has been accumulating more mutations since long before genus homo arose. We're not getting it back.Others are even more frustrating. The mutation that causes sickle cell anemia causes a devastating, painful, deadly disease--if you get two copies of that gene, one each from father and mother. It ought to have been selected against long ago! Oh, except for one inconvenient fact. If you get only one copy of the disease, you have a higher than normal resistance to malaria. Malaria can also debilitate and kill you. Someone who has one copy of the sickle cell gene doesn't get sickle cell, and is less likely to get malaria, and more likely to survive malaria if they do. In regions where malaria is a major problem, people with one copy of the sickle cell gene will be more likely to live long enough to have more offspring, and thus more descendants--even though some of them will have sickle cell anemia due to getting two copies of the gene.Nor are we really fully adapted to walking upright, or to giving birth to children with such large brains. Our babies are born several months earlier than they "should" be, based on the degree of development they have at birth, even compared to our closest relatives, the common chimpanzee and the bonobo.I can't do credit to Lents' writing of this, or to L.J. Ganser's reading of it. It's informative and enjoyable.Recommended.I bought this audiobook.

[jigarpatel-6 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I wanted to like this book more. But it has serious flaws. Lents neglects not only key personalities who shape his world view, but whole areas of research, e.g. palaeontology. It exercises hyperbole at the cost of accuracy, evident in the chapter on junk DNA. A more reasonable discussion would at least mention the huge amount of research in epigenetics; there is more to DNA than protein-encoding.

Then there's the constant assertion that humans are considerably worse adapted than other animals. But there's no real attempt to justify this view; for this, you would also need to be sure that animals are extremely well adapted to their environments. Rare human diseases and disorders are given disproportionate attention, so to use this as an argument for "human errors" Lents should be pretty sure that other animals don't themselves suffer from rare diseases; of course, such logical analysis is blissfully omitted.

As a positive, Lents does attempt to pull together many areas of scientific thought, although if you want to study these in more detail you're out of luck: there's no bibliography. We start with unneeded bones, then genes, the last chapter drifts off into psychology, the epilogue is more about survival of the human species. If you can spare the time, you will find it more rewarding to cover each area in more detail:-Palaeontology / evidence for evolution: Your Inner Fish: A Journey Into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body by Neil ShubinHistory of genetics: The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha MukherjeeEpigenetics: The Epigenetics Revolution by Nessa Carey [more technical, not covered by Lents, eye-opening nonetheless]Behavioural psychology: Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel KahnemanDevelopment of civilisation / scientific method: Cosmos by Carl SaganMy core problem is why this book and why now. There's nothing really groundbreaking, no layman's course on the cutting edge of genetic research, no new discoveries to share with the world. It's an amalgamation and simultaneous watering down of some of the earlier works listed above.

[katevane · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Evolution does not mean we are continually moving towards perfection. Mutations happen by chance, and they may or may not be good for us. If they don’t kill us and if they don’t stop us reproducing, they stick around.Human Errors details some of these ‘errors’ and includes some fascinating examples. Our dodgy knees are a hangover from our primate days, and were never meant to support us standing up. Our retinas are the wrong way round and we’d be much better off if we had the eyes of an octopus.There are chapters which focus on the more serious consequences of these errors – such as hereditary diseases and autoimmune conditions which lead the body to attack itself.I was fascinated by the chapter on reproduction and loved the image of menopausal orca whales leading hunting packs of young males, but when I thought about it later, I wasn’t clear whether the author thinks the menopause in humans is an error at all.There’s also an epilogue which is more speculative. Lents’ argument seems to be that the inventiveness of humans allows us to outpace our errors, or even turn them into strengths. However these strengths can also be weaknesses. He argues that selfishness and short-term thinking may well lead humanity to destroy itself and the planet. This seems to be more about philosophy than science.Overall though, this is an informative and entertaining read for a non-scientist like me and the quirky examples make the underlying facts more memorable.*I received a copy of Human Errors from the publisher via Netgalley.