Reviewing a middle-school book in life science

Science Insights: Exploring Living Things.
1996. 654 pages. ISBN of the student's edition: 0-201-44618-9.
Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc., 2725 Sand Hill Road,
Menlo Park, California 94025.

Ugly Once,
Ugly Again

William J. Bennetta

Garbage in, garbage out -- and in the case of Addison-Wesley's Exploring Living Things, the garbage that has come out is scarcely distinguishable from the garbage that went in.

Although the 1996 version of Exploring Living Things has the label "NEW EDITION" on its cover and its spine, it is not a new edition in any meaningful way. It is merely the 1994 version with a few trivial alterations and some decorative touch-ups. The content of Exploring Living Things hasn't been changed, and this 1996 version -- like its predecessor -- is shot through with superstition, pseudoscience and anachronistic nonsense.

To begin my appraisal of the 1996 book, I randomly chose 69 of its text pages (starting with page 3 and ending with page 622), and I compared each of these with the like-numbered page in the 1994 version. Here is what those comparisons have shown:

• In fifty-two cases, the page in the 1996 version is identical to the corresponding page in the 1994. In seventeen cases, the page in the 1996 version shows an alteration.

• Nine of the altered pages conform to a pattern: The main text and the illustrations haven't been touched, but a margin-note has been relabeled. In the 1994 version, the margin-note was introduced by the headline "Skills WarmUp"; now the note has been enclosed in a box, under the headline "Activity." The wording of the note is virtually or entirely unchanged.

• Page 456 has a new margin-note titled "Physical Science LINK." It deals with sound waves, although the rest of the material on page 456 deals with vision. Page 527 has acquired a margin note, labeled "Chemistry LINK," that says something about bacteria and osmosis.

• The rest of the changes are tiny. For example, on page 33 a list of the continents has been embellished to show each continent's area. A sentence on page 97 has been rewritten: It no longer claims that, during photosynthesis, molecules of water are split into "molecules" of hydrogen and oxygen. On page 205, a line in table 10.2 now says that "Foods are stored at temperatures below 0 degrees C to help slow or stop bacterial growth"; in the 1994 book, the analogous line said "temperatures below -18 degrees C." A sentence on page 289 has been revised, so it no longer claims that a plant can simultaneously be an annual, a biennial and a perennial. On pages 418 and 527, some lines of type have been reset though the words have not been changed. And figure 21.14, which allegedly shows how artificial lenses correct nearsightedness and farsightedness, no longer has lines representing rays of light. (This alteration does not matter. The figure was worthless to begin with, and it is worthless still.)

To summarize: Addison-Wesley is still shoveling garbage. The shovel may look a little shinier, but the garbage still looks ugly and still stinks.

William J. Bennetta is a professional editor, a fellow of the California Academy of Sciences, the president of The Textbook League, and the editor of The Textbook Letter.

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