Hello everyone!! I’m so excited to finally get to share this quest with all of you. This will be a long post, I’ll add subheadings so it’s easier to navigate. First we’ll talk about some quest etiquette, then I would love to introduce myself and get to know you in the comments, and finally I’ll share a bit about the books in the quest and its curation.

Quest Etiquette

This is a Side Quest so it’s static, I CAN’T ADD ANY MORE BOOKS. I spent almost a year choosing which books to add, and I know I missed several classics. But I will always love to get more recs and discussed books with you, so feel free to check out my Evil Scientists lists and recommend books there, so they can all live in a single place!! Evil Scientists - Nonfiction Edition Evil Scientists - Fiction Edition I would also love to use the forum of this quest to discuss different books and it’s similar narratives/topics. You’ll see how interconnected they are once you dive into them, and I found myself multiple times being like “I learned about this in X book” or “This makes so much sense with the political climate of the era.” The forum is a safe place to ask questions and chat between us, so let’s keep it cute and classy, no bigotry allowed!

Introduction

My name is Lizbeth (I always find interesting to know the full name of the Lizs I meet lol), you can call me Liz or Lizzyy (she/her), I’m 27y and I live in Mexico, I have 3 cats, 2 sisters, 1 brother, and 418 tbr books. I’ve always loved science, I’m incredibly curious about the world which led me to become a chemist to understand how matter works. I’ve always loved learning but not so much doing, and I quickly realized that I didn’t like doing lab work so I went the theoretical chemistry route. At that time, circa 2018, I saw research as creating knowledge for the love of it and not really with a goal in mind, someone else’s problem to deal with. As much as I loved chemistry, when my time at university ended I made peace with the fact that I loved being a student not a chemist. So I took a turn and decided to understand humans now that I knew matter. I’m now back at college about to finish my psychology degree, and my take as a researcher has changed radically, I realized that science could not be done all willy-nilly just because we have a question we want answered. While I was aware of the importance of ethics in research during chemistry days, they took a crucial role when discussing human experimentation and the early days of psychology. Scientists are respected, but I believe they should earn their respect, and we should always question how science it’s made and who it benefits. No matter how innovative their research question is, if it compromises human dignity is not worth it, at the end of the day scientists should be at humanity’s service not their ego’s. My goal with this quest is shedding light on the dark foundation of our knowledge today, because science should always be questioned. I would love to get to know you, your relationship with science, why are you drawn to this quest, and everything and all you want to share.

Quest curation and book summaries

I’m super excited about how this quest was curated because it combines fiction and nonfiction!! The quest is comprised of seven pairs of books that explore unethical science across multiple areas; you can choose between exploring these areas from a fictional narrative or you can dive into how this atrocities were committed in the real world, or you can read both to get a broader perspective. Since these books cover sensitive topics I’ll add trigger warnings so you can thread with caution (I’m having issues with my wifi right now so I’ll add them later today). Your wellbeing is more important than a badge (no matter how cute it is).

Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence Nowadays it seems like we cannot escape AI, everyone either loves it🫩 or hates it. If you want to understand its impact across the board (to hate on it with sources) you can read The Atlas of AI by Kate Crawford. It goes over he hidden costs of artificial intelligence, from natural resources and labor to privacy, equality, and freedom, and one of my favorites in the quest👀. It’s accompanied book it’s Hum by Helen Phillips. This is one of the tamer books of this quest, so if you are not into horror, blood, knives, this sci-fi gem is the perfect book for you. It’s a novel about a wife and mother who—after losing her job to AI—undergoes a procedure that renders her undetectable to surveillance.

The Return of Race Science As you will see when reading these books, scientists were just doing whatever. They created theories out of thin air and manipulated results to confirm them, a great example of this is the so called race “science”. Angela Saini explores in her book Superior the disturbing story of the persistent thread of belief in biological racial differences in the world of science. Saini’s writing is amazing and for a nonfiction book it felt quite easy to follow, I would recommend this author to people who are scared of starting a nf journey🙂‍↕️ And to explore more of these topics in fiction form I chose the one and only Babel by R. F. Kuang, it’s a dark academia novel that grapples with student revolutions, colonial resistance, and the use of language and translation as the dominating tool of the British empire. As we know, Babel is a thick book, but it’s definitly worth it, I recommend the audiobook for this one to make it easier to digest!

How Science Got Women Wrong Our next topic is how science helped the patriarchy and sold us the story that women are inferior to men, and for that we have another incredible Angela Saini’s book literally titled Inferior, Saini weaves together a fascinating—and necessary—new science of women, investigating the gender wars in biology, psychology, and anthropology, and delving into cutting-edge studies to uncover a fascinating new portrait of women's brains, bodies, and role in human evolution. While it’s focused on women and biology, it’s not just binary nor it dismissed trans/nb narratives!! Also a good place to start. And it’s fiction partner is an infuriating historical fiction/horror book by Joyce Carol Oates, in Butcher we follow the career of Dr. Silas Weir, “Father of Gyno-Psychiatry,” as he ascends from professional anonymity to national renown🫩. This is one of the heavier books in the quest, it’s full of gore, and sadly it’s based on authentic historical documents. Thread with caution.

Psychiatry's Troubled Search for the Biology of Mental Illness Another area that has failed humanity is psychiatry and the research of mental illness, when psychology embarked on the journey to become a proper science, the race to be the next big scientist made labs a torture playground. In Mind Fixers, Harrington explores psychiatry’s repeatedly frustrated struggle to understand mental disorder in biomedical terms and how they have failed horribly to do so. I really liked how this book is structured into two parts, one from the perpective of the doctors and one from the POV of the actual people living with mental illness, the author is also quite vocal about her dislike of bad science and i laughed at her constant comments about dumb scientists. The fiction counterpart for this section is The Spirit Bares It’s Teeth by Andrew Joseph White. Is a visceral Victorian gothic horror of a young autistic trans boy who can commune with spirits, forced into a haunted sanitorium. The horror doesn’t come from the fantasy but from the treatment of the “mentally ill” in the institution. One of the hardest books to get through due to the topics it explores.

The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present We continue with the explotaition of minorities by medical experimentation. This one is focused specifically on Black Americans because of how much they were impacted by evil scientists. If you want to learn more about this topic, we have Medical Apartheid by Harriet A. Washington, from the era of slavery to the present day, Medical Apartheid is the first and only comprehensive history of medical experimentation on African Americans. This book was one of the hardest nf books to finish; due to it’s lenght and it’s messy structure, but if you truly want to learn more about how science failed black americans this is the one and only book you have to read. It also covers topics discussed in all the other areas of this quest, so even if it’s long, if you want a full look into evil science look no further. And it’s accompanying book is Lakewood by Megan Giddings. A startling debut about class and race, Lakewood evokes a terrifying world of medical experimentation—part The Handmaid’s Tale, part The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. This one was really thrilling and I couldn’t stop reading it, I would definitely recommend it.

The CIA Search for Mind Control Now, evil scientists aren’t only in labs wearing white coats. We cannot ignore how the government funds these experiments that violate human rights. To explore the government’s involvement in evil science we have Stephen Kinzer’s Poisoner in Chief, Sidney Gottlieb was named multiple times a “mad scientist” and “evil” by media so there’s nothing else to say about this book, disgusting human being.
And the fiction book I chose was in My Taste for months until a week ago, but I’m not playing favorites lol Intercepts by T. J. Payne is about Joe. Joe works at a facility that performs human experimentation. His work just followed him home. And that’s all I’ll tell you to avoid spoilers! It is in the gory side of the books, so again, thread with caution🫪

Medical Experimentation and the Price of Saying No This was my miscellaneous, I had to include these books section lol If you read even one book of this quest, you’ll think to yourself “why did nobody say anything?” And this section is about that. In The Occasional Human Sacrifice, Carl Elliot tells the stories of insiders who spoke out against such abuses, and often paid a terrible price for doing the right thing. This ended up being a 5-star read for me (I’ll write my reviews soon, I promise) I recommend the audiobook because it makes it feel like a Ted Talk. Elliot takes us through a philosofical journey of morality and recognition, he goes over how humans are wired to comply and avoid disruption, and then he interviews another six whisteblowers to get a full spectrum of how speaking out affects those involved in evil science. I just loved loved loved it!! And the accompanying book is just a fiction book I could not leave behind, because I was a fan of how dynamic it was. The Troop by Nick Cutter adds lab reports, jury testimonies, magazine ads, newspaper’s clippings, and other resources in between chapters to create an amazing reading experience. Now, the book is not for the weak, this one is the one with the most trigger warnings. In The Troop a scout troop is exposed to something far more frightening than any tale of terror. The human carrier of a bioengineered nightmare. A horrifying contagion that spreads faster than fear.

Let me know which books are you most excited to read, if you prefer fiction or nf, or anything you like!!!! I’m so excited you get to finally meet my baby😭😭

"Since we did not always have this knowledge and now feel motivated by it's, it's easy to assume that if others knew how bad things were, they, too, would want to take action. This assumptions can sometimes lead activists to beecome walking, talking encyclopedias of doom"

Hello, that's me👋🏽 a recovering encyclopedia of doom🙃 I know how frustrating it can be to scream at the top of your lungs the injustices of the world, to get angry at people for deciding to look the other way and only get involved in the issues that affect them. But lately I've been thinking of empathy as a muscle, something that must be trained. I was on tumblr in the 2010's where everyone was a social justice warrior, so I have been training my empathy for more than a decade, but we must give some leniency to those who want to learn but are still making mistakes.

Now this is work for the people who want to be organizers, as I always like to clarify, we should not expect marginalized people to educate their oppressors!! But I (and so many more) have decided to make it my life goal to do it. Because I have faith that people can change and can improve, and that most people hurt each other because they don't know better. The first chapter talks about the power of storytelling, how facts alone are not enough we have to get people involved. I used to get angry when I thought about homophobic people who only started caring about lgbtq+ communities once someone they loved shared that they were queer, I thought it was selfish, and that it meant that they could only care for the issues that affected them. But by thinking of empathy as something that has to be trained, I realized that once you start caring for people you are more likely to spread that empathy towards other communities, but it has to start somewhere.

If we give our backs to the people who want to improve but make mistakes, they will never join our cause. For example, most antivaxxers are afraid and don't know who to trust, and if they are treated as stupid when searching for information, then they will go to the communities that embrace them. That's why the labor of organizers it's so important, because we can open the doors to people who want to be part of the change, who want to imagine a better world for everyone but have been coluded by capitalist propaganda.

This was my first time hearing of crip time and it blew my mind away. I felt so seen, it gave a new way to explain to people how it is to live disabled, similar to how spoons changed the game when discussing chronic fatigue.

Ellen Samuels says:

Crip time is time travel. Disability and illness have the power to extract us from linear, progressive time with its normative life stages and cast us into a wormhole of backward and forward acceleration, jerky stops and starts, tedious intervals and abrupt endings.

Sometimes it feels like I'm not the owner of my time, I'm bound to whatever my disabilities allow me to do on a certain day. I can't make plans or schedules for my day because my disability is unpredictable. I don't grief time anymore, I'm privileged enough to be able to slow down and stop time when my body requires it, but every now and then I'm reminded of the autonomy abled people get and my heart aches for those who don't get to slow down even when their body is screaming for a break.

Crip time is not only time travel, is grief time, is broken time, is sick time, is waiting time...

"I want to be aligned, synchronous, part of the regular order of the world. Like the leaves just now turning as the year spins toward its end, I want sometimes to be part of nature, to live within its time. But I don’t. My life has turned another way. I live in crip time now."