Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society

Treasures of Nature's PharmacopoeiaThe Healing Forest: Medicinal and Toxic Plants of the Northwest Amazonia by Richard EvansSchultes; Robert F. Raffauf; An Ancient Egyptian Herbal by Lise MannicheReview by: William Louis CulbersonAmerican Scientist, Vol. 79, No. 2 (March-April 1991), pp. 168-169Published by: Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/29774325 .

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The Scientists' Bookshelf

Reviewing Peer Review: Ideal versus Reality Peerless Science: Peer Review and U.S.

Science Policy. Daryl E. Chubin and Edward J. Hackett. 267 pp. State

University of New York Press, 1990. $49.50 cloth, $16.95 paper.

Modern science made its Faustian bar?

gain not when it chose relentlessly to pur? sue knowledge, but when it turned for support to the public till. For along with

increasing dependence on public funds came inevitable pressures for greater

democracy and accountability in the con? duct of science. To satisfy these new, polit? ically motivated demands, scientific insti? tutions had to sacrifice their autonomy and stretch their self-regulatory processes to the fraying point. Today's multifaceted debate over the fairness and utility of peer review illustrates more clearly than any other indicator how science is answerable to political power, perhaps even more than to truth.

This is the theme around which sociolo?

gists Daryl Chubin and Edward Hackett have organized their eminently readable account of contemporary American sci? ence policy. Peer review is the starting point of their analysis, but the book does much more than explore whether, 300 years after its invention, peer review still serves as an adequate mechanism for allo?

cation and quality control. Rather, the cri?

tique of peer review provides a doorway to larger questions about how to attain

competing objectives?innovation, ere

ativity and scientific excellence, along with broader participation and more equi? table distribution of resources?in a re?

search environment that has become in?

creasingly and inescapably subservient to societal investments and expectations.

The book is, by the authors' own ad? mission, "idiosyncratically chosen and ar?

ranged," and its parts do not always fit

together comfortably. Quantitative social science findings about peer review alter?

nate, at times jarringly, with subjectively interpreted studies of individual cases, and criticisms of other researchers, though refreshingly honest, verge occasionally on the ad hominem. The authors' spirited defense of the use of science indicators and, more generally, of the role of "sci? ence critics" in public policy may strike some as containing more than a touch of

self-interest.

In return, however, the book offers the attentive reader much more than a con?

ventionally told "insider" account of peer review. Chubin and Hackett are at their best in situating peer review, and science itself, within a changing social context that both trivializes the meaning of peer con? trol (witness cold fusion and publication by press conference) and widens the gap between the real and the symbolic func? tions of peer review (for example when the National Institutes of Health review process claims to make finer and more ob?

jective distinctions than it can achieve in

practice). The book persuasively argues

that the tribulations of peer review are but the flip side of science's institutional suc? cess. Having packaged and marketed a

powerfully appealing ideal of peer review, science now finds itself ill-positioned to de? fend a more modest and equivocal reality.

The book's policy conclusions are not

nearly as radical as its combative tone may lead one to expect. For all their bite, Chubin and Hackett are not out to vandal?

ize the republic of "peerless science."

Their goal is to make peer review more

open and less adversarial through rela?

tively modest procedural reforms. They also point to a need for broader structural

changes in science education and the eval?

uation of scientific work by policy-mak? ers, but their proposals on this score re?

main on the whole unspecific. One wishes that genuinely iconoclas?

tic ideas?such as Richard Muller's sug?

gestion that half the annual National Sci? ence Foundation budget should be set aside to support the "best" scientists

?had received more extended treat?

ment. Germany implements something like Muller's scheme, albeit on a smaller scale, through its Max Planck Institutes. Can we learn anything from that experi? ence? The authors assume a little too eas?

ily that "elitism" in science is equivalent to "cronyism," an unhealthy thing that

must be rooted out in the nation's best interests. On this and other points, this book will start arguments that it does not

pretend to answer, but the authors, one

suspects, are ready to meet the chal?

lenge.?Sheila Jasanoff, Science, Technology and Society, Cornell University

Treasures of Nature's Pharmacopoeia The Healing Forest: Medicinal and Toxic

Plants of the Northwest Amazonia. Richard Evans Schl?tes and Robert F. Raff auf. 484 pp. Dioscorides Press, 1990. $59.95.

An Ancient Egyptian Herbal. Lise Man niche. 176 pp. University of Texas Press, 1989. $19.95.

Here are two disparate but excellent books about human uses of plants. The monumental one concerns the ways that

remote but contemporary primitive Indi? an tribes mtimately involve a myriad of nonfood plants in their daily lives; the more modest one analyses the uses of

plants by a highly developed but long vanished civilization.

One of the least appreciated disasters that would attend a destruction of the trop? ical American rain forest is the extinction of

many plant species that make natural prod? ucts whose medicinal significance is still unknown to us. The Healing Forest gives an estimate of the potential magnitude of this natural resource through a consideration

of the plants currently used by the Indians of the South American rain forest.

Richard Schultes, a well-known Har?

vard botanist, and Robert Raffauf, a phy

168 American Scientist, Volume 79

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tochemist, have spent more than 40 years

documenting the ethnomedicinal, hallu?

cinogenic and toxic uses of plants by the natives of northwestern Amazonia. This

region of 1,350,000 square kilometers in? cludes the western third of the Brazilian state of Amazonas, the eastern slopes of

the Andes in Colombia and Ecuador and the adjacent part of northern Peru. Ama?

zonia as a whole is enormously diverse

floristically, the home of an estimated 80,000 species of higher plants, or 16 per? cent of the world's total inventory of 500,000. The authors report that the Indi? ans who live in the northwestern part of this region?some of whose languages

they learned and whose trust they won?use a surprisingly large number of

the plants that grow around them. The body of this book is a family-by

family account of 1,156 plant species that are used by at least one of the 49 major tribes that inhabit the region studied. Some of these species are well known

botanically, and the chemistry of their ac? tive principles has been worked out. For

example, the psychoactive drug caapi, from the bark of the liana Banasteriopsis caapi, has been known to science since the

middle of the 19th century. Its beta-carbo line alkaloids have been studied chemi?

cally and pharmacologically, and its var?

ied native uses are the subject of many anthropological papers. The vast majori?

ty of the species reported in this book, however, have no equivalent historical

record and are totally unknown chemi?

cally. The botanical identifications of these plants were meticulously docu?

mented with voucher herbarium speci? mens deposited in museums. The aborig? inal uses are either cited from direct observation by the authors or quoted from trusted native informants.

It is notable that the Amazonian Indi? ans rarely use the plant parts of these

species in mixtures or compounded pre?

scriptions but instead administer them as

simples?that is, as medicinals consisting of a single ingredient. For example, the resin of Hymenaea oblongifolia is used as a

fungicide for the feet, a decoction of the root of Hamelia axillaris treats diarrhea, and a tea of the leaves of Vistnia confertiflo ra is a diuretic, but the identity of the ac? tive ingredient or ingredients in these

preparations is unknown.

This impressive, well-illustrated docu?

ment is actually a coarse sieve, a screen?

ing of the incredibly rich Amazonian flora for species that merit and await scientific

pharmacological evaluation. It is also a

sensitive guide for future research on the

ethnobotany and anthropology of an alert, inquisitive and resourceful native

people. The book is unquestionably one of the best of its kind ever produced.

From its title alone, you might think that An Ancient Egyptian Herbal is some

Highly prized among many Indian tribes as a stimulant, the caffeine-rich bark of the

Paullinia yoco is grated into cold water and kneaded to prepare a bitter drink. In stronger concentrations, it can be used medicinally to treat a post-malarial bilious condition, or to act

as a vermifuge and purgative. From The Healing Forest.

newly found vegetable Rosetta stone

miraculously identifying those vaguely or stylistically drawn plants that have

puzzled Egyptologists ever since grave robbing became a fashionable science. In fact, this nicely written little book even devotes a chapter to the problems of

identifying plants from drawings by artists who were not always scrupulous about realism. The author, a Danish

Egyptologist, identifies 94 major plant species that were used in ancient Egypt

for ornament, food, cosmetics, perfumes and medicinals, characterizing each and

pointing out possible pitfalls in botanical identifications. Her line drawings illus? trate both commonplace species such as onion, parsley and cucumber and some

exotic species such as mandrake, sul

phurwort and asafetida. For anyone in?

terested in plants, here is a pleasurable, offbeat excursion into the distant past.

?William Louis Culberson, Botany, Duke

University

1991 March-April 169

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