Book review author

When Yadin Dudai reviews books, he begins by having an imaginary conversation with the book's author. But things get complicated when he knows the writer professionally. When Dudai reviewed the autobiography of eminent neuroscientist Eric Kandel (see page 157), he had the added difficulty of evaluating someone he knows and respects highly. Nature caught up with Dudai to discuss how he resolved his reviewing difficulties.

How daunting was it to review a book by a Nobel laureate and leader in your field?

The only authorities in science are the data, and this should, in theory, solve any potential problem of authority-phobia — even for the most timid postdoc. In practice, I try to dissociate the person and the book, and review the writing, not the author. Of course, this is impossible for an autobiography.

How has reviewing the tale of Kandel's career made you reflect on your own?

It has intensified my appreciation of the revolution that has occurred in neuroscience in the past 30 years, which Kandel both predicted and led. It also calls into focus the pros and cons of reductionism. Reviewing this book, In Search of Memory, made me revisit the conceptual framework that says that to understand the brain you need to look at it more or less one cell at a time. In my review, I applauded the stunning success and potential of the reductionist approach, but I also wanted to remark that it is not the sole player in the field of brain research, and is not omnipotent.

What have you learned from writing reviews in general?

Respect for alternative world views and scientific styles. For example, I wrote a review a while back on a book about another prominent scientist, Seymour Benzer, the pioneer of modern neurogenetics. It became clearer to me, even though I know him well, how different from mine his style of doing science was. Such books epitomize that there are multiple successful ways to do things.

What are you reading now and why?

I watch movies — good films are literature with extra sensory dimensions. I am interested in cognitive evolution as reflected in cinema, which is a very young cultural organ. I just watched three movies that deal with sudden disappearance: one by the British-born director Alfred Hitchcock, The Lady Vanishes; one by the Italian director, Michelangelo Antonioni, L'Avventura; the third by the French-born director George Sluizer, The Vanishing. They deal with the same elementary human anxiety, yet their approach, style and emotive effects are so different. The human mind can follow so many routes to a goal... just as in science.