THE REAL SCIENCE
BEHIND THE X-FILES
Microbes, Meteorites, and Mutants.
By Anne Simon.
318 pp. New York:
Simon & Schuster. $25.
Scientists and science fiction don't always mix. All too often, science fiction provokes the pedant in professional scientists, for whom a beautiful story can be ruined by a single petty error. A friend of mine, a physicist, gave up on ''Star Wars'' when Han Solo used ''parsec'' -- a unit of astronomical distance -- as if it were a unit of time. For me, ''Jurassic Park'' came to grief when the nefarious Dr. Wu explained how he kept his dinosaurs captive: genetic engineering made them incapable of synthesizing the essential amino acid lysine, and thus unable to survive without the park's lysine-enriched dino chow. The error is easily spotted by biologists: no animal can make lysine -- we all ultimately derive it from plants, which, of course, grow everywhere, including Jurassic Park. Amid the general acclaim for the realism of the movie's velociraptors, I was left wondering why Steven Spielberg could not spare a few bucks to consult one measly biochemist.
It is this obsession with accuracy that led Anne Simon, a virologist at the University of Massachusetts, to sign on as science consultant to ''The X-Files,'' which is among the most popular science fiction shows in the history of television. ''The Real Science Behind the X-Files'' chronicles her attempts to lend scientific verisimilitude to otherwise weird and disconcerting tales. In the show, the F.B.I. gives the name ''X-files'' to reports of bizarre events, often involving mysterious deaths and diseases caused by extraterrestrials. A pair of F.B.I. agents, Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, believe that ''the truth is out there'' and are assigned to find it. The premise of the show, however, is that the truth can involve either preternatural or supernatural causes. Mulder favors the supernatural: he believes his sister was abducted by aliens, and expiates his guilt through a lifelong attempt to confirm their existence. The female agent, Scully, is a physician and a rationalist, always preferring more earthbound explanations.
Scully is usually wrong. The X-files incidents are generally caused by aliens or mutants, but it is hard to get at the facts because events are obscured by a tangled skein of conspiracies, some involving our Government. The show's popularity, however, is due more to its carefully cultivated ambience than to its giddy plots: the crucial ingredients include both the overt intellectual tension between Scully and Mulder and their less overt (and unconsummated) sexual tension. Add to this a weekly ration of gruesome deaths and afflictions, and you have a guaranteed hit.
Thanks to Chris Carter, the creator of ''The X-Files,'' the show's emphasis is on the ''science'' in ''science fiction.'' And there is plenty of science, including DNA sequencing, cryonics, pheromones and the mysterious prion, the infectious protein behind mad cow disease. Simon's job is to get the details right, and ''The Real Science Behind the X-Files'' expands her role, offering mini-courses on topics from the show, complete with toothsome and satisfying tidbits on parasites, gene therapy, cloning and the search for extraterrestrial life. In so doing, she adds to the growing list of science books piggybacking on popular shows and movies, including ''The Physics of Star Trek,'' ''The Science of Jurassic Park'' and last year's ''Science of the X-Files,'' by Jeanne Cavelos, which bears an uncanny resemblance to Simon's book.
''The Real Science Behind the X-Files'' uses specific episodes as springboards for broader discussion. Many of Simon's lessons begin with questions about plausibility. Can science possibly enable humans to regenerate their heads, successfully freeze, rethaw and cure the terminally ill or produce smallpox-containing pollen that when eaten by bees turns them into lethal flying syringes? Although each question involves forays into several fields of science, Simon manages to deliver a palatable and surprisingly large dose of information with each episode.
Many of her examples, in fact, are more compelling than the series' convoluted plots. It's scary to imagine aliens inhabiting our bodies, but consider the authentic tale of a parasitic flatworm mentioned by Simon. The worm's complex life cycle involves three successive hosts: a snail, an ant and a sheep. Ants eat the parasites excreted by snails, and the flatworm larvae take up residence in the ant's stomach. One larva, however, makes a beeline for the ant's brain. This larva commandeers the brain and changes the ant's behavior, forcing it to ascend a blade of grass, grasp it firmly with its jaws and lapse into a coma. And so the worm's machinations promote the move to its final host, when the dangling ant becomes part of a sheep's mouthful of grass. Humans can dream up such fantasies, but only evolution can make them real.
Unfortunately, Simon's book is not free of problems. Although the scientific lessons are usually models of clarity, they sometimes bog down in detail, and her breeziness is sometimes irritating. More serious are the scientific mistakes and confusing discussions that pepper the book. The former include erroneous descriptions of the theory of punctuated equilibrium and the methods used to produce a forensic DNA profile, while the latter include some misleading speculations about evolution and a mischaracterization of the ''nature versus nurture'' debate. To be sure, these are minor glitches that will not bother most readers but are surprising in a book by a professional fact checker. I would actually recommend Cavelos's earlier book as a more thorough and accurate account of ''X-Files'' science.
I must confess that I am not an avid X-phile. Call me a geek, but for biologists, marvels like the parasitic flatworm are on tap every day, making the reveries of Hollywood seem like small beer. I also worry that the show's preference for the supernatural will feed the public penchant for the occult at the expense of science. Simon rejects this notion, claiming that ''The X-Files'' attracts students to science. Well, maybe, but how many budding Uri Gellers must we endure for each young Pasteur? The geek within me, however, rejoices that Carter and Simon insist on filling their shows not just with science but with realistic modern science. With their white coats and pocket protectors, scientists are often seen as modern sorcerers, dabbling in incomprehensible mysteries and speaking in strange tongues. ''The X-Files,'' and especially Simon's book, have clarified some of these mysteries, and that can only be a good thing.