TIL the hard way that old textbooks can be totally useless for modern science

I was helping my nephew with his high school biology homework last week and pulled out my old college textbook from 2008 thinking it'd still be good. Big mistake. The section on genetics was laughably outdated - it still talked about the human genome project like it was cutting edge and didn't mention CRISPR at all. We spent a solid 30 minutes cross-referencing with online sources just to get the current info right. Ended up having him borrow a 2023 edition from his school library instead. Has anyone else tried to reuse old study materials and found out they're basically worthless?

2 comments

2 Comments

aaronrobinson19d ago

Did your nephew give you a hard time about it? My buddy tried using his dad's old engineering textbooks from the 90s to study for a certification test and the section on materials science was basically talking about things that don't even get used anymore. He spent like an hour trying to find info on alloys that just aren't a thing now, total waste of time. Honestly, it's wild how fast things change.

wren_brown19d ago

Wait, alloys that literally don't exist anymore?" That's wild. I thought metal was just metal, you know?