Apple CEO Steve Jobs delivered a commencement speech at Stanford University on June 12, 2005. It was about following curiosity and intuition, about looking back and connecting the dots in life, about beginnings and endings, about death. Jobs, a survivor of pancreatic cancer, knows a thing or two about facing death. And the words he chose to relate his life-threatening experience to a crowd full of hopeful graduates are powerful and inspiring. I could paraphrase his message -- but surely something would be lost in my translation. So here is a bit of what he said -- word for word.

The Detroit News has published a review of Intuition, a novel by Allegra Goodman, which takes the reader into the real world of research scientists and scientific fraud -- all the while exploring character, motives and ambiguity. It is a story reminiscent of the true tale involving the famous case from 30 years ago, when a postdoctoral student, Margot O'Toole, accused a researcher in David Baltimore's lab, Thereza Imanishi-Kari, of faking data published in the journal Cell.

Scientists who have read the book say that Goodman has managed to write a tale about life in a science lab that rings so true and includes details so accurate and vivid that they say they are left reeling. "I think it's a unique book because it completely nails this world," said Dr. Jerome Groopman, an oncologist and professor of medicine at Harvard and a lab director. It understands the psychology, the dynamics, the processes and pressures that exist in the current culture of science. I was stunned. I was really stunned." If you have ever wondered what life in a lab was like, and the pressures in research to finding the next cure -- or if you should put blind faith in all the research results you hear about, this looks to be a read worth your time and attention.