Bad Science, Ben Goldacre

"Have you ever wondered how one day the media can assert that alcohol is bad for us and the next unashamedly run a story touting the benefits of daily alcohol consumption? Or how a drug that is pulled off the market for causing heart attacks ever got approved in the first place? How can average readers, who aren’t medical doctors or Ph.D.s in biochemistry, tell what they should be paying attention to and what’s, well, just more bullshit?

Ben Goldacre has made a point of exposing quack doctors and nutritionists, bogus credentialing programs, and biased scientific studies. He has also taken the media to task for its willingness to throw facts and proof out the window. But he’s not here just to tell you what’s wrong. Goldacre is here to teach you how to evaluate placebo effects, double-blind studies, and sample sizes, so that you can recognize bad science when you see it. You’re about to feel a whole lot better."

I you don't get mad after reading this book, you probably didn't understand it.

I don't prentent to be any great expert in scientific thought - whilst I enjoy science it's very much of the popular science end. Even my knowledge of my twin interests of space and dinosaurs can be pretty quickly covered by the science i've got from contemplative fiction.

Bad Science is as much a polemic as a science book however, a furious debunking of the worst of pseudo-sceience, media coverage of science and science teaching. It's coolly analytical, content to let the facts set out on the page do the work for it in accusing and damning those with an agenda in the science community.

Sometimes this can seem a little bloodless - Goldacre rarely seems to go far enough, and his attacks on the social science and arts students who make up the media and who he believes missell science because it's beyond them is one of his most outspoken attacks, rarely speaking so harshly against mendacious, misleading and immoral scientists themselves.

Despite this unevenness of tone when hits do land they pack weight - the homeopathy scetion in particular is brutal in it's evisceration of the false teaching and lies told by those with an agenda, as well as the stupidity of those who would believe it.

It's a book that should be read, and much like Belching out the Devil, acted upon. Already the tools that Goldacre provides have been vindicated in looking at the front page coverage of new 'science'. Essential reading for anyone interested in science, the media or healthcare.

Also Try:
Belching out the Devil, Mark Thomas
A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson
The Manhatten Projects, Jonathan Hickman