Rate this book

Bad Science (2007)

by Ben Goldacre(Favorite Author)

4.07 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

0007240198 (ISBN13: 9780007240197)

languge

English

genre

Humor

publisher

Fourth Estate

review 1: At first I didn't want to read this book (or, rather, to listen the audiobook) and the reason was I thought it was explainin how science is bad. But in the book Ben Goldacre tells quite a different thing, he tells of the occupations that call themselves science but as such they do not hold up to the name: they are inconsistant, their method is flawed - they do not behave like a proper science does. He describes a variety of subjects like homeopathy, nutritional "science", anti-vaccine movement and others explaining why these are not scientifical. While being ironical and slightly sarcastical he does a good job of it.
review 2: This is actually a really good primer on scientific thinking in general for the layman. The subject is important to everyone; hard fact... mores can be found on every page; the author lays out his reasoning clearly; and there was humor scattered throughout. There were tiny (surprisingly painless*) introductions to statistics and why they are important for your understanding of medical trials, a full chapter on the placebo effect and why it isn't all just in the mind, how other people can toy with information to make it sound like it says something else (and how to spot that), and many other useful bits of information. I very much enjoyed reading it. My favorite was the chapter on big pharma and how researchers funded by the larger companies can tweak their results (and, of course, how a reader can pick up on most of it).*Since I am a mathematician doing sciency things, it is a bit difficult for me to judge what statistical explanations might be painless to others. Judging by the relative clarity compared with the many other explanations I have heard, the lack of calculations, and the very short (four short sentences or less) explanations, I would say that someone who had never studied statistics is likely to get the gist with little to no headache. less

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