Bad Science

by Ben Goldacre

Ben Goldacre’s wise and witty bestseller, shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize, lifts the lid on quack doctors, flaky statistics, scaremongering journalists and evil pharmaceutical corporations.

Since 2003 Dr Ben Goldacre has been exposing dodgy medical data in his popular Guardian column. In this eye-opening book he takes on the MMR hoax and misleading cosmetics ads, acupuncture and homeopathy, vitamins and mankind’s vexed relationship with all manner of ‘toxins’. Along the way, the self-confessed ‘Johnny Ball cum Witchfinder General’ performs a successful detox on a Barbie doll, sees his dead cat become a certified nutritionist and probes the supposed medical qualifications of ‘Dr’ Gillian McKeith.

Full spleen and satire, Ben Goldacre takes us on a hilarious, invigorating and ultimately alarming journey through the bad science we are fed daily by hacks and quacks.

• ISBN13: 9780007284870
• Publish Date: 2 April 2009 (first published 6 October 2008)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Inc
• Imprint: HarperPerennial
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 288
• Language: English
• URL: http://harpercollins.co.uk

Reviews

[wyvernfriend]

An extension of his blog, this is a collection of basically rants about how science and statistics are abused by a variety of people. It also looks at faulty science behind some nutritionists and some of their dodgy "credentials". His emphasis is on making people question "facts" and double check the evidence.

However, people don't have the time for a lot of this, and when you're offered a glimmer of hope people tend to take it. The placebo effect is explored here and he does admit that it works and works well if people load it with belief, so maybe examining everything doesn't always work as well as it might.

It's a book worth reading, if only to read why he is so virulently opposed to some people's "science", I must admit to having read some of the books involved and having some reservations but it wasn't until I actually read this that I truly realised what was bothering me about them.

This is part of the problem, I do have a background in Science but I really didn't have enough energy or time to really exhaustively research some of the "facts" given to me by some of these writers. The fact that there are people like Ben Goldacre out there help me sort the truth from the fiction.