A review by cajonist
Bad Science by Ben Goldacre

5.0

A really great book with a heavy dose of didactic teaching. You can literally plot the learning curve in this book from “Here is an example. Here is what you do with it.” to “Here is an example. You may be starting to have suspicions about what you should do with it.” to “Here is an example. You should by now have an idea what to do but don’t worry if you don’t.” to “Here is an example. Everyone together, on three...” That may sound a bit heavy and, in places, this book can be but it’s so funny, so informative, so downright snarky, and so meta in discussing the writing of the book while writing the book, that I couldn’t look away.

Many of my friends are scientists, I am not. They often talk about news articles that cite studies that didn’t actually say what the article claims they did. The Daily Mail and its causes/cures for cancer is a particularly easy target for their ire. I enjoy lambasting the Daily Mail as much as the next person but I could never quite get my head around this idea of manipulating data from studies happening even in even reputable newspapers. I feel like Bad Science, in all its righteous indignation, does a really good job of letting a lay person know how to think critically about the reporting of advancements in science and medicine. I obviously can’t interrogate statistics without stabilisers on my bike but I at least know that that’s something that needs doing.

I’m grateful to any book that can teach me something. Let alone one that I feel has introduced me to a whole topic to the point that I know what people are talking about with regard to statistics.