A review by paper2neurons
Science Fictions: How Fraud, Bias, Negligence, and Hype Undermine the Search for Truth by Stuart Ritchie

3.25

In my review of Superior last year, I mentioned wanting to find a more general book that discussed issues with science which could be incorporated into grad school curriculum to educate scientists about the field of science. I picked up this book to see if it would work. In short, it does.

Science Fictions goes through the various issues with the scientific field, focusing on meta-scientific studies.

The book has a lot of good going for it. It is easily approachable by non-experts because the author explains common academic jargon, such as impact factor and tenure. The breadth of issues discussed is broad and touches on multiple fields (though mostly medical, economics and social science). The examples chosen were widely relevant (such as the flawed autism-vaccine study), funny, and back up the theses. One pet peeve of mine is when writing overemphasizes the institution of scientists. This book does not do that, which reduces bias in assessing science.

I would have liked to see the last part on solutions more fleshed out. The author didn’t seem to fully evaluate the academic landscape (e.g., there wasn't mention of how to overcome the negative impact of publishing an article claiming someone's work is incorrect). The solution section seemed tacked onto the end as an afterthought. I would not hand this to the National Science Foundation and ask them to implement it without additional ideas and analysis.

Overall, the book is a good introduction to what is wrong with science, and I think a science grad program concerned with having graduates knowledgeable about scientific issues should have this (or something similar) included in their curriculum.