A review by christianhartman
Not a Scientist: How Politicians Mistake, Misrepresent, and Utterly Mangle Science by Dave Levitan

3.0

3.5 stars. I was really excited about this book, and it truly is a formidable set of critical thinking tools when gauging political rhetoric. The problem is, the author falls into a few of these very same traps of his own letting his political bias guide his writing, for example, "Cherry-Picking" data (one of the pitfalls he calls on us to look out for), from GOP politicians that fit the agenda he is trying to build. I do not doubt that of the two parties, the GOP is one with a more tenuous hold on science, and will probably be overrepresented no matter what, yet the only two examples he lists in the whole book were two quotes from Obama that were not "quite" perfect, yet still positive (e.g. Obama crowing that the ROI of the Human Genome Project was "140 to 1", while it was later updated to be "only" 65 to 1, both unbelievable numbers for ROI). If these tools were applied fairly, or even relatively equitably, this would be an excellent example of what he would be trying to espouse, yet underneath the good science it reads like a semi-political scree.