I THINK YOU'LL FIND IT'S A BIT MORE COMPLICATED THAN THAT
Ben Goldacre
Harper Collins India
160 pages; $18
Ben Goldacre is a physician by training and he's in his early 40s. His day job is in epidemiology. This is important because epidemiologists use a lot of statistics and understand how maths works. Since 2003, Mr Goldacre has written the most entertaining science column in mass media, "Bad Science" for The Guardian.
He specifically targets pseudoscience, fallacies and woo and he does so with a trademark blend of logic, wit, snark and sarcasm that mocks bad science. He is breathtakingly blunt in his takedowns but he is often very funny as well.
This is a free-wheeling column, flitting across disciplines and going wherever the fancy takes Mr Goldacre. The sheer breadth requires great gobs of erudition and quantities of research. His ability to turn an elegant phrase makes it look easy. In that sense, his facility with language may be somewhat to blame for science seeming a little less complicated than it actually is.
There is obviously a rich lode to be mined in debunking. There is an enormous amount of pseudoscience in the public domain and more tripe is churned out on a daily basis, quite often by people who should know better.
Two previous compilations, Bad Science and Bad Pharma, drew on the column for material and both books were bestsellers. This third compilation is a potpourri that avoids new pharma-related fallacies (for the most part) while also staying away from material covered in the earlier compilations.
That still leaves 400 pages organised into many sections, with another 70 pages of end-notes and bibliography. Each section consists of several articles with a common theme. The overarching focus is on statistics and epidemiology.
The first section, "How Science Works" covers the art and grammar of peer review, and the back and forth that typically occurs when research is accepted, published and discussed. It also deals with evils such as cherry-picking data.
As he says in one of those pieces, "Science has authority, not because of white coats and titles but because of precision and transparency". One of the most interesting articles in this section dealt with scientific studies conducted by children (the oldest being 15 and the youngest nine) which flatly contradicted received wisdom about the Brain Gym exercise system, about a "miracle drug" that cured Crohn's Disease and about a faddish nursing concept called "Therapeutic Touch". In two cases, the papers were initially suppressed because they were embarrassing to adults.
That relatively staid hors d'oeuvre leads us into "Biologising", Statistics, Big Data, Surveys, Epidemiology, Bad Academia, Government Statistics, Evidence-based Policy, (recreational ) Drugs, Libel (which focuses on lawsuits brought against science writers by purveyors of pseudoscience), Quacks, Magic boxes, Irrationality, bad journalism, Stuff and Early Snarks. Phew! I've probably missed something but that should give the reader a sense of how widely Mr Goldacre trawls (and trolls when it comes to snark). Note that, most of the time, he is dealing with egregious errors, mishaps and fallacies.
Some of this material is truly frightening in its implications. For example, lacunae in compilation, logical errors and deliberate misuse of government statistics, can lead to appalling policy mishaps. So the government statistics and evidence-based policy sections dovetail into each other. For example, he cites instances where he tracked down studies upon which major UK government policy recommendations were based. One six-page study consisted of a four-page advertisement for the research organisation concerned, with two pages of verbiage and three lines of unexplained data. it said 20 per cent cuts in municipal budgets was possible.
The National Health Service suffered from a minister citing fallacious "evidence" for reorganisation. Another error-ridden study with absurd assumptions claimed vast losses (amounting to 10 per cent of GDP!) through music piracy. This was used to push through anti-piracy laws.
Another such study advocated the creation of a massive DNA database maintained by the police, of everyone who had ever been arrested (not necessarily convicted) so as to aid in detection of future crimes. (India's DNA Bill wishes to take this a step further by maintaining a DNA database of anybody, who has ever been involved in a crime, including the victims). The UK government released a consultation paper based on a sample of a few hundred people who had been arrested. Mr Goldacre eviscerates the methodology. Then of course, there are erroneous policies for combating AIDs, which rely on pseudoscience and helped to kill thousands of people.
There are other instances, where the writer is just having fun, dealing with less serious subjects. He asserts for instance, that the female preference for pink as a colour is entirely culturally-driven and of recent origin. Then again, in some cases he may not be entirely tongue-in-cheek: he points out that watching £20 worth of pornography appears to have the same positive effect on sperm donors, as a course of in-vitro fertility treatments costing £3,000.
The articles cited above more or less at random should give the reader a sense of where Mr Goldacre goes. He is always entertaining, often thought-provoking. As he says himself, this is a "toilet book". Keep it next to the loo and dip into it while reigning over china.
