Message from Dean - May 8th 2007
I am currently testing out a new version of the APF Bridge Component - If you notice any errors within this demo store please drop me a line.
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Binding: Paperback
EAN: 9780007240197
ISBN: 0007240198
Label: Fourth Estate Ltd
Manufacturer: Fourth Estate Ltd
Number Of Pages: 352
Publication Date: September 01, 2008
Publisher: Fourth Estate Ltd
Studio: Fourth Estate Ltd
Alternate Versions: Click to Display
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Best read I have had for a good few months.
I got hold of a copy of the book during Christmas and finished it within 3 days. Coming from a science background, I can only say that I cannot treat the misinformation, manipulation and exploitation by the media and pharmcueticals described by Dr. Goldacre as 'light-hearted science'. Some of those things he mentioned regarding statistical methods and reporting are common problems for any science research, albeit not always used by companies to seek profits. It throws me into despair.
I recommend this book to anyone, especially to those who are supposed to promote public understanding of science - there are so much they could have done and yet haven't.
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Following on from his Guardian column of the same name Ben Goldacre, a doctor and journalist, has published Bad Science, where he attempts to engage us in the science that we are all subjected to and persuaded by on an almost daily basis. He is not a happy man. Not so much because people get things wrong, or portray them inaccurately but because the science behind it isn't really that complex. In fact the revelation of this book is not so much that he lays into some soft targets like Gillian McKeith ('or, to give her full medical title: Gillian McKeith') or homeopathy, giving us all a giggle along the way, but that he attempts to arm us all with the basic scientific tools that will help us to smell a rat. After all, most of what we get now in the press and on the television is statistics and we all know that there are lies, damn lies and then there are statistics.
When I was about 13 at school I once convinced my class that red apples could give you cancer. Having learnt the ... Read More
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I found this book interesting, informative and a little scary. Ben Goldacre's calm, patient list of the crimes against science and by extension humanity perpetuated by the alternative medicine and pharmacological industries, as well as the media's own aptitude for distorting the view of science in the popular eye, is a gripping, sometimes funny, often terrifying read. Strongly recommend this book.
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This book (even with its somewhat over the top style) is extremely important, and should be given to all the people you know. It demonstrates very well how much of the science that we glean through our newspapers is at best simply wrong and at worst a gross distortion of the facts (OK, lies). [Real] Dr. Goldacre's book ranges from the MRSA and MMR "scandals" (which on closer inspection appear to be nothing of the sort), through the dubious (and to some extent, hilarious) PR methods of the nutritionists and purveyors of wrinkle creams, to the wacky new age worlds of homeopathy and ear candles.
It is also an important book for scientists (of which I am one), to remind us of the traps of false positives and dodgy statistics, into which we are occasionally tempted due to shortage of time (or even, heaven forbid, laziness).
The main picture coming out of this book is of sadly ignorant journalists printing the ludicrously unchecked ramblings of a variety of "scientists" ... Read More
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Ben Goldacre is a doctor who writes a weekly column in the Guardian exposing bad medicine. He writes, "The hole in our culture is gaping: evidence-based medicine, the ultimate applied science, contains some of the cleverest ideas from the past two centuries, it has saved millions of lives, but there has never once been a single exhibit on the subject in London's Science Museum."
He attacks the idea that social and political problems can be solved by pills, even Patrick Holford's Optimal Nutrition pills, or those of the TV 'nutritionist' Gillian McKeith, with her PhD from a non-accredited correspondence course 'college' in the USA. Their advice is just 'a manifesto of right-wing individualism', blaming people's ill-health on their food choices, not on the social inequality that drives health inequality.
Dr Goldacre writes, "All too often this spurious privatisation of common sense is happening in areas where we could be taking control, doing it ourselves, feeling our ... Read More
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