Bad Science
Cover scans
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Synopsis
Bad Science is a book almost entirely dedicated to the exposition of poor and damaging science reporting in the media, especially medical science. (Another major point of the book is focusing on specific people in the media who Goldacre thinks are doing a poor job or a disservice to the public.) This isn't all of the book, however: some chapters (The Placebo Effect and Bad Stats stand out) go into how medical science is actually done and what methods are used in clinical trials.
Review
I found the book both entertaining and enlightning, although the book is heavily focused on the UK. If you're from the UK then you'd probably enjoy this book much more than I did, being from Norway.
Table of contents
- Introduction
- Chapter 1: Matter
- Chapter 2: Brain Gym
- Chapter 3: The Progenium XY Complex
- Chapter 4: Homeopathy
- Chapter 5: The Placebo Effect
- Chapter 6: The Nonsense du Jour
- Chapter 7: Dr Gillian McKeith PhD
- Chapter 8: 'Pill Solves Complex Social Problem'
- Chapter 9: Professor Patrick Holford
- Chapter 10: The Doctor Will Sure You Now
- Chapter 11: Is Mainstream Medicine Evil?
- Chapter 12: How the Media Promote the Public Misunderstanding of Science
- Chapter 13: Why Clever People Believe Stupid Things
- Chapter 14: Bad Stats
- Chapter 15: Health Scares
- Chapter 16: The Media's MMR Hoax
- And Another Thing
- Further Reading and Acknowledgements
- Notes
- Index