Bad Science - Ben Goldacre

Bad Science by Ben Goldacre

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
In the last hundred years or so, evidence based medicine has probably done more to improve life expectancy and general quality of life for people than anything else. Measuring the outcomes of treatments, drugs and surgical techniques in carefully designed and controlled trials allows us to choose those that work and discard those that don't, or are harmful. To coin a phrase, it's not rocket science, but in this book Dr Ben Goldacre shows how simple common sense is being drowned by a tidal wave of nonsense perpetrated by homeopaths, tv nutritionists, big pharmaceutical companies and most egregiously of all by journalists and the media who prefer outrageous scare stories and outright lies to honest reporting.

The book opens with an amusing disection of a device that supposedly de-toxes your body with a sort of foot bath and provides a gentle introduction to ways of testing the efficacy of such products for yourself. Another good example is to try burning an ear candle without sticking it in your ear and you will easily see that it produces the exact same waxy residue as when it is supposedly extracting ear wax.

The book then goes on to examine homeopathy, including a complaint from a homeopathist who claimed that a newpaper column by Goldacre had made them look stupid by not mentioning that homeopathy relies on banging the jar of diluted water ten times on a special leather and horsehair pad to get the molecules to 'remember' whatever it is they are supposed to remember. However, the point is not to mock (much) but rather to look at the much more interesting placebo effect where genuine medical benefits can be seen and measured. He similarly skewers the pseudo science of nutritionists who affect medical expertise by wearing a white coat and standing in front of some test tubes, and recommend fad diets and expensive supplements (that they can sell you for a tidy profit) rather than the sensible option of eating a balanced diet and moderate exercise.

The final section deals with the MMR hoax where a perfect storm of a badly designed medical study, parents of autistic children looking for someone to blame (and sue) and outrageously biased and untrue media reporting combined to cause a catastrophic fall in the number of children being vaccinated against potentially harmful diseases.

This is an excellent book that explains how to interpret evidence and statistics, and look behind the scary headlines where everything either causes cancer or cures it.

Highly recommended!




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