After being so thoroughly intrigued and impressed with
Goldacre’s Bad Pharma, I went back to the library to get his first book, Bad
Science. But alas, the library did not have it requiring an interlibrary loan.
While Goldacre’s barbs are directed solely at the pharma
industry in Bad Pharma, his targets in Bad Science include the media (a most noble andn worthy target for most any expose) and statisticians (those hit a little too close to
home), his sharpest arrows are lasered on homeopathic claims and nutritionists
whom he considers to border of quackery. Notice he discusses ‘nutritionists’
and not ‘registered dieticians.’ He really blasts some fad nutritionists (not in general, he really has a bone to pick with one UK woman in particular) whose
many false claims (about their training, research history, science knowledge,
interpretation of the literature) are almost laughable if there weren't so many of
the public who buy into their nonsense.
His most enlightening, and longest, section is about the MMR
and autism scare of the last 10-ish years that just won’t seem to go away. In some detail, Goldacre discusses
how the scare started (using now-dismissed data), was perpetuated by an
agenda-driven media (hmmm, can you spell “global warming”?), the seeming inability of the media to admit after the fact that they were fooled and mislead and finally the
mishandling of retorts by a medical establishment was most adept at tripping over its
own tongue.
Despite being a legendary cheapskate and getting my books
almost exclusively from the library, my highest recommendation for a book is if
I then go out and buy it. I just
did get Naked Statistics and will now order both Goldacre books. If you want to
test drive Goldacre, see his Ted Talks online. I'm wondering if my primary society, the American College of Sports Medicine, would consider him for a keynote? Maybe I'll drop the hint to a guy I know on the program committee.
East Coast Don
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