Some while ago I read Bad Science by Ben Goldacre. As his website says:
Ben is an award-winning writer, broadcaster, and medical doctor who specialises in unpicking dodgy scientific claims made by scaremongering journalists, dodgy government reports, evil pharmaceutical corporations, PR companies and quacks. He has written the weekly “Bad Science” column in the Guardian since 2003.
“Bad Science“, the Guardian column and blog, seeks to expose the misrepresentation of scientific and medical reporting in the media.
Bad Science, the book, looks in greater depth at the ways in which the aforementioned journalists, pharmaceutical companies, PR people, quacks and, yes, even government reports distort, misrepresent and lie about the science behind just about everything in order to have us believe what they want us to believe.
In reading the book I culled a few good quotes (page references to the 2008 paperback edition) for you …
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As the perfect example, there are huge numbers of creams (and other beauty treatments) claiming to deliver oxygen directly to your skin. Many of the creams contain peroxide, which, if you really want to persuade yourself of its efficacy, has a chemical formula of H2O2, and could fancifully be conceived of as water ‘with some extra oxygen’, although chemical formulae don’t really work that way – after all, a pile of rust is an iron bridge ‘with some extra oxygen’, and you wouldn’t imagine it would oxygenate your skin. [Page 25]
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Like most things in the story the natural sciences can tell about the world, it’s all so beautiful, so gracefully simple, yet so rewardingly complex, so neatly connected – not to mention true – that I can’t even begin to imagine why anyone would ever want to believe some New Age ‘alternative’ nonsense instead. [Page 117]
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We should also remember that bizarre English ritual whereby GCSE results get better every year, yet anyone who suggests that the exams are getting easier is criticised for undermining the achievement of the successful candidates. In fact, taking the long view, this easing is obvious: there are forty-year-old O-level papers which are harder than the current A-level syllabus; and there are present-day university finals papers in maths that are easier than old A-level papers. [Page 140]
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SSRI antidepressant drugs cause sexual side-effects fairly commonly, including anorgasmia. We should be clear (and I’m trying to phrase this as neutrally as possible): I really enjoy the sensation of orgasm. It’s important to me, and everything I experience in the world tells me that this sensation is important to other people too […] There are evolutionary psychologists who would try to persuade you that the entirety of human culture and language is driven, in large part, by the pursuit of the sensation of orgasm. Losing it seems like an important side-effect to ask about.
And yet, various studies have shown that the reported prevalence of anorgasmia in patients taking SSRI drugs varies between 2 per cent and 73 per cent, depending primarily on how you ask: a casual, open-ended question about side-effects, for example, or a careful and detailed enquiry. One 3,000-subject review on SSRIs simply did not list any sexual side-effects on its twenty-three-item side-effect table. Twenty-three other things were more important, according to the researchers, than losing the sensation of orgasm. I have read them. They are not. [Pages 190-191]
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Research conducted at Cardiff University in 2007 showed that 80 per cent of all broadsheet news stories were ‘wholly, mainly or partially constructed from second-hand material, provided by news agencies and by the public relations industry’. [Page 211]
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Science coverage now tends to come from the world of medicine, and the stories are of what will kill you, or save you. Perhaps it is narcissism, or fear, but the science of health is important to people, and at the very time when we need it the most, our ability to think around the issue is being energetically distorted by the media, corporate lobbies and, frankly, cranks.
Without anybody noticing, bullshit has become an extremely important public health issue, and for reasons that go far beyond the obvious hysteria around immediate harms: the odd measles tragedy, or a homoeopath’s unnecessary malaria case. Doctors today are keen – as it said in our medical school notes – to work ‘collaboratively with the patient towards an optimum health outcome’. They discuss evidence with their patients, so that they can make their own decisions about treatments.
[…] working in the NHS you meet patients from every conceivable walk of life, in huge numbers, discussing some of the most important issues in their lives. This has consistently taught me one thing: people aren’t stupid. Anybody can understand anything, as long as it is clearly explained. [Pages 316-7]
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The book certainly makes you think about the truth of just about everything we’re told. It is definitely recommended reading, it isn’t hard even for non-scientific technophobes and is most definitely clearly explained.