And Big Pharma Flacks, Hacks, Bad Science: Quacks

Anybody who is a fan of science and reality should check this book out. Dr. Goldacre encourages alternative medicine to be recognized as medical practitioners just as soon as they produce scientifically reproducible experiments. The book is not a tale told by a snob, but rather a story about how science works and how everything else fails. If you actually want to know how evidence based medicine works, I can recommend no better book.

Bad Science is an excellent entry to the genre of skeptical books that are, in this country, associated with Michael Shermer, James Randi, and Paul Kurtz. It is a pleasure to read, both because Goldacre writes well, and because the books from Shermer, et al, are very similar to each other and this one is in many regards refreshingly different.

Part of this stems from its national origin -- this is a very British book. As a result, it has a lot more about the MMR-vaccine-causes-autism nonsense than would have appeared in an American book, as the media panic in the U.K. was much greater than the one here. It similarly has less on faith healing and other topics that loom larger in the American consciousness.

But the book also differs in approach. In the quintessential American members of the genre, various bits of nonsense are debunked with a combination of common sense and powerful anecdote. American writers are particularly fond of grand gestures, sneaking into the back room and discovering the wizard hiding behind the curtain. That's not Goldacre's style at all. Instead, his favorite tool is the statistical blobbogram. The main targets of his scorn are holistic healers, vendors of pharmaceuticals and vitamins, who lie and abuse statistical techniques to mislead people into buying products that don't work instead of using ones that do. He similarly rails against the journalists who enable these malefactors.

Goldacre is a physician, so he spends most of his time on medical topics, but not all.

I enjoyed and appreciated every chapter of this book, and I hope many other people read it too.

Ben Goldacre does an excellent job of de-puffing all the health related puffery out there, and there's a lot out there. It's very revealing that the drug companies spend much more on advertising than on research. They know if they convince the public, the doctors will follow. He's fighting an uphill battle. The public (I don't exclude myself) is always more willing to believe a good story rather than good science. Kudos to the author for waging that battle. Please check out my own SF novel at GateWorld: The Search for Earth Book 1.

After reading Ben's, "Bad Pharma" I was hooked. It is an excellent book. I searched and found, "Bad Science". Bad Science seems more broadly focused with less case study examples and more author opinion. It does make some good points.

Clear and laugh-out-loud funny explanation of why certain claims are believable, while others are flim-flam,. Ben Goldacre has done heroic work tracing back , and giving us the skills to evaluate, original sources. His premise is that 'people aren't stupid'; that we can make our own choices when given the tools. Then he takes on nutritionists, big pharma, the whole mess. Did I mention is an exceptionally clear and accessible way? You'll never look at a juice carton the same way again. And - it's funny. I'd be wearing the t-shirt, too, if there was one available from a printer in the US!

Dr. Goldacre reviews many current topics in an informative but highly readable book. Instead of being verbose he has most of his support information online. With this approach he is able to stick to stay on topic without overwhelming the reader. The book can stand alone but for the reader who wants to dig deeper or check facts extra information is easy to find.

This is the best kind of science writing - light, witty, conveys sophisticated concepts in plain English that makes sense to non-scientists, and exposes all sorts of nonsense thrown at us from everyone trying to take advantage of the weaknesses of our intuition about the world.

Ben Goldacre has done an important public service by providing a science-based criticism of alternative medicine, including megadose vitamins, homeopathy, and so-called "nutritionists". He saves a few arrows for the pharmaceutical companies, and pointedly and entertainingly shows how tenuous is the relationship between claims of the alternative medicine proponents and sound science. I am recommending this book to all of my friends and colleagues.

was only really interested in the chapters on skincare and vitamins/supplements. those were very illuminating. surely some will find the rest the same, but i skimmed the rest. the guy knows his stuff.

Ben Goldacre is one sharp cookie. His assesments of the ways of the world of medical science are witty and cleverly told so as to make them intersting to a layperson like me. He does tend to get very technical, though, but at least he does acknowledge this himself.
I do not agree with his butchering of everything homeopathic, though. This is just too science-nerdy for me. As he does mention himself, a lot of people quite happily spend their money on homeopathic treatment, and I for one don't really care if they spend their money on sugar pills, if it works for them, why not? For me it's a bit like Richard Dawkins saying that people shouldn't be allowed to believe in God, it's simply too authoritarian for my digestion. Goldacre does go into a long argument with himself as to why it is not "harmless" but at that point he lost me.
Still a good read, though, and I am looking forward to reading "Bad Pharma"

I purchased Bad Science as a guide to better myself sniffing out the BS of many papers and studies. This affects me in both my daily personal life and professional career. While I have to say there are some absolute gems of rules, guidelines, and examples in the book, I found Ben Goldacre's long diatribes to make this a difficult read. He seems to take a certain joy in writing pages-long word soup about certain people and groups are terrible citizens for conflating the numbers and results. I don't totally disagree with this, but I have better things to do than wade through the verbal superfluousness. The worst example was a list of pointers which were randomly placed over several pages and broken up by the word stew. I generally enjoy keeping a list as one entity.

Overall, I almost put this book down permanently a handful of times, but I'm a masochist when it comes to bettering myself.

Media today can send your head spinning with over-information. Vaccinations are bad! Homeopathy is NATURAL and therefore GOOD! In Bad Science, you can learn the truth behind all of these claims, and learn for yourself what is real and what is hype. The power should be in your own hands to choose what is good for you. Educating yourself about exactly what homeopathy is, and facts about acupuncture, and knowing what chiropractic medicine actually involves is the best way to gaining control over your making your own decisions.

After reading this book, the general impression I am left with is that it's depth and clarity and verity are...scattered. I would not depend on this book as back-up for any opinion I might form. It's not totally badly done, though.

If you are an Australian customer you should ignore the review "Kindle edition UPDATED to include graphs etc,".

The Australian version DOES NOT have graphs or images. I have asked the store for the updated (US) version but have been told that is not possible as the publisher has not supplied an updated version for sale to Australian customers.

This book had some good information and at times was quite amusing, but I had one major beef. Constantly throughout the books the author goes on about "humanities graduates", equating them with ignorant science-deniers who spread misinformation and endanger people's lives (i.e. by being journalists who 'resent' science and by not believing in immunisation. Really, he has researched every immunisation opponent and discovered they are all humanities graduates? Please show me the statistics, Dr Goldacre.) This is ridiculous and a massive generalisation that is just as much bad science as that which he is seeking to expose.

He also seems to think that all of his readers are male, because says, "I recommend looking at your sperm [under a microscope]; it's quite a soulful moment." (location 4347 of Kindle edition). Well I'm sorry but I don't have any sperm and yes, female humanities graduates can read books about science. But that doesn't fit in with his world view. These kind of tiresome things really interfered with my enjoyment of the book and drove me to write this review. The book would have been better if he had left out these stupid, unsubstantiated and prejudiced jibes.

In this book Ben Goldacre addresses the scientific method applied to medicine. I must confess that this is a topic of immense interest to me. Once you are past the condescending tone and the author’s self-promotion / elation, there are very valid points in the discussion of the various chapters. Although deep the approach is repetitive, Goldacre tries to explain through concrete examples how can the scientific knowledge be misapplicated at the medical level.

As someone minimally informed regarding scientific method, there are simply things that confuse me. I, for one, don’t understand the lack of regulations for the marketing of natural products. Thousands of products are advertised and sold without any problem and as it reads in the insert "have no side effects." This is just due to lack of studies, but they are openly recommended by some health professionals, broadcasters and sold freely.

The author draws particular attention to Dr. Gillian McKeith and Professor Patrick Holdford, which recommend the consumption of substances in their television programs. I did not know these cases, but I followed the Dr.Oz case in USA. In my country, Portugal, there are fortune tellers making medical diagnoses on television. This is unacceptable.

With regard to the author's approach on glucosamine and chondroitin, can’t fully agree with the author's position. There is still not enough evidence for a broad recommendation on medical level, but there’s been taking place a large study in an attempt to clarify some contradictory results. The truth is that the book was written before to the Cochrane review showing that there might be some benefit in taking these supplements.

I have to refer the chapter of vaccination. The anti-vaccination movement has increased in recent years and, in the light of current knowledge, the results of refusal to vaccinate children will be catastrophic. We’ll start to have diseases that didn’t appear for several years. Many of which were only referred to at the medical school as a curiosity.

Finally, I would like to make a small comment to the role of the physician and the patient. Medicine has changed over the years. With the invalidation of the biomedical model, the doctor came to share treatment decisions with the patient. This change is not always seen as beneficial both for the patient or the doctor. On the one hand, the doctor was formatted during college to have all the answers to the patient's problems. It is often necessary to explain that you simply don’t know or that according to evidence what you have to offer is not wonderful. On the other hand, the patient himself often has a hard time taking responsibility for his own health. This is easily seen by the notorious difficulty in adhering to lifestyles changes. People establish a notion of health who focus only in taking pills. We live in a time when happiness is dependent on having the right pill. And that's essentially why so much that is described in the book happens.
It was an interesting read, and I think it’s important to everyone. May become a bit boring to some, but the author strives to explain some basic concepts that we should all have.

OK. So the media help quacks sell pixie dust. But that's about 80% of US economy. More power to 100% natural, humane, and organic balls of cows. If everything is down to earth and practical, then we probably could live on 20% of the current resource usage. What's the fun in that?

The more I think about it, the more I feel maybe privatized media outlet is actually a very bad idea. The spread of BS is basically uncontrollable because of it. How about close all of them? Sure, people would cry murder and chant for freedom of speech 10,000 times. But maybe, just a thought, very similar to how AT&T, Comcast and United fight ferociously against any new regulations on ways of milking customers, Freedom of Speech is really just a facade for all the magic pill companies so they could keep their racket going and further undermine knowledge and keep the darkness of ignorance on humanity for another 1000 years. These are just my thoughts typed in the shower thanks to my waterproof iPhone 7! Now that's progress that actually works.

In this book Ben Goldacre addresses the scientific method applied to medicine. I must confess that this is a topic of immense interest to me. Once you are past the condescending tone and the author’s self-promotion / elation, there are very valid points in the discussion of the various chapters. Although deep the approach is repetitive, Goldacre tries to explain through concrete examples how can the scientific knowledge be misapplicated at the medical level.

As someone minimally informed regarding scientific method, there are simply things that confuse me. I, for one, don’t understand the lack of regulations for the marketing of natural products. Thousands of products are advertised and sold without any problem and as it reads in the insert "have no side effects." This is just due to lack of studies, but they are openly recommended by some health professionals, broadcasters and sold freely.

The author draws particular attention to Dr. Gillian McKeith and Professor Patrick Holdford, which recommend the consumption of substances in their television programs. I did not know these cases, but I followed the Dr.Oz case in USA. In my country, Portugal, there are fortune tellers making medical diagnoses on television. This is unacceptable.

With regard to the author's approach on glucosamine and chondroitin, can’t fully agree with the author's position. There is still not enough evidence for a broad recommendation on medical level, but there’s been taking place a large study in an attempt to clarify some contradictory results. The truth is that the book was written before to the Cochrane review showing that there might be some benefit in taking these supplements.

I have to refer the chapter of vaccination. The anti-vaccination movement has increased in recent years and, in the light of current knowledge, the results of refusal to vaccinate children will be catastrophic. We’ll start to have diseases that didn’t appear for several years. Many of which were only referred to at the medical school as a curiosity.

Finally, I would like to make a small comment to the role of the physician and the patient. Medicine has changed over the years. With the invalidation of the biomedical model, the doctor came to share treatment decisions with the patient. This change is not always seen as beneficial both for the patient or the doctor. On the one hand, the doctor was formatted during college to have all the answers to the patient's problems. It is often necessary to explain that you simply don’t know or that according to evidence what you have to offer is not wonderful. On the other hand, the patient himself often has a hard time taking responsibility for his own health. This is easily seen by the notorious difficulty in adhering to lifestyles changes. People establish a notion of health who focus only in taking pills. We live in a time when happiness is dependent on having the right pill. And that's essentially why so much that is described in the book happens.
It was an interesting read, and I think it’s important to everyone. May become a bit boring to some, but the author strives to explain some basic concepts that we should all have.

OK. So the media help quacks sell pixie dust. But that's about 80% of US economy. More power to 100% natural, humane, and organic balls of cows. If everything is down to earth and practical, then we probably could live on 20% of the current resource usage. What's the fun in that?

The more I think about it, the more I feel maybe privatized media outlet is actually a very bad idea. The spread of BS is basically uncontrollable because of it. How about close all of them? Sure, people would cry murder and chant for freedom of speech 10,000 times. But maybe, just a thought, very similar to how AT&T, Comcast and United fight ferociously against any new regulations on ways of milking customers, Freedom of Speech is really just a facade for all the magic pill companies so they could keep their racket going and further undermine knowledge and keep the darkness of ignorance on humanity for another 1000 years. These are just my thoughts typed in the shower thanks to my waterproof iPhone 7! Now that's progress that actually works.

Despite its rather broad-sounding title, the "bad science" is really science associated with the health, nutrition and medical fields. The author, a physician and strong advocate of evidence-based medicine, guides the reader through what constitutes careful research and diligent analysis and interpretation of results. He points out the many pitfalls that even the most conscientious researchers can unwittingly fall into. But mainly he also discusses various tricks that less than honest researchers - those usually with a vested interest in some specific outcome of the experiments/research (e.g., some alternative medicine practitioners, some pharmaceutical companies, some nutritionists, even some physicians, etc.) - will use to promote their ideologies, products, etc., even when these have been proven worthless by honest, careful researchers. Carl Sagan's view that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" features prominently throughout this book.

This author is not afraid to express his views - especially when sloppy research and/or dishonesty is involved. His prose, although occasionally cumbersome, is quite lively, authoritative, friendly, often witty and fast-paced. Anyone interested in the use and abuse of science should thoroughly enjoy this book.

You may not know author Ben Goldacre. He's British. He's also a doctor, and a science writer. His work appears in the Guardian.

Goldacre also has a finely tuned BS detector. In this book, he takes that detector and looks at how science and medicine is reported in the popular press. It turns out that those representations are usually wrong. They're that way because everything is over simplified by reporters that apparently don't know what they're talking about. Sometimes the problem goes deeper too. The people creating the data misreport or misinterpret the data they create, with varying degrees of malice. The book builds with Goldacre debunking various people who have his behind science and exposes them as the quacks they are. It creschendos with a take-down of the MMR scare over the supposed autism link.

The best thing is that he explains the statistical subterfuge and the medical mysteries in plain language. You feel smarter, and not talked down to, having learned what is real -- and what is BS.

The key takeaway, as Goldacre asserts, and I agree with is this: "I'll think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that." I've found myself internalizing this lesson, becomming even more skeptical than usual. Last night the news reported that aspirin lowered the risk for colon cancer, and I said to myself: "There's more to this story."

It seems a bit gratuitous to write the 223rd review of Ben Goldacres book "Bad Science" but having decided that it would be more of a fault not to recognise the brilliance of his book I'll go ahead any way.

The Bad Science that particularly irks Goldacre and takes up the bulk of his book is that which relates to the medical sphere. It's not that he thinks purveyors of crystal healing, homeopathy or the wannabe scientific but far from terrific "nutritionists" should be soundly horse whipped weekly or even fortnightly, but that he wishes they would stop pretending to be what they are not which is science. The other target of his ire is the media, the scare-mongering, the cry wolf-ers who were up to their necks in the MMR scare-mongering without understanding more than a tiny fraction of the whole story. With regard to MRSA he gob-smacked this cynical reader with the information that the "scientist" who was coming up with the +ve results for the newspapers was working from his garden shed, done up with pieces of kitchen fittings and sub-standard scientific apparatus: The Walter Mitty of the world of micro-biology no less!

He's also interesting, though it is by no means a central part of the book, on the attractions of the quick (quack?) fixes to deal with complex problems within society. The account of the Teeside Fish oil fiasco is fairly disturbing, as is the bizarre (and trademarked) exercises that are apparently carried out in hundreds of schools across the land. Hopefully this aspect of his writings will be explored further in a later book.

Totally recommended, Goldacre is an effortlessly witty writer and by some slight of hand. . . sorry . . . by rational explanation he makes statistics, especially those relevant to the study of the efficacy of medical treatments, entirely comprehensible. 100% recommended. A first step to immunising yourself from irrational medical nostrums, saving yourself a pile of money as well as having a well earned laugh.

This is a wonderful, angry, ranty book that educates and entertains, and ultimately leaves you sad that the world is the way it is, and wanting to change it.

I have read some good works on critical thinking and on science, and this book is right up there with the best of them. Ben Goldacre works in the NHS and the science he is talking about is unashamedly the science of healthcare - but the points he makes about understanding scientific reporting and spotting quackery applies in other fields too.

Indeed it was very refreshing to read a book attacking bad science, and defending reason that focussed on such real world and downright useful subjects as how to answer someone who thinks MMR jabs cause autism, or who thinks eating spinach will oxygenate your blood.

I thought I was usually reasonably good at spotting bad science, but putting the book down and picking up today's paper I was immediately struck by two stories I would normally have quicky forgotten, and was left suspecting that both are very inaccurately reported.

Bad science is all around us, and in this book you can sharpen your skills at spotting and refuting bad arguments. The only people who will hate this book are people who think that "there are more things in heaven and earth..." and thus we should never discount homeopathy (or crystals, or tarot or whatever) just in case they work by some mechanism we do not know.

(And the message of the book to those people is - fair enough. But there is simply no evidence that the *do* work at all).

The only down sides of this book are the writing style. It is open and amusing, but sometimes some people might feel it grating a little. I didn't - I liked it, but I would understand if others felt differently.

Moreover, there writing was sometimes a tad opaque. I found myself re-reading some paragraphs because the book was so chatty that sometimes the author repeated himself and at other times he seemd to assume his point was clear before he had quite finished writing it. It is a minor criticism, because for the most part the author has done an admirable job of making science and the scientific method clear and understandable.

One last criticism - had I been explaining the material in this book, I would have covered much sooner the issues of prabability and chance, and the point that even where there is no effect to be discovered, 1 in 20 experiments attempting to show the effect (or rather, to disprove there is no effect) will come up with positive results merely by chance.

He does mention this in a very good chapter on statistics. It is just that it was relevant earlier, and even when mentioned it is not a point he labours.

Again a very minor criticism for a very good, readable and enjoyable work that is thoroughly recommended.

Goldacre has a nice breezy voice, which is an essential attribute when writing about science for a lay audience. The goal of the book, as stated, is to help non-scientists evaluate quackery and its cousins, and shed light on why there is so much conflicting information reported in the media as apparently legit scientific results. One day we’re told to drink OJ, another week a new study says forget that, OJ is toxic after all (that’s a fake example, but you get the drift). It's a real problem and it is eroding public trust in science. Bad Science is eminently readable, with a great deal to say about the title’s defining features, including how to spot bad science even when its disguised as a headline in the New York Times, CNN, or FOX. However, on balance, Goldacre oversimplifies what is a complex issue about the troubling inconsistencies in scientific reporting and the damage this see-saw of discoveries and rebuttals has done to public support for science. By reverting to the simplistic notion that the “fault” lies with bad-apple journalists and quack scientists – rather than honestly examining the intricate interplay of all aspects of the ecosystem of science, including funders, academics, and the translational challenges inherent in scientific tactics themselves – Bad Science only adds to the confusion.

If you enjoy reading popular science books, this is a must read. If you have wondered why there are all these medical claims in the media that you never hear about again, this is a book for you. In fact, if you just like to read, this is a book for you. Ben Goldacre does an excellent job laying out the issues and unlike many other popular science books, you actually feel like you learned something. He does a great job balancing humility and being witty when disproving bogus health claims which many authors can't pull off without sounding smug. It definitely will change the way you think and approach fantastic claims. I'm so glad that I read this.

Despite its rather broad-sounding title, the "bad science" is really science associated with the health, nutrition and medical fields. The author, a physician and strong advocate of evidence-based medicine, guides the reader through what constitutes careful research and diligent analysis and interpretation of results. He points out the many pitfalls that even the most conscientious researchers can unwittingly fall into. But mainly he also discusses various tricks that less than honest researchers - those usually with a vested interest in some specific outcome of the experiments/research (e.g., some alternative medicine practitioners, some pharmaceutical companies, some nutritionists, even some physicians, etc.) - will use to promote their ideologies, products, etc., even when these have been proven worthless by honest, careful researchers. Carl Sagan's view that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" features prominently throughout this book.

This author is not afraid to express his views - especially when sloppy research and/or dishonesty is involved. His prose, although occasionally cumbersome, is quite lively, authoritative, friendly, often witty and fast-paced. Anyone interested in the use and abuse of science should thoroughly enjoy this book.

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 own potency and our ability to make sensible decisions; instead we are fostering our dependence on expensive outside systems and people."

He praises the brilliant Cochrane reviews of medical literature. He notes that to say that giving placebos in trials of treatments is unethical is to assume that the treatment is better, which is to assume what is being tested. We don't know the result of the trial before we do it - that is why we do trials.

For example, trials have proven that the painkiller Vioxx caused 80,000-139,000 heart attacks, a third probably fatal, during its five years on the market. Trials have also discredited antioxidants, hormone replacement therapy and calcium supplements.

Dr Goldacre notes that anti-arrhythmia drugs when given to all heart attack patients, not just to those with arrhythmic heartbeats, increased their risk of dying. He reminds us that Benjamin Spock's well-meant but wrong advice - that babies should sleep on their tummies - led to tens of thousands of cot deaths. What counts is the effect, not the intent.

He recounts the media's disgraceful nine-year campaign against the Measles Mumps Rubella vaccine. The campaign caused an epidemic of mumps in Britain, with 5,000 cases in January 2005, and 2008 saw the highest number of measles cases since 1995. Nearly half of all homoeopaths irresponsibly advised against taking the vaccine, as did almost a fifth of chiropractors. Only a few homeopaths and just a quarter of the chiropractors acted professionally and recommended it.

I enjoyed this book. It's good information. We're bombarded daily with claims about what certain behaviors, services, and products can do and likewise warnings about what will do us harm or worse, what will kill us. These claims and warnings are proclaimed with supreme confidence and are supposedly founded on "research" or "science". Having been trained in science, I get the importance of taking a hard look at "research" and "science" to verify it's validity and reliability though I know that many don't have the same exposure and understanding.

My one criticism about the book is that the author generalizes about professional classes. I didn't find this helpful. For example, I would not be willing to conclude that all nutritionists are peddling lies or that all programs similar to the Brain Gym are a sham. I work alongside nutritionists at a cancer treatment center. They don't promise miracle cures or make unfounded generalizations about causes as do the nutritionists the author cites. They provide a valuable service to cancer patients that is founded on a scientific understanding of the body. They do look to organizations like the Cochrane Collaboration for information on collective, sound research.

I also feel it's important to point out that the lack of sound research on a given practice does not by itself invalidate that practice. Much unquestioned knowledge that we now consider to be at the core of human experience started out as mere hypothesis. Good research is time-consuming, expensive, and logistically challenging to execute and there are some practices that don't lend themselves easily to quantitative research methods.

Despite my criticism, I would definitely recommend this book. It provokes thought and stimulates discussion. Refocusing us on knowing what good science is; this is critical for each of us and for our society.