If I could
recommend one good book this summer, Bad
Science by Ben Goldacre would be it. I know the book has been around for
several years, but I am just finally getting around to reading it. I am
thoroughly enjoying it, not only as a scientist interested in how the public
understands science, but also as a member of that public. As I read the book, I
try to put myself in the shoes of non-scientists, to determine if they can really
understand what Ben Goldacre is saying. I believe they can—he is that good a
writer—never dull or dry, rather smart and humorous, but deadly serious concerning
what he writes about. I find myself thinking—yes, it’s good to be skeptical and
questioning, it’s correct to want to see good statistics in newspaper articles,
something to which he devotes an entire chapter (Bad Stats). It’s correct to
want the media to be accountable for their reporting of medical and scientific
issues. I know that it’s ok to be all these things, because as a scientist, I
both write and review articles (peer review) for scientific journals. Part of
learning to become a scientist involves learning to be critical, objective, unemotional,
and tough when reviewing articles for your peers as well as when writing your
own. You learn to welcome constructive criticism from co-authors and journal
editors alike. You learn to swallow your pride and put aside your ego often, to
edit your own article in ways that you never thought possible, and to suggest
that other scientists do the same when it is your turn to be a reviewer.
I think Bad Science should be required reading
for high school and college students, so important is its message. And it might
get fledgling scientists to really take
a look at what is demanded of them for the future in terms of the quality of
the research they will perform, and why it is important for them to adhere to a
few basic ground rules. Because Ben Goldacre has no patience for quacks or
sloppy science, and he is not afraid to say so. Here are just a few of the
chapter titles in Bad Science: The
Placebo Effect; The Nonsense du Jour; How the Media Promote the Public
Misunderstanding of Science; Why Clever People Believe Stupid Things; and The Media’s MMR Hoax. He is merciless
when it comes to holding the media accountable for what they write about
medicine and science, and he is right. They should be held accountable, from
journalists all the way up to editors. But as I said, he is also humorous, in
that especially British sort of way. His description of the media frenzy
surrounding Tony and Cherie Blair’s failure to comment as to whether they had
vaccinated their infant son Leo, and their foray into the world of homeopathy
and New Age, is priceless. Ditto his
description of how the scientific community dealt with the anti-vaccine campaign
of a few years ago; here is an example from his chapter about the MMR
(measles/mumps/rubella triple vaccine) hoax—“Emotive anecdotes from distressed
parents were pitted against old duffers in corduroy, with no media training,
talking about scientific data”. If nothing else, you get a good mental picture
of stodgy old scientists who were totally clueless as to how they should
counter the arguments against vaccinating children. Hence his campaign for the
public understanding of science; it involves prodding scientists to explain
their work clearly and concisely to the public as much as it does prodding the
public to make a real effort to learn to understand how science is done. Ben
Goldacre also writes a column for the British newspaper The Guardian, and
otherwise a website that he updates regularly:
http://www.badscience.net/, both of them well-worth checking
out.
