Bad Science – Bad Science

This is a splendidly lucid and entertaining romp through the reasons people misunderstand science, and the consequences such misperceptions have on the real world.

The book opens with a broadside against the alternative medicine industry and the cult of nutritionism, which is fun but pretty well self-evident to the careful observer. Next up comes Big Pharma, which is frankly derided as evil but not for the reasons you may expect. Finally the media come in for a roasting for swallowing PR-reviewed pseudoscience and churning it out uncritically as news
I am a fan of Goldacre’s Bad Science column in my beloved Grauniad, so much of the material here was familiar to me, but the expanded format allows a more overarching thesis to be explored (briefly: we are all to blame), as well as providing room for more detail and more, often hilarious, jokes.

Goldacre suggests that the books main arguments could be summed up in the t-shirt slogan “I think you’ll find it’s a little more complicated than that”.

Superb.