Bad Science

from printing nonsense, but you can add your own sense into the mix. Email the features desk, ring the health desk (you can find the switchboard number on the letters page of any newspaper), and offer them a piece on something interesting from your field. They’ll turn you down. Try again. You can also toe the line by not writing stupid press releases (there are extensive guidelines for communicating with the media online), by being clear about what’s speculation in your discussions, by presenting risk data as ‘natural frequencies’, and so on. If you feel your work – or even your field – has been misrepresented, then complain: write to the editor, the journalist, the letters page, the readers’ editor, the PCC; put out a press release explaining why the story was stupid, get your press office to harrass the paper or TV station, use your title (it’s embarrassing how easy they are to impress), and offer to write them something yourself.

The greatest problem of all is dumbing down. Everything in the media is robbed of any scientific meat, in a desperate bid to seduce an imaginary mass who aren’t interested. And why should they be? Meanwhile the nerds, the people who studied biochemistry but who now work in middle management at Woolworths, are neglected, unstimulated, abandoned. There are intelligent people out there who want to be pushed, to keep their knowledge and passion for science alive, and neglecting them comes at a serious cost to society. Institutions have failed in this regard. The indulgent and well-financed ‘public engagement with science’ community has been worse than useless, because it too is obsessed with taking the message to everyone, rarely offering stimulating content to the people who are already interested.

Now you don’t need these people. Start a blog. Not everyone will care, but some will, and they will find your work. Unmediated access to niche expertise is the future, and you know, science isn’t hard – academics around the world explain hugely complicated ideas to ignorant eighteen-year-olds every September – it just requires motivation. I give you the CERN podcast, the Science in the City mp3 lecture series, blogs from profs, open access academic journal articles from PLOS, online video archives of popular lectures, the free editions of the Royal Statistical Society’s magazine Significance, and many more, all out there, waiting for you to join them. There’s no money in it, but you knew that when you started on this path. You will do it because you know that knowledge is beautiful, and because if only a hundred people share your passion, that is enough.

FURTHER READING AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I have done my absolute best to keep these references to a minimum, as this is supposed to be an entertaining book, not a scholarly text. More useful than references, I would hope, are the many extra materials available on www.badscience.net, including recommended reading, videos, a rolling ticker of interesting news stories, updated references, activities for schoolchildren, a discussion forum, everything I’ve ever written (except this book, of course), advice on activism, links to science communication guidelines for journalists and academics, and much more. I will always try to add to it as time passes.

There are some books which really stand out as genuinely excellent, and I am going to use my last ink to send you their way. Your time will not be wasted on them.

Testing Treatments by Imogen Evans, Hazel Thornton and Iain Chalmers is a book on evidence-based medicine specifically written for a lay audience by two academics and a patient. It is also free to download online from www.jameslindlibrary.org. How to Read a Paper by Professor Greenhalgh is the standard medical textbook on critically appraising academic journal articles. It’s readable, short, and it would be a best-seller if it wasn’t unnecessarily overpriced.

Irrationality by Stuart Sutherland makes a great partner with How We Know What Isn’t So by Thomas Gilovich, as both cover different aspects of social science and psychology research into irrational behaviour, while Reckoning with Risk by Gerd Gigerenzer comes at the same problems from a more mathematical perspective.

Meaning, Medicine and the ‘Placebo Effect’ by Daniel Moerman is excellent, and you should not be put off by the fact that it is published under an academic imprint.

There are now endless blogs by like-minded people which have sprung from nowhere over the past few years, to my enormous delight, onto my computer screen. They often cover science news better than the mainstream media, and the feeds of some of the most entertaining fellow-travellers are aggregated at the website badscienceblogs. net. I enjoy disagreeing with many of them – viciously – on a great many things.

And lastly, the most important references of all are to the people by whom I have been taught, nudged, reared, influenced, challenged, supervised, contradicted, supported, and most importantly entertained. They are (missing too many, and in very little order): Emily Wilson, Ian Sample, James Randerson, Alok Jha, Mary Byrne, Mike Burke, Ian Katz, Mitzi Angel, Robert Lacey, Chris Elliott, Rachel Buchanan, Alan Rusbridger, Pat Kavanagh, the inspirational badscience bloggers, everyone who has ever sent me a tip about a story on ben@badscience. net, Iain Chalmers, Lorne Denny, Simon Wessely, Caroline Richmond, John Stein, Jim Hopkins, David Colquhoun, Catherine Collins, Matthew Hotopf, John Moriarty, Alex Lomas, Andy Lewis, Trisha Greenhalgh, Gimpy, shpalman, Holfordwatch, Positive Internet, Jon, Liz Parratt, Patrick Matthews, Ian Brown, Mike Jay, Louise Burton, John King, Cicely Marston, Steve Rolles, Hettie, Mark Pilkington, Ginge Tulloch, Matthew Tait, Cathy Flower, my mum, my dad, Reg, Josh, Raph, Allie, and the fabulous Amanda Palmer.

NOTES

Chapter 1: Matter

2 ‘We sent Alex’: Daily Mirror (4 January 2003)

6 ‘The candles work by’: http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/southeast/ sites/mind/pages/hopi.shtml

6 ‘a paper published’: Seely DR, Quigley SM, Langman AW. Ear candles – efficacy and safety. Laryngoscope (October1996); 106 (10): 1226–9.

7 ‘a published study’: Ibid.

11 ‘These cleansing and’: Green EC, Honwana A. Indigenous healing of war-affected children in Africa. IK Notes No. 10. Knowledge and Learning Center Africa Region, World Bank Washington (1999), available: http://www.africaaction.org/ docs99/viol9907. htm

Chapter 4: Homeopathy

39 ‘In one study’: Marshall T. Reducing unnecessary consultation – a case of NNT? Bandolier (1997); 44 (4): 1–3

41 ‘But the point of the study’: MacManus MP, Matthews JP, Wada M, Wirth A, Worotniuk V, Ball DL. Unexpected long-term survival after low-dose palliative radiotherapy for non-small cell lung cancer. Cancer (1 March 2006); 106 (5): 1110–16.

46 ‘a very theatrical trial’: Majeed AW et al. Randomised, prospective, single-blind comparison of laparoscopic versus small-incision cholecystectomy. Lancet (13 April 1996); 347 (9007): 989– 94.

46 ‘a review of blinding’: Schultz KF, Chalmers I, Hayes RJ, Altman DG. Empirical evidence of bias: Dimensions of methodological quality associated with estimates of treatment effects in controlled trials. JAMA (1995); 273: 408–12

46 ‘review of trials’: Ernst E, White AR. Acupuncture for back pain: a metaanalysis of randomised controlled trials. Arch Int Med (1998); 158: 2235–41

47 Diagram: Ibid.

48 ‘Let us take out’: van Helmont JB. Oriatrike, or Physick Refined: The Common Errors Therein Refuted and the Whole are Reformed and Rectified. Lodowick-Loyd (1662): 526. Available at (http://www.jameslindlibrary.org

50 ‘two landmark studies’: Khan KS, Daya S, Jadad AR. The importance of quality of primary studies in producing unbiased systematic reviews. Arch Intern Med (1996), 156: 661–6; Moher D, Pham B, Jones A