Bad science is good for you

Bad Science by Ben Goldacre is a tenacious and sometimes hilarious showdown of scientific research gone wrong. It is not cheap entertainment though, although Goldacre is no stranger to a comic pun, but is set out to make a point of what it means to do research and communicate about it. The abundance of examples of bad research is just collateral damage in an exposé of scientific pitfalls that most of the time can easily be avoided (such as the CONSORT guidelines which describe best practices in writing up trail results. The book is essentially about being misled into thinking something is more effective than it really is. This may be inconvenient in our daily life; in science it is a sin. 

Tagged with: placebo, cognitive illusions, science,