Quacks, Hacks, and Big Pharma Flacks
by Ben Goldacre
Readers' rating:
Published Oct 2010
304 pages
Genre: Science, Health and the Environment
Publication Information
Paperback Original. Have you ever wondered how one day the media can assert that alcohol is bad for us and the next unashamedly run a story touting the benefits of daily alcohol consumption? Or how a drug that is pulled off the market for causing heart attacks ever got approved in the first place? How can average readers, who aren’t medical doctors or Ph.D.s in biochemistry, tell what they should be paying attention to and what’s, well, just more bullshit?
Ben Goldacre has made a point of exposing quack doctors and nutritionists, bogus credentialing programs, and biased scientific studies. But he has also taken the media to task for its willingness to throw facts and proof out the window in its quest to sell more copies. Now Goldacre is taking on America and its bad science in this revised version of his runaway U.K. bestseller. But he’s not here just to tell you what’s wrong. Goldacre is here to teach you how to evaluate placebo effects, double-blind studies, and sample size, so that you can recognize bad science when you see it. You’re about to feel a whole lot better.
"Goldacre is the acerbic quackbuster ... both unsettling and an amusing illustration of how simple it is to pull back the curtain on the wizard of Oz." - Publishers Weekly
"Great fun for science and statistics geeks, this is challenging in the best sense of the word." - Library Journal
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Ben Goldacre is a writer, broadcaster, and doctor best known for the Bad Science column in The Guardian. Trained in Oxford and London, with brief forays into academia, Goldacre works full-time for the National Health Service.
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