- Paperback: 216 pages
- Publisher: Brignell Associates (1 July 2004)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0953910822
- ISBN-13: 978-0953910823
- Product Dimensions: 23.8 x 18.6 x 1.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,226,576 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Description
The Sunday Telegraph, September 12, 2004, Dr James Le Fanu
A lucid exposition of the many ways the researchers, deliberately or otherwise, fail to distinguish truth from mere conjecture.
Book Description
The starting point is a list of just a few examples of the many contradictory headlines that have announced or refuted recent health scares. The rest of the book comprises an investigation of how this bizarre situation came about. The early chapters of this book are concerned with the historical origins of the subject, starting with the terrible toll disease has inflicted on mankind through the ages. Then comes a great breakthrough with the tale of the Broad Street Pump, which brought into focus centuries of slow convergence on an understanding of the nature of disease. There follows an abbreviated account of the work of one of the great pioneers of statistics and the dramatic irony of his legacy. Then comes the Social Theory, which turned scientific medicine on its head and changed the world. A brief discussion of the fraught subject of cause and effect completes the preparatory half of the book.
The second half of the book represents the results of a struggle to cope with the overwhelming amount of available material. Two chapters deal with the basics of how the present situation came about, tools of the trade and fallacies. There follows an exercise in critical reading in epidemiology, which takes one random example from the media coverage and picks over its bones. The following three chapters are devoted to a small selection of examples divided arbitrarily into trials of life, body parts and substance abuse. Then, because of the unique way in which its history is tied in with modern epidemiology, tobacco receives a chapter of its own, as does cancer, the ultimate scare. There follows a chapter on the history of a holocaust in which millions of animals were needlessly slaughtered. Next is a survey of some of the delights and disasters associated with electromagnetic fields. The penultimate chapter lists some of the big players in the scare game and the final chapter ties up a few loose ends.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
19 of 19 people found the following review helpful
This book is a breakthrough in the analysis of junk science.
For the first time, Brignell shows exactly how, when and why it happened. He presents not just examples, not just the typical dodges of the trade, but an integrated historical account of the rise and fall of epidemiology, and its huge impact on the intellectual world we inhabit.
The explanation starts on the cover. A clown leads a horse-float bearing the banner "P<0.05". Storming the float are a gaggle of beaming white-coated geeks, each brandishing his own banner: salt is poison, soy beats Alzheimer's, night shifts cause cancer etc. They have trampled the brass band and stopped the float, but the clown smiles fatuously on, unaware that his machine is kaput.
Brignell's message is that the statistical apparatus developed by Ronald Fisher and his successors for the identification of risks and benefits has been prostituted to produce trumped up cures and scares.
No previous book has so clearly identified the intellectual and social origins of the fall of epidemiology. Brignell gives exact references and dates. He identifies the stages by which the mathematical tools of correlation and significance were torn apart from the rational requirement to demonstrate cause and mechanism.
Many of today's science and health "stories" defy common sense. But the endless river of nonsense in the media about food scares, fad diets, quack cures, radiation, pesticides and the rest have reduced the so-called educated population to superstitious credulity. Even worse, feedback mechanisms operating through political and funding systems are distorting science itself. Brignell provides chilling, documentary evidence of the deliberate watering down of scientific criteria at the highest levels of the medical establishment.
This book will make you think, even if you feel you already know the territory.
19 of 19 people found the following review helpful
Just as in Sorry, wrong number, which I've also read, Dr. Brignell does a magnificent job in this one, too. He has put into the correct perspective the many scares we face everyday promoted by publicity-hungry scientists and money-hungry newspapers. The immense majority are bunk. The book is well written and easy to follow and in contrast to the first one, typos are kept to a minimum. I couldn't find one, but I'm sure there must be some. I really love the way he makes sure that we absorb the fact that correlation is not causation. There is, however, one unpardonable sin. Being an electrical engineer, Dr Brignell has no excuse for mangling one of the few equations in his book: the diode equation!
5 of 10 people found the following review helpful
After reading this you'll never view a newspaper in the same way again.
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