Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Always question the data and/or evidence, 8 Sep 2008
We are all familiar with recent media-driven hysteria such as foot-and-mouth disease, BSE/madcow disease, dioxin poisoning in Belgium, child-abuse in the UK etc. The question is, what is the anatomy and the psychosis of such scares? What drives scares in today's enlightened, Post-religious modern Western society?
In this riveting book, Christopher Booker and Richard North take a deeper look into recent scares and reveal an intriguing pattern:
- The scare is usually based on genuine concern that some chemical/bacteria or phenomenon has endangered human life
- Thereafter, the evidence for the scare is blown out of proportion
- The media get on board and without bothering to check the evidence drive a mass hysteria campaign
- Various interest groups get on board on one side of the argument or the other. (They authors call them 'resisters' and 'pushers')
- The pushers - usually scientists - do all in their power to frustrate the legitimate views of dissenters, including ad hominem attacks
- Politicians, who don't want to seem out of touch, respond disproportionately
- The result is overkill and ruined lives.
The authors do an excellent job of dissecting the evidence in past scares such as asbestos poisoning, salmonella and BSE in the UK to reveal a disturbing pattern of behaviour on the part of scientists, governments and the media.
However, Messrs North and Brooke are less exacting when they describe the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the Millennium Bug "scares". As an African, I beg to differ that HIV is a not a scare. What do you call disease that wipes out the productive class of a developing country? One can argue that it is precisely because the Millennium Bug and HIV received so much attention ( that they were resolved in the first place (at least in the West).
The book's epilogue, for my money, is perhaps the best part of the book. The authors attempt to explain why modern society has become susceptible to mass hysteria. They conclude that mass hysteria is only an expression of man's deeply-ingrained religous instinct. Since modern society has demystified religion, people need other righteous causes; they need to define the 'goodies' and the 'baddies' and need to stand up for a cause. Now, what cause is worthier than saving the planet from the greed of global capitalism or saving children from Satan-worshipping parents?
Fortunately, mass hysteria in our modern society, unlike religion's transcendental claims, is still amenable to scientific evidence. Therefore, the evidence will eventually undermine the basis for the hysteria. Alas, it may do so after countless lives have been ruined and billions of dollars wasted. The current global warming debate, therefore, is one to watch.
In conclusion, this book is an excellent reminder to always question the evidence. It deserves my 4 stars.
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56 of 59 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The scare phenomenon, 7 Dec 2007
Booker and North posit a "scare phenomenon" by analysing a series of scares, starting with HIV/AIDS and salmonella in the 80s, though BSE, the Y2K bug and passive smoking amongst others, to the global warming scare of today. They identify a pattern that starts with scientists making exaggerated claims based on inadequate evidence, becoming so obsessed with their theories that they manufacture evidence to support them while excluding consideration of contradictory data, and then actively suppress those who oppose their "new orthodoxy". The media, finding such scares make good copy, further hype them up, often finding scientists to speak in support of them whose own areas of research were quite different. Politicians, unable to distinguish between good and bad science and reliant on officials who have in many cases become members of the new orthodoxy themselves, and faced with media hysteria, overreact under cover of the "precautionary principle" by implementing policies that are scientifically suspect and economically damaging.
I purchased the authors' first joint book, "The Mad Officials", some dozen years ago after hearing Richard North speak, very entertainingly, on the excesses of environmental health officers. I was greatly entertained by that book's humorous, "if you didn't laugh you would cry" style. This is a much more scholarly work, although, thankfully, still flavoured by a wry sense of amusement at the irrational behaviour of many of those who would tell us how to live.
The book's longest chapter is on global warming, the biggest of these scares and one that is still gaining momentum. The authors provide a short history of the development of the theory of the "greenhouse effect" (from 1827) and some alternative theories, reminding us that many of those who expounded the theory of man-made global warming in the 80s had, ten years previously, been warning of a coming ice age. They analyse the development of the IPCC and how as early as 1989 scientists whose research did not support this "new orthodoxy" were having their funding withdrawn and were, in due course, lumped together with "holocaust deniers". Al Gore comes in for much criticism. Much of material will not be new to those interested in the global warming debate, but it is summarised concisely and clearly. You would be correct in deducing that Booker & North are somewhat sceptical of MMGW; what they add to the debate is explaining the current furore over global warming as another example of the "scare phenomenon".
In the epilogue they suggest that subscribing to movements like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth in some way satisfies a human "need for religion" in a secular age. While there may be something in this, here Booker & North appeared to be moving out of their own area of expertise, the ideas were only lightly sketched out and there were, unusually, no references to those whose ideas were culled - e.g., Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens? They also betrayed their British orientation: the statement that, by the end of the C20, "the prevailing values of the West were as completely secularised as those of any society the world had ever known" may be true of the UK, but not, I would have thought, of the US. These criticisms aside, I would heartily recommend "Scared to Death" as a critique of contemporary western societies' tendency to indulge in "scares" and as a call to arms for a more intelligently sceptical approach.
Booker & North conclude cheerily by warning us that this century will probably deliver us a "real crisis" soon enough, and that there will then be little time, or need, for imaginary ones.
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37 of 39 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
If you don't think this book is important............, 28 Feb 2008
.....then try reading the chapter on satanic child abuse when your children are in the same room watching the T.V. I did, and an icy chill went down my spine. Imagine at that point someone came into your house, took your children away, accused you of the most disgusting crimes and gagged any attempt you made to speak out. Orwell, Kafka? No. Cleveland, Rochdale and Nottingham in the Twentieth Century.
This book is not about denial. Booker and North do not try to deny or trivialise AIDS, BSE, smoking related diseases, E coli, Listeria or any of the issues raised. Indeed these are major issues that require a well thought out and appropriate response.
The authors take issue with the scientists who push their own research and exclude any notion that alternate research might show something to the contrary. They round on lazy jounalists who do not research facts for themselves and compete for the most sensational headline.
Mostly however, they condemn politicians who settle on the current orthodoxy and take disproportionate measures, cost millions or even billions to the taxpayer and yet fail to do any good whatsoever (what the authors call 'taking a sledgehammer and missing the nut')
What is most telling is that once the scare has been proved to be groundless, the powers that the authorities have taken for themselves to solve the problem are never given back.
An excellent read, concise and well referenced. A copy should be sent to evey politician bureucrat and pompous town hall official in the land.
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