How do we know if a treatment works, or if something causes cancer? Can the claims of homeopaths ever be as true—or as interesting—as the improbable research into the placebo effect? Who created the MMR hoax? Do journalists understand science? Why do we seek scientific explanations for social, personal and political problems? Are alternative therapists and the pharmaceutical companies really so different, or do they just use the same old tricks to sell different types of pill?
We are obsessed with our health. And yet—from the media's "world-expert microbiologist" with a mail-order Ph.D. in his garden shed laboratory, via multiple health scares and miracle cures, to the million-pound trial that Durham Council now denies ever existed—we are constantly bombarded with inaccurate, contradictory and sometimes even misleading information. Until now.
Ben Goldacre masterfully dismantles the dodgy science behind some of the great drug trials, court cases and missed opportunities of our time, but he also goes further: out of the bullshit, he shows us the fascinating story of how we know what we know, and gives us the tools to uncover bad science for ourselves.
Ben Goldacre is a British science writer and psychiatrist, born in 1974. He is the author of The Guardian newspaper's weekly Bad Science column and a book of the same title, published by Fourth Estate in September 2008.
Goldacre is the son of Michael Goldacre, professor of public health at the University of Oxford, the nephew of science journalist Robyn Williams, and the great-great-grandson of Sir Henry Parkes.
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