Bad Science Book Summary - Bad Science Book explained in key points

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Bad Science summary

Name: Bad Science
Rating: 4.3 (43 reviews)
Author: Ben Goldacre

Ben Goldacre

A behind-the-scenes look at the bogus science used to mislead us every day.

4.3 (43 ratings)

22 mins

What is Bad Science about?

We often swallow scientific-sounding language used in advertisements or on the news without any further thought. But if we analyze it a little, we often find that it’s merely pseudoscience. Bad Science shows us that this bogus science can lead to serious misunderstandings, injustice and even death.

Table of Contents

Bad Science
summarized in 9 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 9

What’s in it for me? Learn how to separate real science from cheap imitations.

Science wields immense power, and its applications are pervasive: it makes our lives easier, improves our health, and extends our life. Yet unfortunately there are many who use science to promote their own agenda – one which bypasses evidence in favor of profit.

Bad Science reveals common tricks used by big players such as pharmaceutical companies, homeopaths and nutritionists to hoodwink the public into buying treatments they don’t need.

It also shows how the media concoct misleading stories in the name of science to create a sensation, or worse, scare people into believing the tenuous results from fringe scientists.

These blinks give us the analytical tools necessary to determine whether a piece of science, such as a medical trial, has been designed well enough for us to place our confidence in its results and the researcher’s conclusions.

Using these tools, we can lift the veil of superficial, phoney science, which may have nice superscript numbers and references and graphs, but is ultimately just empty talk.

In addition, these blinks will show you:

How people portrayed as “experts” in the media are often nothing of the sort.
How researchers can bias the results of medical trials in their favor.
Why the South African government withheld antiretroviral drugs from people suffering from HIV.
Why one mother went to jail because of one prosecutor’s flawed and unchallenged statistical reasoning.

We buy into the junk science myths used to sell health and beauty products.

Each and every day we are bombarded by advertisements for products that promise to improve our lives in some way. All too often these products are explained in complex and seemingly indisputable scientific language.

We don’t have to do much digging to find examples of this. Just think of the health and beauty industry with their claims of how their products “purify” us and make us look more attractive.

For example, there is a detox footbath called Aqua Detox, which purports to cleanse your body of “toxins,” evidenced by the bath water turning brown after the product is used.

And then there’s an advertisement for a face cream made from “specially treated salmon roe DNA,” which assumes that salmon DNA somehow nourishes and revitalizes your skin.

Surely the brown water left in the detox bath is the toxins our feet leave behind, right? Wrong. These grand scientific claims are based on absolutely no evidence whatsoever!

Upon closer inspection, the brown color of the water has nothing to do with your feet, but is merely the rust coming from the iron electrodes when the device is switched on.

And that salmon skin cream? DNA is simply too large to be absorbed by skin but even if it wasn’t, fish DNA – i.e., alien DNA – isn’t beneficial for your cells, and certainly not beneficial for you. If you really want to reap the benefits of nutrient-rich salmon, you have to actually eat and digest certain parts of it, not rub it on your skin.

So how do these companies get away with it? In essence, they rely on our misunderstanding of science: we tend to think that it’s just too complicated for us. Better to leave that “science stuff” to the people in lab coats, right?

We therefore easily accept the scientific “facts” presented to us without questioning them, leaving advertisers an irresistible opportunity to exploit our ignorance and trust in order to sell their wares.

Many nutritionists’ claims are fraudulent and misrepresent evidence.

How many multivitamins do you take every day in the hope that they will make you smarter or healthier, or even prevent some terrible disease? Many people have added multivitamins to their morning routine, but how much actual scientific evidence demonstrates their value?

Not much. In fact, the assertions made by nutritionists often lack scientific rigor, and therefore don’t stand up to scrutiny.

Some pharmaceutical companies abuse the way science is conducted and reported.

How reliable are drug trials? You probably think (and hope!) that the results are fair and accurate. Unfortunately, they aren’t always as honest as we’d like them to be.

This is partly because drug trials are extremely costly, and often financed by the drug companies themselves. In order to bring a drug to market, it must surmount a number of obstacles: first, it must pass the initial trials to determine safety, then trials to determine efficacy, and finally a larger-scale trial where it is measured against a placebo or comparable treatment. The total cost is close to a staggering $500 million on average.

Placebos illuminate the way we heal ourselves.

No one understands why a placebo – a pill containing only sugar – can be used to treat a large range of conditions, such as tooth pain and angina. But somehow they do work.

In part, it is the “theater” of placebos that is crucial to their ability to help our bodies heal. For instance, details such as packaging, price and color all affect our expectations – and thus the outcome – of the treatment itself.

Flaws in the design of scientific studies can massively affect the results.

We tend to place a lot of trust in the results of medical trials. Why shouldn’t we? As it turns out, some evidence suggests that they might not always be fair tests.

For example, some trials don’t report how they randomize which participants are filtered into the treatment group or the non-treatment group.

Statistics can be powerful scientific tools, but they must be used responsibly.

Nothing is certain. That’s why we use statistics – the analysis of numbers and data – to determine something’s probability, such as the effectiveness of a treatment or the likelihood that certain crimes are going to happen. When used correctly, they can be incredibly useful.

For example, statistics can be used in meta-analysis, in which the results from many similar studies with few patients are combined into a larger, and therefore more robust and accurate test of whether a treatment is effective.

We are prone to delusions and biases about the information we come across.

Can you remember the first time you drank coffee? Probably not. But can you remember your first kiss? I bet you can! So why is it easier to remember one event, but not the other?

This is because we have been conditioned to pick up and remember unusual events and forget everything else. Hence the way we remember and process information is necessarily biased, because we don’t treat all information equally.

News stories about science research are dumbed down or sensational, leading to public misunderstanding of science.

You’ve probably seen “scientific” stories in the newspaper about things like the “happiest day of the year.” The media is full of fluffy stories like these which are passed off as the real deal, while stories about genuine scientific inquiry hardly ever make it into the news at all. Why is this?

The media’s problem is that the vast majority of today’s scientific advances simply happen too gradually to be newsworthy. There was a time, however, when this wasn’t the case: between 1935 and 1975, groundbreaking science was being churned out constantly.

The media are compelled to scare people with science stories that lack evidence.

It’s an unfortunate fact that we are drawn to headlines that play on our fears – for example, that we’ll all die from some horrible disease or be vaporized by an asteroid impact. The media love to scare us with terrifying stories – luckily, they are often total junk.

Stories that appear to be based on scientific evidence are often neither challenged nor properly investigated. For example, in 2005, newspapers reported that the “superbug” MRSA had been detected in various UK hospitals. Microbiologists from the hospitals, however, found no such bacterium.

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Best quote from Bad Science

In general, you dont absorb things through your skin, because its purpose is to be relatively impermeable. When you sit in a bath of baked beans for charity you do not get fat, nor do you start farting.

—Ben Goldacre

About the Author

Ben Goldacre is a doctor, a journalist and the author of two books. His Bad Science column in the Guardian attacked alternative medicine and was the starting point for this book, which was shortlisted for the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for nonfiction.

Who should read Bad Science?

Anyone worried about science reporting in the media
Anyone who thinks understanding science is beyond them
Anyone who buys vitamins or homeopathic remedies

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