John Grant writes with humor and it shines thru in all his works. I first became aware of him from his brilliant 'Directory of Discarded Ideas' back in the late Seventies. Still have the hard bound book ant it is highly praised. This book has some of the same undertones and make it a must have for folks like me. In fact, I have also purchased all his available works that are available electronically. I frequently delve into them and enjoy the offbeat writing. If you like something a little offbeat this it it. This review applies to all John Grants works. The 'Directory of Discarded Ideas' is a rock solid 5 Star book.

I read this book as a pre-release e-book obtained through NetGalley, provided by the publisher.

Contemporary news articles and websites have a distinct anti-scientific bias, all the while telling us of some new “wow” discovery. Some are prematurely released, some only give part of the story and others outright frauds. Conspiracy Central has their own followers, that things are the way they are because of some conspiracy by some group for whatever reasons go into their agenda. Some are outright deniers of science, often replacing it with “ancient knowledge” that appeals to that person. Each area has its own chapter so as to keep the types of problems seen together. Investigative journalists have exposed many papers to have been ghost-written, often by corporations seeking to sell products based on the research in the paper(s), and an even larger problem is the listing of a well-known researcher as the primary author of a paper when he hasn’t seen it. Other scientific papers are ghost-written, with or without permission from the paper’s listed authors, who haven’t seen the paper. Bad science will be ousted by good science, and even good science will be superseded by better science in the future – but this process works slowly. However, corrupted science, whether by fraud or ideology has a nasty tendency to become accepted, and to send scientific advances back by decades.

Many of the things we learned in elementary school which are true attributed to the wrong person – who merely republished or restated an earlier scientist’s work without attribution.

There is a long chapter on medical science. There are a lot of historical quack cures, as well as contemporary ones, some popularly believed, some sold as “alternative” treatments – often making vast sums of money. Some by people who genuinely believe the hype, some are knowingly selling people what has been proven to not work, or at least not been proven to work. At best, these just waste money. At worst, it delays a patient receiving actual treatment until after it’s too late to do any good. They also waste research time and scarce research grant money for no benefit.

The question Is how to tell the difference – whether you are a researcher, corporation seeking to use the science, or an individual. Your doctor may be helpful, but doctors are not exempt from reading and accepting fraudulent or un-reviewed papers, and acting on them. Neither are scientists exempt from seeing what they want to see or what they’ve been trained to see, even in the face of measurements and data telling them that the contrary is proven. Cultural beliefs and a-priori beliefs about the matter effect the conclusions of scientific studies, even very good ones. This is part of how some data and concepts have been abused to prove a racial superiority or inferiority, with some disastrous results.

All of human kind suffers from this corrupted science. It's far far easier to start a lie and get it believed than it is to get the lie out of common discourse once it's exposed.

(Also posted on Amazon)

I found this well-researched exploration of the hoaxes, frauds, manipulation of scientific data, fudged results and general corruption in science entertaining up to a point, but the writing is episodic and disjointed and it’s probably best read in bite-size chunks rather than consecutively, which was perhaps my mistake. It comes as no surprise that science has often been abused by the powers that be for their own nefarious ends and/or personal gain, so I didn’t find the book particularly shocking and by the end had actually got a bit fed-up with example after example of yet more corruption in science, especially when the author saw fit to link Bush with Hitler and Stalin. I’m no fan of Bush but it hardly seems fair to rank him alongside such evil men, even if he didn’t always adhere closely to the facts in his policy making. But overall it’s a readable and accessible look at the history of science and the way the facts can be interpreted for sinister ends, and it’s certainly a corrective to any idea that scientists are necessarily above self-interest and only concerned with verifiable fact.

Brilliant, funny look at the abuse of science

I loved this book. As a defense of good science, it is a funny, brilliant analysis of bad science. The author has a great sense of humor and uses it liberally, along with some biting sarcasm. And there are no taboo areas: the author goes after big business, government, and even scientists who stand in the way of the appropriate use of science. I had one quibble with the content where I think the book trivialized some mental illnesses. Nonetheless, the book is one of the best science books I’ve ever read and I strongly recommend it.

No. Just no. Who wrote this? Moses and his uneducated bible buddies? Pence? If you enjoy being bored out of your mind, and reading pages of stupidity, then this is the book for you! Don't write, just call 1-800-haveigotaloadforyou! Oh Crikey! Was this dense? Why yes, yes it was! I tried to find chapters that would interest me, but no. I would like to thank the publishers and Netgalley for allowing me to read and review this awful mess, but to be honest...I'm busy working on getting a few hair or fingernail clippings from them at the moment. I have a few dolls to make, and poke!

I struggled with reading this book. I didn’t start at the beginning which was a mistake. I first read the section which discussed “microbes and the days of creation”. This is a well known creationists theory, I appreciated his thoughts here as this is a difficult subject to properly test. (He mention peer review-which brings me to the next section I read.

As someone who worked in research for too many years, I jumped ahead to the section titled “Big Pharma”. I was disappointed to find most of the information included was outdated or incorrect, “shadow writer”. It’s unfortunate your short couple of paragraphs may discourage someone from receiving clinical trial medications by your negativity.

I will not be finishing the book,

Thanks to #NetGalley and the Publisher for an ARC for my honest opinion