Customer Reviews

Follies and Fallacies in Medicine

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This delightful short monograph artfully skewers typical medical thinking with numerous examples of misdirected logic, hapless grandiosity, and short-sightedenss. Most of the examples are historical and real. They range from intransigence to accepting scientifically proven facts to embracing fads and charlatanism. This book is a must for any serious medical scientist and would be of great use to journalists covering the medical profession. Medical students would also benefit from the authors' wry and insightful perspectives.

...What a convenient means of avoiding having to actually engage with Skrabanek's arguments. Would you say that most health promoters have a vested interest in establishing links between disease and all sorts of factors, since their jobs depended on it? Most medical researchers accept money from drug companies; indeed, many of the most vocal proponents of organic farming and opponents of genetically modified foods are themselves organic farmers, with an obvious vested economic interest in promoting it.

But none of that means you can airily dismiss their arguments out of hand. I would urge medical students, doctors, nurses, and the general public, to read this book: make up your own mind.

The New Scientist (16 May 98 p5) points out that the fist author of this book is one of many 'consultant' projects funded by the tobacco industry to help spread confusion on the relationship between tobacco and health. Peter Skrabanek is reported to have written a number of reports for the tobacco industry. Caveat emptor. It may be a good read, but it is a subtle part of tobacco industy propaganda.