Customer Reviews

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science (Politically Incorrect Guides)

5 star:		(42)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(48)

 

 

Whenever you decide to read something with "politically incorrect" in the title, you are basically guaranteed that that book will be politically charged. Reading politically charged books can be quite fun. On the other hand, reviewing these books is often pointless because a person's political passions have already determined their reactions. Still, as a physics teacher and someone who likes to see both sides, I thought I'd put down a few thoughts.

First, let me say that there are many things Mr. Bethell asserts here with which I agree. His main point seems to be that the growth of government as the primary investor in science has perverted the scientific method into a political one. I certainly think that government money has politicized science though I believe conservatives have co-opted science for their political purposes as much as liberals. And I think that government support has a significant place in science.

I also agree with some of the purely scientific things that Mr. Bethell asserts. I have long been a believer in nuclear technology and the general safety of radiation when used correctly (think of x-rays & CAT scans--no one seems to worry much about this radiation). I agree that unreasonable fear has kept us from pursuing nuclear technologies that could make us much less dependant on foreign oil, for example. Mr. Bethell discusses the DDT ban and how its benefits clearly outweigh any supposed dangers it might have and there is certainly plenty of evidence to back that up. He also discusses the "flat earth" issue and I have long taught in my class that no educated person since the time of the Greeks has believed the earth was flat. The argument in Columbus' time was about the size of the earth, not the shape. (Columbus used inaccurate calculations to estimate the size of the earth to be considerable smaller than it is.)

On the other hand, I am left unconvinced by his arguments on genetic science--the genome project, stem cell research, cancer research & cloning. Just because no significant "curative" breakthroughs have been made (on the order of immunization or penicillin, for example) doesn't mean the research has no value and might not yield future results. I agree that the excitement about genetic research may be overblown but excitement is a human quality which doesn't devalue the research. I also find his arguments about intelligent design vs. evolution to be simplistic and misleading but typical of the very politicization of science that Mr. Bethell seems to abhor.

Which, of course, is the real problem with any book that claims to be sick of the politicization of anything--hypocrisy. Even at his most accurate & insightful, Mr. Bethell clearly has conservative political issues to spell out. Apart from the typical creationism stand, Mr. Bethell uses his discussions to promote other classic conservatism ideas: his discussion of extinction pushes for private properties & monopolies and his discussion of the AIDS crisis in Africa brings out the old saw that the African were better off under colonial rule. I felt like I was reading an essay from the Victorian era.

That's really the fundamental weakness of this book. What could have been a powerful exploration of serious scientific issues--for which Mr. Bethell could have made some excellent arguments--is instead reduced to the very issues of politics Mr. Bethell decries. It's too bad. An otherwise excellent opportunity to make moderates aware of some real scientific issues is lost.

Tom Wolfe describes Tom Bethell as one of America's best essayists. We can see why. Bethell, an Oxford graduate, has written on a variety of scientific topics over the years and distills them in this outstanding book. He shows -- and quotes his sources copiously, so you don't need to take Bethell's word for things -- case after case of scientific "consensus" that has led the world down a dead end. But once an established view takes hold, it becomes extremely difficult for dissenting views to get a hearing. They certainly don't get government funding -- and the role that government funding plays in propping up poor science is a fascinating and consistently overlooked point that this book drives home again and again. The establishment media, meanwhile, fearful of questioning our new priesthood, consistently goes along with whatever they're told to say.

The book is not only beautifully and intelligently written, but it's also fun to read, believe it or not. Bethell's engaging style makes this book hard to put down.

Some of the points Bethell raises are quite surprising. He is skeptical of stem cell research, not for religious reasons (though he may have those as well for all I know) but because in recent months we have begun to learn that science has over-promised, so to speak. The grandiose claims of major cures being around the corner, he shows, are massively overstated. Stem cells don't seem to behave the way researchers thought they might.

Or take African AIDS. We've heard almost ludicrous figures regarding the number of Africans with AIDS. Wait till you read this chapter and you learn what it takes to qualify as having AIDS in Africa. You don't even need to test positive for HIV. That could be why the demographic catastrophes anticipated for Africa haven't panned out; Africa's population has increased dramatically over the past decade.

Then there's hormesis, the principle according to which certain things that are toxic in high doses are positively beneficial at low doses. This insight, which the scientific mainstream disdained for so long, is impossible to avoid today. The U.S. government, on the other hand, has spent countless sums and disrupted countless lives on the basis of the standard view that toxins are toxins, whether in large doses or in trace amounts. Entire communities, schools, etc. have been evacuated on this basis. Bethell shows, for instance, that cancer rates are often lower -- indeed MUCH lower -- among people who have had mild exposure to radiation than among control groups with no such exposure. This flies in the face of the oft-repeated claim that there is no such thing as a safe dose of radiation.

Bethell also exposes the hysteria over species extinction and the bizarre methodology used to reach the fantastic figures of extinctions we've routinely heard. Then there's the banning of DDT thanks to environmental extremists, which resulted in hundreds of millions of avoidable deaths. Bethell even manages to dig up quotations from major intellectuals who have openly favored the devastating demographic effects of banning DDT. That's scary stuff.

Now let me tell you what you can expect from some of the reviews you'll see of this book. Lots of people will love it, as they should. Others, usually people who haven't read it -- yes, this is VERY common on Amazon -- will denounce Bethell because this or that person gives him a blurb, or because he is skeptical of Darwin, or whatever. Don't let these people do your thinking for you -- someone who condemns a book he hasn't read is hardly in a position to criticize "dogmatism," is he?

What I'd like to see from critics of this book are SPECIFIC points Bethell makes that are wrong. Much of what Bethell teaches us here isn't really a matter of controversy. He's telling us, in some cases, about wildly exaggerated claims by mainstream scientists, the demonization of those who have dissented from these claims -- so much for the cool rationalism we expect to accompany science -- and the excruciatingly slow process by which the exaggerations have been exposed.

Modern science is a wonderful thing, responsible for a great many inventions and innovations that have improved our lives. But science is no more exempt from politics, pettiness, and agendas than any other field of human endeavor. Given the media's and the general public's intimidation in the face of science and scientists, though, behavior we would never tolerate in any other aspect of life is routinely given a pass in the scientific field.

Tom Bethell is to be congratulated for a volume that is at once thoroughly enjoyable, compulsively readable and full of serious and important information. When you see one-star reviews by people who have no specifics about the book, but just go on and on about what a fool Bethell is (or who try to appear they've read the book by quoting a phrase from the cover image above), IGNORE THEM ENTIRELY. No one writing such a review read the book. But you should -- and they should, if for once in their lives they could show evidence of the open mind such people are always telling us they have.

OK, this is an odd book. From reading the "other reviews" of everyone who's given this book a one star review it's clear that they are *mostly* -even some admittedly- members of the far left and reacting emotionally. Or they're the admittedly far right "Mr. Truth." My sincere apologies to him for failing to predict his one star review and political persuasion before I sat down to write my initial review. This is not a great book, but it is definitely better than 1 star or calling it trash or ranting and raving about science from people who aren't scientists. This is a book about how science can be politicized.

Having a master's degree in engineering (not the same as science but close) and having worked in R&D for several years (very near the same as science) I can tell you this: No one really knows all that much about science and anyone claiming you should listen to them because they're a scientist and an engineer is full of it. (Me especially)

So let's start on another path.

Science is a method (quite surprisingly named the Scientific method) which really is an epistemological way to define fact. (As opposed to truth, which gives meaning to fact. Religion and philosophy do that, but meaning isn't verifiable whereas facts are.) Science depends first on collecting data on a system: What are the inputs to the system, what is the configuration of the system, what are the outputs of the system. For example the system could be studying global warming of the earth. The configuration could be the Earth's natural atmosphere and atmospheric chemistry, the amount of solar radiation, etc. The inputs could be antrhopogenic CO2 and other pollutants and the output would be temperature. As you collect the data you propose a hypothesis which explains the process of causation between the inputs and configuration on the outputs. At this point all you have is a wild guess so for the purposes of science you have to conduct a controlled experiment to test your hypothesis. In the real world any system has a lot of variables that can be part of the configuration, and a lot that can be inputs, and a lot more that are outputs. In the controlled experiment you control for all the variables except those that are pertinent to your hypothesis, and vary those to see if your theory is borne out in a sort of quasi "reality."

Science thus easily explains relatively simple systems with few inputs and outputs and simple system configurations. When the number of variables becomes large, and/or the ability to conduct controlled experiments is hampered, science becomes extremely difficult. The way the entire Earth works is one such example. Knowledge is gained in piecemeal fashion and for extremely large systems even a very large amount of knowledge may be insufficient to fully explain and predict its input-output behavior.

These troublesome conditions exist in spades for such areas as the environment, biology, psychology, etc. The reality of the matter is that human knowledge of these fields is far less than scientists and engineers like to admit.

What this book is about then (and it is not terribly well written, in fact it's quite confusing sometimes) is that in certain fields science is very vulnerable to being used for political agendas. There are several reasons for this:

- Scientists are people too, they have politics and many of them are not above using the public perception of science to advance their agenda in areas of knowledge where they know they can't be refuted, because no one really knows enough to refute them.

- Because science is about finding verifiable facts people believe that scientists are generally correct and unbiased. Since science really IS hard, people like reporters aren't going to go through the effort of getting a Ph.D. in quantum physics to critique scientific claims. Science therefore has a built-in soapbox which can potentially be abused, in a way that, say, the plumbing profession doesn't.

- It's embarrassing to admit we know so little about things like how the environment and about how the body really works, especially when we've spent all our lives and lots of money studying them. So some otherwise honest scientists will put forth their best guess or just agree with the most vocal in their field to avoid looking dumb or useless (which they really aren't).

- Scientists exacerbate possible problems in order to get funding. "There may or may not be a problem, I don't know, I need more time and money" won't get you an extension on a grant, even though it's usually the most intellectually honest. "The earth might be heading for disaster" on the other hand will. This is especially true for government funding of science, especially since the funding parties explicitly do have a bias and were voted into office on the foundation of that bias!

This book primarily goes into more depth on several aspects of science which the author claims liberals have taken over politically. (Sometimes this is convincing, sometimes it isn't.) Most of these topics are in the environment and life science fields where the numbers of variables are so immense, and our ability to actually perform controlled experiments (especially in the case of things like global warming) are next to nil, and are thus the most ripe for political abuse. Despite what people think he does not come down for the conservative answer as "the" answer.

There's definitely some interesting information in each of these topics. It was especially interesting to see how little we really know about the origin of life. Evolution might be right, so may creationism. Unfortunately there really is not enough evidence to prove evolution correct and thus there's still plenty of room for other theories to be correct. (The fossil record and the patterns of life on the planet are so complex that no theory has really satisfiably coalesced all the data yet. A modified form of evolution may be able to, but, again, maybe not.) Creationism is one such theory, but with the peculiar problem that it can't be scientifically proven because it falls outside of what science allows as possible. (We can't replicate an omnipotent creator in a controlled experiment, so any claim of omnipotent forces can't be verified. It can only be believed in.) The fact that private venture capital firms aren't terribly interested in investing in stem cell research is a telling point as well. He makes another good point about government funding of science. This will practically be biased right off the bat, and it has the unintended consequence of drying up private venture capital which can't compete, and of concentrating all the research in the few theories government chooses to fund because the government is such a large source of money practically the entire science community pursues it.

Where the book falls short is:

- Written in a confusing manner

- Trying to point out that there's politics in science and that it's bad for science, by being political itself. This is a little self-defeating.

- Being against all government funding of science. In many cases government funding of science is not helpful. But in other cases, like NASA and DoD research, it has been. Trying to determine when it's good and when it's bad would have been interesting and useful, but instead we get a political stance.

There is a lot of fascinating stuff in here. If you're a die hard liberal (or, ahem, "Mr. Truth") it will apparently fool you into the unnecessary need to go into apoplectic rage against the book. If you're willing to put up with some confusing writing and decide to just forget about all the politics liberal and conservative you might just learn something about some of the most important scientific debates of our times.

P.S.

In all sincerity if Mr. Truth could show us, at least with a weblink or reference to the books that have made him so knowledgable in evolution, how there is 100% evolution rather than expecting us to blindly accept his credentials I think we all would be interested so long as we're willing to be open-minded. The fact that we all have common DNA in and of itself is not sufficient proof that evolution is correct so far as I know. (I may be wrong though, what do I know?) What's the process of new species generation? If it is through DNA mutation, then could you address the phenomenon of no "half-bats" which was brought up in the book but not mentioned in your review? Has anyone been able to identify the species ancestors that connect us from our current selves to any known species past or present? If so then that could potentially prove evolution. Last, if evolution is 100% proved, why are people still spending entire careers and vast sums of money scouring for missing links and trying to explain how new species actually appear? In my field no one has devoted their career to proving f=ma anymore (It's also a far simpler system than evolution). I'm not saying creationism is correct (creationism is a belief and can't be proven correct or incorrect), or that evolution is incorrect, but I do think species generation is such a vastly complex subject, and that the current state of the art in the theory of evolution doesn't explain it all yet to warrant 100% correct assertions. More theories that have been claimed as 100% correct have later been proved wrong in science than those that haven't.

Following the guides to American History and Islam, the then-new "Politically Incorrect Guide" series turned to science for its third title, released at the tail end of 2005.

Given the politicisation of science since the Kyoto Protocol and controversies over "Creation Science", this was to be expected. However, "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science", not unexpectedly, never gets into a clear and consistent routine - Tom Bethell seems simply to want to refute claims regardless of the evidence either way. For the most part, he writes like a contrarian relying on belief without any evidence. With evidence and practicality, I have no problem with strongly-held beliefs, but without them there can be many traps.

The tone is set from the first two chapters, on global warming and nuclear power. The absence from the book of clear evidence, like changes in Australian rainfall, that strongly supports man-made global warming is really occurring, nor of evidence that in the supposedly not-warming Southern Hemisphere, sea surface temperatures have actually been rising more rapidly according to many climate journals I read as a student at Melbourne University. Like the PIG to global warming, the critical mistake of taking 1970s "global cooling" issue out of the context of the discovery of glacial/interglacial cycles during the past 400,000 years is made. Theories of these cycles have been refined considerably since "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science" was published. Bethell's view that nuclear power is clean is likewise problematic: uranium is one of the most energy-intensive metals to produce and when that is factored in nuclear power is still a big producer of greenhouse gases.

Tied in are Bethell's views on biodiversity. Whilst in remote, infertile, rugged areas there will always exist extra species to be discovered, Bethell ignores how many species are on the verge of extinction either from global warming or habitat loss. He ignores scientists' well-established knowledge that a population below 500 individuals is not viable. This makes the threat to biodiversity much deeper than he dares say. Even his views on evolution contradict Tim Flannery's demonstration that in many environments competition is not an important factor in natural selection, as Bethell appears to think.

Whilst his claims about the dangers of cloning and genetic engineering I wholeheartedly agree with, even these sections of the book ignore issues that are very important, like the potential for genetically engineered plants to become "superweeds" that take over cropland and natural vegetation uncontrollably. His look at cancer and the pesticide debate is done equally poorly with many facts brushed over in a manner that is most likely deliberate. Examples are real or potential resistance to DDT in malarial mosquitoes, or the fact that most zoologists know many animals can never form fossils because they lack hard parts.

Whilst the section on science and religion does have some real evidence behind it, Bethell's inability or refusal to look at any single topic in a chronological or otherwise sequential manner makes this part of the book equally lacking.

The fourth book in this series on women, sex and feminism was so logical in structure and arguments (even with poor citation) that you wonder how even so parochial an organisation as Regnery cannot find someone capable of a better job than done in "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science". I must say that even if some of its points are actually valid, this book is too poorly structured and has so many dubious claims that giving it more than one star is impossible.

This book should have been called "A Guide to Politicise Science with Incorrect rubbish". Every topic consists of long ago debunked falsehoods and misconceptions about science. And where the science is correct it's presented in such a cherry-picked way as to lead the reader to the wrong conclusions.

Many have suggested that this book is either the best indictment of the scientific funding racket or an oversized brochure for the platform of the far right. It is neither. It is worth a look, however the range of topics might cause the skeptical (and definitely the committed liberal) reader to lose focus and find one theory to use as an an excuse to reject the work in its entirety. Several reviewers have gleefully done this, making me wonder how many seconds they spent flipping through it at Borders instead of buying it and actually reading it.

The book opened my eyes to certain "truths" I've been led to accept over the years without argument, notably the AIDS epidemic in Africa. That the UN and others might have been lying about the statistics in order to garner more world funding for AIDS programs is a shocking possibility, and the author backs up what he says with citations from credible sources. In fact, two months ago the UN revealed that they were overestimating the AIDS statistics of the world, vindicating the author's stance on this issue. Though the UN did not come out and address the alleged flaws in AIDS reporting in Africa (i.e., people who have not even tested HIV positive, but exhibit certain symptoms such as weight loss and diarrhoea are counted as AIDS statistics), at least their candor is a start.

He does a fine job of making a relevant and engaging book that asks some serious questions about assumptions we've all heard through the media mantras (DDT is bad; global warming is real and it's our fault, AIDS is going to kill everybody in Africa, etc.). In that sense it is written like all the other books in the "politically correct" series, which I call (not too derisively) the Cliffs Notes approach. However, the tome probably loses focus by covering too many issues. People have short attention spans and emotional bases for their reactions. Thus, giving them too many challenges to their established beliefs may be too much to take for some readers. The passage about intelligent design seems to have set people off in particular. Were it not for that section (I'm not a Darwinist at all, but the ID argument has its flaws), the detractors may have stuck around to consider the arguments in other areas.

Therein lies the problem with the Cliffs Notes approach: the author cannot do justice to each and every subject and still make it a reasonably sized book. Nevertheless, it is engaging and thought provoking and worth a read. Though I'm all for challenging the status quo with well reasoned and researched arguments, sometimes the shotgun approach kills the entire effort at attempting to convince people of your point of view.

I found Tom Bethell's The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science lying in the science rack at the local super bookstore. Now, is that a fair way of introducing Bethell's book? Perhaps not. But it's pretty much the way that Bethell writes, a way that is by turns engaging, infuriating, and illuminating. What his writing doesn't do, however, is show us how science conforms to the politically correct, nor does it show that, even if one assumes that it has so conformed, it has suffered as a result. If it shows anything at all, in fact, it is that as a scientist, Tom Bethell is an excellent rhetorician.

Here's an example of what I mean by that. Bethell introduces his chapter on the intelligent design vs evolution debate with a selection of quotations from various people on both sides of the debate. He cites philosopher Daniel Dennett as "reveling in his hyperbole" when he says that Darwin's idea was "the single best idea that anybody ever had." Or, after quoting geneticist Thomas H. Morgan to the effect that it is essentially a truism to say that those individuals survive who are best equipped to survive (a defensible point of view), he offers, helpfully, that Morgan won the 1933 Nobel Prize in medicine for his work on the chromosomes of fruit flies.

It is perhaps interesting that Morgan's experiments on fruit flies were intended by him specifically to establish macromutationism (in which speciation is explained as single, broad leaps in genome) in opposition to Darwinian evolution by natural selection, but Bethell doesn't mention this. What is more fascinating is Bethell's portrayal of Dennett as an excited convert to Darwinism, and Morgan as a measured, scholarly foil. How is that relevant to whether what they say is right? The answer is, it isn't.

To a certain extent, this kind of rhetoric is deserved. Science writers have been characterizing creationists or intelligent design advocates as backwater hicks for decades, so perhaps it's only proper that they get some of that thrown back in their faces. Sauce for the goose. But does it really belong in a book that purports to get at the bottom of things, to rake the name-calling muck?

What's interesting is that Bethell doesn't engage in this with views that have some body of evidence behind them. When discussing hormesis (the property of some environmental factors that large doses have opposite effects from small doses) with respect to ionizing radiation, he gives the educational pedigrees for scholars on both sides of the topic. He does not characterize one side as speaking rashly, and the other as the grave voice of experience. But with intelligent design, he does.

What's more, Bethell allegedly spends the better part of two chapters on intelligent design versus evolution by natural selection, but nowhere in those two chapters does he indicate one piece of evidence *for* intelligent design. All the arguments--many of them specious on the face of it--are *against* evolution by natural selection. He implicitly poses a two-way multiple-choice problem: it's either intelligent design or natural selection.

That isn't the way that science works, though. We do not cleave to a theory because there's something wrong with the other theory, because there is no such thing as "the" other theory. We accept a theory because there is something right about it. It does have to be "righter" than the other theories, with respect to the evidence, but that means that showing where another theory goes wrong is only half the task--and by far the easier half at that.

As easy as it might be, Bethell's assemblage of objections to evolution by natural selection doesn't succeed. A few of them aren't even objections to natural selection, but are instead criticisms--some of them woefully misguided--of old experimental data offered to support natural selection. Bethell points out, for instance, that Ernst Haeckel's drawings of vertebrates in support of evolution have been shown to be conjured essentially from cloth. Yet, Bethell charges, such drawings are still found in older biology textbooks in support of evolution.

Yes, but what of it? In the first place, Haeckel did *not* subscribe to evolution by natural selection; he was a Lamarckian, and thought that beneficial characteristics were acquired through interaction with the environment, and then passed on to the next generation. But even if he had been a decided Darwinist, what would be the relevance? Some older history textbooks claim that Columbus knew his geography when he sailed in 1492, but that doesn't make it scholarly consensus, and it certainly doesn't prove that today's geography is wrong.

In other words, just because a supporter of a theory gets it wrong doesn't mean the theory itself is in error. But look through Bethell's examples, and they are almost exclusively methodological errors (or outright falsifications) in data proferred in support of natural selection. Deflating for those data (and despicable in the case of the falsifications), but not by any means an indictment of the theory, especially when that theory is buttressed by an array of properly collected evidence that Bethell declines to discuss.

The shame is that Bethell does get plenty of things *right*. Educated Christians and non-Christians alike did know the Earth was round. The risk of some pesticides and some radiation has been overstated. It is known but not well-publicized that casualties from the Chernobyl disaster have fallen well below initial estimates. It's unclear how much of these facts are really disputed by scientists--it's clear that they are disputed by many lay folks--but they do have evidence to support them. I think he could have spent some time on hormesis in the other direction, by skewering the pseudoscience of homeopathic "medicine," but it's his prerogative not to.

Now, isn't it better that way than to have a book that gets it consistently wrong? I don't think so. A book that consistently gets it wrong is transparently poor. No one would accept it. But Bethell, consciously or not, buys credibility with his well-supported claims, and spends it on his dubious ones. That's not science.

What it is, apparently, is politics, a fact underscored by the kicker on the book's cover: "Liberals have hijacked science for long enough. It's time to set the record straight." But science is an equal-opportunity endeavor. It has been hijacked by some liberals and some conservatives alike, and it is up to everyone to defend it. If we rely only on conservatives to do it--even if we ourselves are conservatives--we turn science into nothing better than a partisan tool to effect social policy. Bethell has done us all a disservice by providing an instrument for polarizing public understanding of science.

If you like a book full of half truths and/or out right lies, then this is the book for you. Bethel lets his political beliefs color his view on science -- which is not surprising since he does not have a background or training in any scientific field. On a number of occasions he uses non-scientists to support his argument. For example, he repeated quotes from Rian Malan, a South African journalist to support his argument that AIDS in Africa is overhyped due to politics and is not the major health crisis that health authority claims -- and that the AIDS death rate is only a fraction of what the statistics say. When he does quote from reputable sources, he takes selected quotes out of context giving them meaning that was not the intent of the author. If you are looking for a book to learn more about science -- DO NOT, repeat, DO NOT use this book.

Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. This is a great book! In many ways modern science has become increasingly intolerant of challenges to its motives, methods and conclusions. At one time its reputation was beyond reproach because its members were mostly unified in practicing real science, that is the pursuit of facts and truth. But today is the era of junk science, where too many have preset ideas that are guided by money, political agendas and illusions of grandeur. The author tries to reason with the reader in some of the more well known areas. The bottom line is that we all lose when we have a scientific community that is steered by very unscientific forces.

Let me put aside all questions of scientific accuracy for this review, which would take more than 300 words and my current knowledge to address, and only comment on the logic used in this book.

Bethell has a clear misunderstanding of the scientific community and the process of science. Most everyone in the community will tell you that scientists thrive on proving one another wrong and that it is naive of Bethell to think that, "challenge and disagreement rarely arise" (v).

One of Bethell's main assertions is that scientists have knowingly spent time and money on worthless pursuits such as stem cell research and mapping genomes. In a field where outcomes are uncertain and progress takes time, it's easy-but not helpful or justifiable-to assume failure and cast blame. Just ask Thomas Edison how far science will progress if all new ideas stop after a few years of failure.

Similarly, because the danger of living near a nuclear power plant turns out to be less than first estimated, this does not mean scientists knowingly set out to mislead the public in order to propel a political agenda, as Bethell suggests. Science is full of risks, and error of the side of caution is generally appreciated when new, potentially dangerous technology is involved.

These issues, in addition to the fact that Bethell does not "bust" any of the "myths" listed on the cover, nor use peer-reviewed research to support most of his claims, suggest that instead of rallying people to demand unbiased information, Bethell is rallying people around his own agenda through initiating the hype and hysteria that he claims to despise so much.

I give this book 2 stars for being thought-provoking and amusing, -3 for poor logic and inaccuracy.