Customer Reviews

Science Without Sense

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4 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(3)

 

 

I hold an MPH and have worked in public health for 15 years. Unfortunately, i witness examples of the type of "science" discussed in this book too often. I also witness consumers of such information misguided by it. Simply laid out, this is a good book for an introduction to the topic of, as colleagues have coined, the 'religion of public health' and 'rituals of funding.'

Milloy's book is an excellent expose of the proliferating pseudo-scientists that are trying to obtain their 15 minutes of fame. As a retired biomedical scientist of some 40 years standing, I am aware that a statistical correlation is simply a mathematical relationship between two sets of numbers. As such it doesn't prove anything, it simply suggests a cause and effect.

For a real scientist, this correlation would be the beginning and would require proofs obtained by different independent methods. For the pseudo-scientist, however, this is the end point. As the author points out, it's much easier that way and who's going to know the difference. The American public receives a poor education in math and none in statistics.

I think this is a result of the 'publish or perish' syndrome; an awful lot of garbage is being produced. I think the author did a very good job of pointing out the weaknesses in much of the current 'epidemiology', and I think every lay person should read his book.

Milloy successfully debunks some of the public health scares of our age and shows how the methods and jargon of the public health profession can be misused to provoke fear. This book is your response to the scaremongers. If you've ever wondered how such nonsense as the theory that power lines and cell phones cause cancer can become national headlines, this book will explain it.

The author establishes his credentials before he begins to closely examine the smoking research data that has led to the popular non-smoking bans of the day. The writing style is irresistably humorous as well as informative. Mr. Milloy provides the average citizen with a wealth of vital information with respect to research projects and the way they 'should' be handled according to his own established credentials; then he exposes the many biased manners in which the data can be, and has been interpreted, depending upon the desired results. I'd once heard that we can take statistical data and use it to establish a case for almost anything. The best example being, that 100% of the people who have tried marijuana, first chewed gum. Mr. Milloy lines the matter up perfectly for us in a very pleasant to read manner. Whether smoking is or isn't a sensitive issue to you, the book is a must to be informed about the biased use of scientific slight of hand in major issues affecting our lives today. It is presented in a very entertaining, and easy to read style.

He obviously puts his political motives above scientific evidence. A clear waste of time.

With weak pseudo-sientific arguments and a strong political agenda, this book is very much what it criticizes. Garbage.

While the issue of bias in science is quite important because it deals with ethical, academic, economic and political issues among others, the approach of this publication is quite a dissapointment. It is an example of how either economic/political agendas bias the interpretation of science and reinterprets other's conclusions. Unfortunately it falls exactly into the same arguments it criticizes and it does so in a quite simplistic and boring way. There are many really good books that address this issues. This book is just a waste of paper and ink.