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Science Fictions: How Fraud, Bias, Negligence, and Hype Undermine the Search for Truth Hardcover – July 21, 2020

by Stuart Ritchie (Author)

4.6 325 ratings

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An insider’s view of science reveals why many scientific results cannot be relied upon – and how the system can be reformed.

Science is how we understand the world. Yet failures in peer review and mistakes in statistics have rendered a shocking number of scientific studies useless – or, worse, badly misleading. Such errors have distorted our knowledge in fields as wide-ranging as medicine, physics, nutrition, education, genetics, economics, and the search for extraterrestrial life. As Science Fictions makes clear, the current system of research funding and publication not only fails to safeguard us from blunders but actively encourages bad science – with sometimes deadly consequences.

Stuart Ritchie’s own work challenging an infamous psychology experiment helped spark what is now widely known as the “replication crisis,” the realization that supposed scientific truths are often just plain wrong. Now, he reveals the very human biases, misunderstandings, and deceptions that undermine the scientific endeavor: from contamination in science labs to the secret vaults of failed studies that nobody gets to see; from outright cheating with fake data to the more common, but still ruinous, temptation to exaggerate mediocre results for a shot at scientific fame.

Yet Science Fictions is far from a counsel of despair. Rather, it’s a defense of the scientific method against the pressures and perverse incentives that lead scientists to bend the rules. By illustrating the many ways that scientists go wrong, Ritchie gives us the knowledge we need to spot dubious research and points the way to reforms that could make science trustworthy once again.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“A highly readable and competent description of the problems facing researchers in the 21st century... An excellent primer for anyone who wants to understand why and how science is failing to live up to its ideals.”
―Wired

“An impressive achievement... A handy guide to what can go wrong in science, nicely blending eye-popping anecdotes with comprehensive studies.”
―National Review

“An unnerving yet much-needed analysis... Frighteningly well-documented... A timely, hair-raising must-read.”
―Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Liberally documented with amazing stories... An uncompromising examination of the collision between the ideals of science and the realities of scientific publishing. Highly recommended for popular science readers curious about what lurks behind science headlines.”
―Library Journal (starred review)

“A bracing indictment... Thorough and detailed, this is a sobering and convincing treatise for anyone invested in the intellectual credibility of science.”
―Publishers Weekly

“Excellent... A fascinating study... Sure, some scientists are corrupt. Some are negligent. Some are biased. But that does not mean we need less science. It means we need better science. That’s why books like this are so important.”
―Evening Standard(London)

“We should listen to this warning about how neophilia and hype is ruining research... Ritchie has a gift for turning boring statistical processes into thrilling detective stories.”
―The Times(London)

“A desperately important book. Stuart Ritchie’s much-needed work brilliantly exposes the fragility of the science on which lives, livelihoods, and our whole society depend. Required reading for everyone.”
―Adam Rutherford, author of A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived

“An engagingly accessible set of cautionary tales to show how science and scientists can be led astray, in some instances with fatal consequences, as well as a clear-eyed and chillingly accurate view of how current funding and publishing practices are leading to more of the same mistakes. As we rely now more than ever on science to solve the world’s problems, Science Fictions should be compulsory reading for anyone involved in the communication of science to policy makers and to the public.”
―Gina Rippon, author of The Gendered Brain

About the Author

Stuart Ritchie is a lecturer in the Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre at King’s College London. His main research focus is human intelligence: how it relates to the brain, how much it’s affected by genetics, and how much it can be improved by factors such as education. He is a noted supporter of the Open Science movement, and has worked on tools to reform scientific practice and help scientists become more transparent when reporting their results.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Metropolitan Books; Illustrated edition (July 21, 2020)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 368 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1250222699
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1250222695
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.2 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.4 x 1.32 x 9.56 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #222,203 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #75 in Scientific Research
- #763 in History & Philosophy of Science (Books)
- #5,901 in Philosophy (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.6 325 ratings

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Customers say

Customers find the book informative and well-researched. They describe it as a good, important read with an easy-to-follow writing style. The pacing is described as lively and refreshing. However, some readers feel that the scientific method is flawed and science is broken fundamentally.

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Information quality Readability Writing style Pacing Rigor

24 customers mention "Information quality"24 positive0 negative

Customers find the book well-researched and informative. They appreciate its thorough analysis of science, including major fraud events over the last couple of decades. The evidence is thoughtful and easy to validate. The book explains a bunch of problems facing science, from fraud to publication bias. It's a comprehensive discussion of the reproducibility crisis and a must-read for all scientists who love science and want to preserve it as rigorous.

"Stuart Richie does not write like an academic. This is a honest and animated depiction of the sorry state of contemporary science...." Read more

"The book is really well written and explains a bunch of problems facing science, from fraud to publication bias...." Read more

"What I appreciate about this book is that it does not just focus on dishonesty in science, but on the everyday problems created by its practice in..." Read more

"...Superbly organized, argued, documented. Lucidly explained and beautifully written...." Read more

22 customers mention "Readability"22 positive0 negative

Customers find the book engaging and informative. They describe it as a good read, well-written, and a must-read for all researchers. The book includes stories that make it fun to read. It is methodical, solid, and thorough.

"...Overall, I enjoyed this book. During my short academic career, one question that I've been asked is, "What cross do you want to die on?",..." Read more

"...Still, the book is a page turner and a must read for lay people interested in the practice of science." Read more

"...addition to the big ideas, the book tells lots of stories that make it fun to read...." Read more

"...I had no problem reading this book. I have taken courses in statistics which help in some of the details...." Read more

19 customers mention "Writing style"19 positive0 negative

Customers find the writing style engaging and easy to read. They appreciate the author's thoughtful approach and clear explanation of scientific processes. The book avoids sensationalism and exaggeration, yet maintains a lively and engaging style.

"...Some pros/cons below. Pros. The author does a good job in summarizing the scientific process in this book; how we get money to collect..." Read more

"...Still, the book is a page turner and a must read for lay people interested in the practice of science." Read more

"The book is really well written and explains a bunch of problems facing science, from fraud to publication bias...." Read more

"...but specialized knowledge is not really necessary. Author's style was east to read." Read more

7 customers mention "Pacing"7 positive0 negative

Customers find the book's pacing interesting and informative. They describe it as lively, readable, and important. The examples shake readers' thinking and hope to raise their awareness. Readers appreciate that the book is general about science, not just psychology.

"...The book is general about science, not just about psychology. I read it on a Kindle, which was fine...." Read more

"This book was eye opening and disturbing. Anyone of my age (75) could intuit that there were issues in scientific studies...." Read more

"...One never doubts the author’s integrity or commitment to science. Refreshing and important." Read more

"This is a first-rate book, well written and interesting. I've taught some of this material for years in graduate seminars and even learned a lot...." Read more

15 customers mention "Rigor"4 positive11 negative

Customers find the book's rigor lacking. They mention bias, fraud, poor analysis, and widespread flaws found in papers published in the scientific literature. The book also documents structural flaws in the research system, such as wishful thinking, ignorance of appropriate statistical tools, and overexplaining concepts.

"...However, because this book is not novel in its discussion, DOES NOT limit its contribution...." Read more

"...Tempted by perverse incentives, scientists use hype, bias, negligence and outright fraud to get their often spurious findings published...." Read more

"Well written and many good illustrative examples...." Read more

"...pharmacology, medical reversals, bad economic policies, corrupt researchers and paperback bestsellers brimming with lies...." Read more

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Michael
Humans make science good, but also bad.
Reviewed in the United States on August 7, 2020
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First, I would not say that this book is a "novel" assessment of the limitations in the scientific process and the mess it can cause in findings. Rigor Mortis, published in 2018, provided components that were comparable to some of the issues discussed in this book. However, because this book is not novel in its discussion, DOES NOT limit its contribution. I would encourage early career researchers to read this and take away what they can to improve research practices. Some pros/cons below.

Pros. The author does a good job in summarizing the scientific process in this book; how we get money to collect our data, how we disseminate that information and who/how that information is vouched. Further, the author covers some of the key ingredients that contribute to the problems: money, fame, more money and the ideologies some scientists may carry. In a courteous way, the author also provides details on how some errors may not always be malicious, but just errors that can be easily resolve through good practices. The author discusses the incentive structure that contributes to these problems. In other words, the structure that helps get researchers more money to do research and keep their job and *teaches* future scholars "this is what you need and how you do it to a) get a job, b) keep a job and c) be valued."

Cons. Although the author attempts to offer recommendations how to fix the problems in science (which is an uphill battle), the entire book is quite negative. Although, I agree with 99% of the things discussed in this book, it does not offer hope for the reader. Why do I say that, when I agree with it? The negative narrative doesn't give someone like me hope, just as the author mentioned in the book, that those who cannot stand the issues and want to do "good" they leave. Thus, the author recognizes the problem but doesn't provide a balance of "hey, if you leave, things aren't better else where necessarily", which doesn't provide the motivation for folks to stick around. Although the grass is not always greener on the other side (unless "green" in this context signifies money, in which case the other side (i.e., industry) has waaay more money to offer), a chapter devoted to this is beneficial. In a way, that is what the last chapter was intended to do, but it fell a bit short, in my opinion. Moreover, due to the current state of the public-science relationship, perhaps a more devoted disclaimer such as "Science may have problems, but we identify our issues, whereas others, A, B, C and D, do not and so unlike science they do not resolve their problems through an iterative process." would have been helpful.

Overall, I enjoyed this book. During my short academic career, one question that I've been asked is, "What cross do you want to die on?", and a cross for good research practices is one that always is worthwhile.

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jerry lawler
Lively, readable, depressing
Reviewed in the United States on August 30, 2020
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Stuart Richie does not write like an academic. This is a honest and animated depiction of the sorry state of contemporary science. While "science" may be seen as objective, value free and unapproachable for many lay people, this deep dive into the trenches of research show a dreary picture. Tempted by perverse incentives, scientists use hype, bias, negligence and outright fraud to get their often spurious findings published. Once legitimated by being published in scientific journals, so-called truths are take as gospel. Only recently as a result of the "replication crisis" have we found out differently. Ritchie user-friendly prose leads the reader into the sometimes arcane areas of p-hacking, significance levels, effect sizes, meta analyses as well as the depressing realities of research funding, flawed publication practices and universities cutting corners in their research programs to enhance their status. But perhaps the author did too well in describing the symptoms such that the cure described in the last chapter, Fixing Science rings hollow. The chapter is full of "ought tos" and "shoulds" but these prescriptions seem belied by the author's own description of "the crooked timber of human nature" (p. 208). Unlike the patronage system of old, contemporary science is embedded in the larger capitalistic structure. I found myself imaging how each of the proposed reforms could easily be circumvented by clever and ruthless researches. Perhaps the best we can do as consumers of science is to be fanatically skeptical of what is touted as a "breakthrough" and do our homework well. Still, the book is a page turner and a must read for lay people interested in the practice of science.

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Nelson Amaya
Science needs a reckoning. Good summary of a decade of writing on bad science.
Reviewed in the United States on January 15, 2024
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“human understanding is of its own nature prone to suppose the existence of more order and regularity in the world than it finds.”
- Francis Bacon (1620)

Something has been eroding, corrupting, a few scientific fields, particularly those that rely on weak statistical conventions, have a culture of hiding data or key parts of analysis, and deal with very noisy data. It is not exactly clear when this started, how it spread through different disciplines or how deep it goes. Science, Stuart Ritchie summarizes at the beginning of the book, "has become home to a dizzying array of incompetence, delusion, lies and self-deception" (p. 7). How did we turn the best tool humanity has conceived for learning about the universe into a sensationalist tabloid? Why did misbehavior by the scientific establishment become so prevalent in so many different areas --from psychology and economics, to chemistry and cancer research? Why are we throwing so much money away funding bad science?

At the heart of this mess there are a few bad incentives within the scientific community that feed off each other. Ritchie writes "Perverse incentives work like an ill-tempered genie, giving you exactly what you asked for but not necessarily what you wanted" (p. 196). These incentives are more widespread than was previously recognized, creating a sort of "Black Mirror", distorted-version-of-itself: instead of reliable, credible, non-obvious knowledge we got dangerous pharmacology, medical reversals, bad economic policies, corrupt researchers and paperback bestsellers brimming with lies.

What are these perverse incentives? Ritchie shows how each of the Mertonian norms of science (universalism, communality, disinterestedness and organised skepticism) has, in actuality, been overshadowed with fraud, bias, negligence and hype. Instead of sound methods we have a flurry of fraudulent data (Dieter Stapel, Marc Hauser, or more recently Dan Ariely and Francesca Gino); widespread use of bad statistical practices (p-hacking, HARKing, publication bias); a blatant disregard for both clerical and fundamental errors (the Rogoff-Reinhart Excel mishap, non-replicable published research); and exaggerated claims from "latest study" syndrome (underpowered experiments inflated by TED talks, bad research featured in PNAS and Nature).

Nowhere has this mixture been so evidently wasteful as in psychology, with decades of bad research and non-existing findings turning into a full-fledged epistemological crisis. (The crisis has a better description in C. Chambers' (2017) "The Seven Deadly Sins of Psychology"). Yet Ritchie reveals there is another field where bad practices are worse: anesthesiology. RetractionWatch, a registration of papers that are retracted from journals, shows the biggest are anesthesiology researchers.

Two of the most insightful parts of the book come from demand-drive explanation for bad science: the demand for constant novelty and the drive from the public asking questions science is ill-equipped to answer. The latest-study syndrome, the consequence of assuming that new is better, improved or corrected, is not a bad heuristic to have if science operates well in the sense of constantly revisiting previous findings (the problem of induction never goes away). But there is also this attention-driver from media and the public of looking for answers in the wrong places. Ritchie writes "Perhaps the very scientific questions that the public wants to have answered the most - what to eat, how to educate children, how to talk to potential employees, and so on -- are the ones where the science is the murkiest, most difficult, and most self-contradictory" (p. 169).

Even if you have followed the discussions in blogs and articles on bad science by Andrew Gelman, Uri Simonsohn, Elizabeth Bik or Ben Goldacre, you'll still learn a lot from this book. Highly recommended.

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Top reviews from other countries

Stuart M. Wilson
Excellent!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 13, 2021
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This is a superb account of what is increasingly going wrong with academic science. It explains how and why the importance and impact of many scientific advances are grossly overstated and why scientific fraud is becoming increasingly prevalent. Contains some excellent suggestions about how this situation could be remedied. An excellent book....read it in a single sitting!

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Bardi Ugo
Great Book
Reviewed in Italy on September 18, 2021
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Great book. By all means read it. It will change your way of seeing the world

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Amazon Customer
An eye opener.
Reviewed in Canada on September 7, 2023
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This has to be one of the most important books I've ever read. While I was aware of some of the issues presented, I didn't appreciate the scope and depth of the problems and I will no longer accept scientific findings without looking in depth at the studies that back them up. Next time someone tells to "Follow the science", I'll point them to this book.

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james davey
None
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 12, 2020
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Renata Mancopes
Amazing!
Reviewed in Canada on March 26, 2024
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Very nice reading for those who work at an academic environment!

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