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Science Fictions: How Fraud, Bias, Negligence, and Hype Undermine the Search for Truth Hardcover – Illustrated, July 21, 2020
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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.
- Print length368 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherMetropolitan Books
- Publication dateJuly 21, 2020
- Dimensions6.4 x 1.32 x 9.56 inches
- ISBN-101250222699
- ISBN-13978-1250222695
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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
Product details
- Publisher : Metropolitan Books; Illustrated edition (July 21, 2020)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 368 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1250222699
- ISBN-13 : 978-1250222695
- Item Weight : 1.21 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.4 x 1.32 x 9.56 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #691,739 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #284 in Scientific Research
- #2,320 in History & Philosophy of Science (Books)
- #3,327 in Behavioral Sciences (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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Customers find the book very informative, superbly organized, argued, and documented. They also describe it as well written, well researched, and a good read. Readers also appreciate the clear-eyed look at our institutions.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Customers find the book very informative, thoughtful, and well-argued. They also appreciate the good illustrative examples and clear explanations. Readers also mention that the book is superbly organized and a superb exposition of the flaws in the system.
"The book is really well written and explains a bunch of problems facing science, from fraud to publication bias...." Read more
"...Stylistically, it reads well, and has interesting case studies, some of which carry on through the book for a good cohesive read - his willingness..." Read more
"Well written and many good illustrative examples...." Read more
"On the plus side, this book includes some well-written summaries of major scientific fraud events over the last couple of decades...." Read more
Customers find the book well-written, beautifully written, and Lucidly explained.
"The book is really well written and explains a bunch of problems facing science, from fraud to publication bias...." Read more
"...Stylistically, it reads well, and has interesting case studies, some of which carry on through the book for a good cohesive read - his willingness..." Read more
"...but specialized knowledge is not really necessary. Author's style was east to read." Read more
"...Ritchie user-friendly prose leads the reader into the sometimes arcane areas of p-hacking, significance levels, effect sizes, meta analyses as well..." Read more
Customers find the book a good read with a timely warning. They also say it's well done and well informed.
"...to the big ideas, the book tells lots of stories that make it fun to read...." Read more
"...In the end, its a good read, and a timely warning that the immense promise of science, both in deducing truth and advancing knowledge, depends on..." Read more
"...I had no problem reading this book. I have taken courses in statistics which help in some of the details...." Read more
"...Still, the book is a page turner and a must read for lay people interested in the practice of science." Read more
Customers find the writing style wonderful, honest, and animated. They also say the book is eye opening and disturbing.
"This book was eye opening and disturbing. Anyone of my age (75) could intuit that there were issues in scientific studies...." Read more
"Stuart Richie does not write like an academic. This is a honest and animated depiction of the sorry state of contemporary science...." Read more
"Methodical, substantive, solid, graceful, searing..." Read more
"A Wonderfully Clear-Eyed Look At Our Institutions..." Read more
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In addition to the big ideas, the book tells lots of stories that make it fun to read. The author is very thoughtful and never tries to overgeneralize.
All scientists should read this book to get an overview of what the reproducibility crisis is all about. Nonscientists will find it interesting too. The author is careful to write in clear language and define technical terms. Although the author is a psychologist, he includes plenty of examples from biology and physics. The book is general about science, not just about psychology.
I read it on a Kindle, which was fine. The tables and figures were all easy to read on a Kindle. One thing to know is that while most of the footnotes are simply citations, about a third of them are author notes, some quite lengthy. In fact, the notes fill close to a third of the pages.
The author states the problem succinctly. The nexus of money, prestige and tenure provides too great an impetus for the result of studies, not the actual findings which are usually dry and not totally conclusive. The issue of complexity and variance in individuals and populations is discussed as is the difficulty of choosing a study group. The author is honest in talking about the special difficulties in the soft sciences, psychology and sociology that has lead to some rather bogus theories that still circulate to the harm of the general public. And the author is also brutally honest about outright fraud.
Like a good business person, the author doesn't complain about a problem without providing a suggested solution. And of course, good luck with common sense ideas.
Money, prestige and tenure will always win. Become an educated skeptic.
I had no problem reading this book. I have taken courses in statistics which help in some of the details. but specialized knowledge is not really necessary. Author's style was east to read.
- 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.





