Bad Advice: How to Survive and Thrive in an Age of Bullshit

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It's definitely a very interesting summary of the topic although, as mentioned, I didn't find much new here, there were definitely some new insights and a helpful overall framework. And although mistakes do inevitably creep in during the writing and editing process, I was surprised that the letter M in the commonly used acronym, STEM, was erroneously attributed to medicine, instead of mathematics.

So, finding ways to trip ourselves up before we start accepting as true the latest factoid that proves that all those bastards from the other side are selfish, nasty hypocrites is essential. It’s imperative we improve our ability to assess the avalanche of medical claims: our continued wellbeing depends on it. Compare with the p value of the Einstein’s prediction that light will bend when passing by a massive object and you realise the shallowness of the claim that psychology is a science.It should be required reading for high school and university students as well as for any thinking person who is working to identify questionable news sources and stories, and navigate their way around social media in these weird times.

For Eileen O’Sullivan, being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2013 was the catalyst for a deluge of distinctly unscientific and frequently dangerous advice. It would require a vast conspiracy of hundreds of thousands of scientists and doctors to sustain – a scenario unlikely to endure. I was also inundated with relatives and friends coming out with crackpot therapies – and even from other patients in chemo wards and waiting rooms. It is much easier to blast the waves with bullshit than it is to unpack the nonsense and disprove it. My own understanding of “bullshit”, in the Harry Frankfurt sense, is speech in which the speaker doesn’t care whether he is telling the truth or not; but for Robertson, it’s essentially problematic overconfidence, misjudging your own expertise and abilities.

And it is precisely this asymmetry that explains why bullshit persists and how it can even grow over time. Over the years of dealing with such bullshit, I had been able to develop most of the rules of thumb mentioned in the book but it was still nice to see it all structured in one place. Tem toda uma parte sobre relações de causa e efeito e testes estatísticos que outros livros como o How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking ou o The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail—But Some Don't cobrem, mas que mesmo assim é bem interessante e complementa bem o que é discutido. The US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) non-exhaustive list of debunked claims numbers more than 187, while Wikipedia’s list of bogus cures run from “energy-based” to “spiritual healing”.

For all ebook purchases, you will be prompted to create an account or login with your existing HarperCollins username and password. New patients in particular are often targeted by those pushing cancer “cures”, and while some of these are well meaning but misguided, others are commercially driven. This comes at a terrible cost; patients who subscribe to alternative approaches are more than twice as likely to die in the same period as those who rely on conventional therapies. The bits on issues with science reporting + publishing and tips for readers to identify bullshit was especially beautifully written, I thought.A How To for relationship issues, personal battles, job war fronts and other young adult day to day fuckery.