ISBN: 9780007284870
Release Date: 02 Apr 2009
Average rating:   (read by 48 members)

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Categories: Popular science

Guardian columnist Dr Ben Goldacre takes us on a hilarious, invigorating and informative journey through the bad science we're fed by the worst of the hacks and the quacks! When Dr Ben Goldacre saw someone on daytime TV dipping her feet in an 'Aqua Detox' footbath, releasing her toxins into the water and turning it brown, he thought he'd try the same at home. 'Like some kind of Johnny Ball cum Witchfinder General', using his girlfriend's Barbie doll, he gently passed an electrical current through the warm salt water. It turned brown. In his words: 'before my very eyes, the world's first Detox Barbie was sat, with her feet in a pool of brown sludge, purged of a weekend's immorality.' Dr Ben Goldacre is the author of the 'Bad Science' column in the Guardian and his book is about all the 'bad science' we are constantly bombarded with in the media and in advertising. At a time when science is used to prove everything and nothing, everyone has their own 'bad science' moments -- from the useless pie-chart on the back of cereal packets to the use of the word 'visibly' in cosmetics ads.This book will help people to quantify their instincts -- that a lot of the so-called 'science' which appears in the media and in advertising is just wrong or misleading.
Satirical and amusing -- and unafraid to expose the ridiculous -- it provides the reader with the facts they need to differentiate the good from the bad. Full of spleen, this is a hilarious, invigorating and informative journey through the world of 'bad science'.

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Colmeister1
Rated it   1 months ago
I'm not really a 'sciencey' person, but having read a couple of Goldacre's Guardian columns thought this was worth a go. I was surprised by quite how compelling a read I found this, and shocked to realise just how ignorant I was, and how many people...

Lucie
Rated it   3 months ago
Excellent. A must read for anyone who is taken in by all the media hype and pseudo science. Really a book that 'should definitely' be compulsory reading for everyone.

horrabin
Rated it   7 months ago
A wonderful book. Crushing pseudo science wherever it rears it's ugly head.

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