Could have benefited from a touch of editing (maybe just 250 pages next time Ben) but wow was it a great time from start to finish. I love Goldacre, both his style and his message, and this compilation of his writing was excellent and informative. Everything he writes is worth reading.

A clever, funny and informative compilation of essays about the use and misuse of science in the modern world. Goldacre is willing to criticize even the best and goes back to the heart of contemporary issues in his Guardian Op-eds about science reporting and media in the UK. While the book could've done with a bit of a heavier editorial hand, it's engaging enough to read straight through.

Brilliant throughout (I found myself barely skimming the author's college paper on heroin, but it's fine to have one outlier in a book where the quality is so high otherwise).

Many writers take on pseudoscience and bad statistics, but Goldacre's approach is unique in my experience: He's happy to concede the limits of data and doesn't advocate for its use in all cases. But he won't tolerate anyone who tries to lie about data, or ignore it in a way that lets them steal money from gullible patients.

Here's a collection of my favorite quotes and stories from the book. One preview:

"It's fine to make policy based on ideology, whim, faith, principles, and all the other things we're used to. It's also fine for evidence to be mixed. And it's absolutely fine if your reforms aren't supported by existing evidence: just don't pretend that they are."

This is only one of many original insights in the book: Goldacre says a lot of things here that I've never heard said in the same way anywhere else.

* * *

Also, I'd be remiss not to tell you how funny he is. From a column where he drank oxygenated water and then vomited all over his laptop:

"With my dying keystrokes, just in case any Oxygizer customer ever looks up Oxygizer to buy some Oxygizer, I'm using the word Oxygizer as much as Oxygizer, because articles on the Guardian website come up right at the top of the first page on Google keyword search."

A lot of arguments these days lack nuance, and I see, back when I was around 16-, that it is no different in the columns Goldacre writes, compiled in this book. Initial bad faith interpretations that beget kneejerk reactions are a dime a dozen on Twitter, and seemingly so in academic and scientific fields, as well. I enjoyed the book for the amount of bullshit it called out, the nuance it added, the additional context provided, and the "they never said that" calling out of the distortion disguised as hyperbole, as well as the argument for evidence-based medicine and argument itself. I highly recommend this book. :)

I'd previously read most of these columns when they were originally published in The Guardian but it was still enjoyable to read them in this collection.

I thought that my statistical literacy and ability to critically examine information was pretty good - but I learnt a lot from this book. I will be able to use this in my own work with data analysis and interpretation to (hopefully) avoid unintentional error.

This book highlights many examples, largely in the media. There are examples of intentional misinformation, over-interpretation and errors in methodology. Academics are also put in the spotlight, with errors of the past shown and some that still happen.

I didn't really know what a systematic review was in the past, but I'll be paying more attention to those in the future - and taking a harder look at what's behind the seemingly authoritative figures quoted in sources I would usually presume to be reasonably reliable.

An uneven collection of Ben Goldacre's writings. Oddly Ben reads the first few chapters of the audiobook and then switches to a different narrator. It's almost as if he got bored with this himself.

I've just finished reading Ben Goldacre's: I Think You'll Find it's a Bit More Complicated Than That.

I found this book both fascinating and infuriating!
The book is about...well, it is about many things, such as bad science, bad journalism (compounding much the bad science or blatantly distorting real science), and bad governmental policy making (using said bad science and bad journalism).

I think everyone should get a copy of this book, read it, and try to apply the lessons you may learn from it. For instance I am going to try to put into practice one of his pieces of advice:

"If people don't link to primary sources, I don't trust them and I don't read them." (ESPECIALLY on social media).

I use to think (some) sources of journalism were trustworthy, but I think I'll have to start digging even deeper into issues that matter to me in order to ensure I am getting the correct information. The sad part is that this is going to take a lot more time, so I will have to narrow my focus significantly. Soon, I will know every piece of factual information about stegosaurus!