I am a Ben Goldacre fan. I love science, but I love good science even more. I work in clinical research, so talk of critical appraisal of evidence fills me with joy. Increasing public awareness of the need to think critically about science is one of my major soapboxes. Scientific enquiry is a process, not a collection of facts. You form a hypothesis, test it, then (hopefully) send it out into the world to be pulled apart and put back together by your peers. Its brutal, but I love it.
Normally, I hoover up a Ben Goldacre book in days…

‘I think you’ll find…’ is not a typical Ben Goldacre book. Instead, it’s a collection of his newspaper columns, curated into themes or topics. It has the usual critique of other people’s methods, of governmental policy, of blind acceptance of science “facts”. So what was it lacking?

To me, it needed a good edit. Points were made, remade, said a third time under a different topic. The structure (to me) created redundancy –I read the same ideas several times.

If you are new to Ben Goldacre, it’s probably a great start. As a curation of his columns, everything is bite size and you can start with topics that interest you. My brother described it as a perfect “bathroom book” – you can pick it up and put it down, and never feel like you’ve lost the flow. It is written with wit, and each column in it stands alone well.

But if you’re a long term fan, it might fall short of what you expected in a new Goldacre book.