xxii, 474 pages : 21 cm

The very best journalism from one of Britain's most admired and outspoken science writers, author of the bestselling Bad Science and Bad Pharma. In 'Bad Science', Ben Goldacre hilariously exposed the tricks that quacks and journalists use to distort science. In 'Bad Pharma', he put the $600 billion global pharmaceutical industry under the microscope. Now the pick of the journalism by one of our wittiiest, most indignant and most fearless commentators on the worlds of medicine and science is collected in one volume

Includes bibliographical references (pages 407-458) and index

How science works. Why won't Professor Susan Greenfield publish this theory in a scientific journal? ; Cherry-picking is bad. At least warn us when you do it ; Being wrong ; Kids who spot bullshit, and the adults who get upset about it ; Existential angst about the bigger picture ; The glorious mess of real scientific results ; Nullius in verba ; Is it OK to ignore results from people you don't trust? ; Foreign substances in your precious bodily fluids ; How myths are made ; Publish or be damned ; Academic papers are hidden from the public. Here's some direct action -- Biologishing. Neuro-realism ; The stigma gene ; Pink, pink, pink, pink. Pink moan -- Statistics. Guns don't kill people, puppies do ; Datamining for terrorists would be lovely if it worked ; Benford's Law : using stats to bust an entire nation for naughtiness ; The certainty of chance ; Sampling error, the unspoken issue behind small number changes in the news ; Scientific proof that we live in a warmer and more caring universe ; Drink coffee, see dead people ; Voices of the ancients -- Big data. There's something magical about watching patterns emerge from data ; Give us the data ; Care.data can save lives : but not if we bungle it ; Care.data has been bungled ; The huff ; A new and interesting form of wrong ; 'Hello Madam, would you like your children to be unemployed?' -- Epidemiology. Beau Funnel ; When journalists do primary research ; Confound you! ; Bicycle helmets and the law ; Screen test ; How do you know? ; Anecdotes are great. If they really illustrate the data ; The strange case of the magnetic wine ; What is science? First, magnetise your wine ... -- Bad academia. What if academics were as dumb as quacks with statistics? ; Brain-imaging studies report more positive findings than their numbers can support. This is fishy ; 'None of your damn business' ; Twelve monkeys. No ... eight. Wait, sorry, I meant fourteen ; Medical hypotheses fails the Aids test ; Observations on the classification of idiots ; More crap journals? -- Government statistics. If you want to be trusted more : claim less ; Is this the worst government statistic ever created? ; Anarchy for the UK. Ish -- More than sixty children saved from abuse ; Home taping didn't kill music ; Is this a joke? -- Evidence-based policy. I'd expect this from UKIP, or the Daily Mail. Not from a government leaflet ; Andrew Lansley and his imaginary evidence ; Why is evidence so hard for politicians? ; Politicians can divine which policy works best by using their special magic politician beam ; Pornography in hospitals ; The power of ideas ; 'Exams are getting easier' ; Over there! An eight-mile-high distraction made of posh chocolate! ; As far as I understand thinktanks ... ; Meaningful debates need clear information ; Minority retort ; Building evidence into education

Drugs. A rock of crack as big as the Ritz ; The least surrogate outcome ; Heroin on prescription -- Libel. NMT is suing Dr. Peter Wilmshurst. So how trustworthy is this company? Let's look at its website ... ; 'We are more possible than you can powerfully imagine' ; Science is about embracing your knockers ; The return of Dr. McKeith -- Quacks. The noble and ancient tradition of moron-baiting ; How do you regulate Wu? ; Blame everyone but yourselves -- Magic boxes. ADE 651 : WTF? ; After Madeleine, why not Bin Laden? ; Who's holding the smoking gun on bioresonance? -- AIDS. House of numbers ; Aids denialism at the Spectator -- Electrosensitivity. Wi-Fi wants to kill your children ... but Alasdair Philips of Powerwatch sells the cure! ; Why don't journalists mention the data? -- Post-modernism. Archie Cochrane : 'fascist' -- Irrationality. The Golden Arse-Beam Method ; Illusions of control ; Empathy's failures ; Blind prejudice ; Yeah, well, you can prove anything with science superstition ; Evidence-based smear campaigns ; Why cigarette packs matter ; All bow before the mighty power of the Nocebo Effect ; So brilliantly you've presented a really transgressive case through the mainstream media -- Bad journalism. Asking for it ; Jab 'as deadly as the cancer' ; Health warning : exercise makes you fat ; The caveat in paragraph number 19 ; Why don't journalists link to primary sources? ; A fish friend, and his friends ; MMR : the scare stories are back ; Prevention is better than cure when it comes to health scares ; Dodgy academic PR ; Suicide ; Roger Coghill and the Aids test -- Brainiac. Ka-boom! Science! COOL!!?! ; Who's the daddy? -- Stuff. Here's my ... foreword to the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway Guidebook ; How I stalked my girlfriend -- Early snarks. Staying beautiful is easy to do ; Because you're worth it ; More than water? ; 'Nanniebots' to catch paedophiles ; Nanniebots and Neverland ; Artificial intransigence -- Bookends. Be very afraid : the bad science manifesto ; What eight years of writing the Bad Science column has taught me

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