Philosophy Now Forum

I have not been on the forum for quite a while but I just wanted to recommend a book that I'm reading - Bad Science by Ben Goldacre. I'm sure many of you are already aware of it. I'm only half way through it but it's very funny and thoroughly goes to town on pseudoscientific rubbish like antioxidants, 'superfoods', ear candles and brain gym. Some of the stuff in the book is hard to believe, e.g. people who put candles in their ears to draw out toxins, Gillian McKeith's theories about dampness in the body. A must-read for smug educated people and gullible idiots everywhere!

There is a website too:

http://www.badscience.net/

I am interested in what keeps people believing this stuff. Perhaps it is a need to believe that there must be some fully effective, trouble-free, cure for whatever disease or inconvenience afflicts one.

Sometimes an inadequate grasp of basic science makes people's ignorance invincible. You need to know a bit of maths to understand the concept of a statistically significant result. And I once knew someone who insisted that people's ability to walk on glowing coals could not be explained naturalistically because the temperature was so high. She did not have the concept of specific heat, so it was not possible to offer her a naturalistic explanation without sending her back to school to revise physics.

And for some of the consequences of bad science...

http://whatstheharm.net/