S3: Science, Statistics, and Skepticism

by Fourat Janabi

Does Homeopathy work? Are GMOs dangerous? Is climate change really happening, or is it a hoax as claimed by many? This book will help you navigate the twisted shores of pseudo-scientific territory and cut through the nonsense to find the good science.

I'm Fourat, and I think good, peer-reviewed, replicable science should be the pride of humanity. Yet, for some reason it's not. Join me on this mini-adventure as I help you navigate the confusing, jargon-filled, and treacherous arena of science and the outfits trying to coat themselves in its respectable veneer. By the end of this book, they won't be able to hide their nonsense from you any longer.

Learn why homeopathy is wrong, climate change is happening, vaccines are safe, western medicine is doing us just fine, why evolution is true, among a few others. Find out what makes good science good, and pseudoscience pseudo. The success of science should be one of humanity’s proudest achievements, but, somehow it isn't. This book will tell you why.

Genres: Nonfiction, Science

150 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 18, 2013

About the author

I am a reader, a photographer, an explorer, and an idiot. Because of these qualities, I like to think I’m silly enough to write a book.

I’ve worked in Baghdad while a war was waging, in Bahrain while riots were ensuing, and in Saudi Arabia where women don’t exist. I lived in Italy where a simple task takes five days, and in Australia, where men wearing pink shirts is the new norm. While exploring twenty-five countries on five continents, and speaking bad Italian, horrible Spanish and passable Arabic, I’ve befriended Americans, Italians, Brazilians, Australians, Arabs, Chileans and New Zealanders all while faithfully and stupidly remaining the odd one out.

Through four years of craziness, staring death in the face on four occasions, meeting hundreds of beautiful people, and exploring new cultures, I now feel arrogant and important enough to commit my overvalued thoughts to fake paper and tell people what to think. The culmination of this randomness, is ‘Random Rationality: A Rational Guide to an Irrational World‘.

The first, and hopefully not last, book, of aspiring idiot, Fourat Janabi.

Reviews

[Book Shark · Rating 5 out of 5]

S3: Science, Statistics, and Skepticism by Fourat Janabi

"S3: Science, Statistics, and Skepticism" is a wonderful resource for laypersons seeking to differentiate good science from bad science. Science writer and photographer, Fourat Janabi has provided the public with a succinct, accessible and practical book that is fun and enlightening to read. This delightful 96-page book is broken out by the following unnumbered sections: Bad Science, Good Science, Bad Statistics, and Good Statistics.

Positives:
1. A well-written, focused book on science that is fun to read.
2. Excellent resource for laypersons. This book is short and sweet and really does a wonderful job of meeting its goal to educate the public on what's good science versus bad. "This book will help you navigate your way through some of today's more popular pseudoscientific fads, as well as show you what good science looks like and why you can be confident in it. It will show you examples of good science and statistics, and bad science and statistics."
3. An excellent and important topic.
4. Solid format. I love how each topic is closed out with a summarized conclusion. "In conclusion: A scientific theory is the conceptual framework that we set up to make sense of scientific facts."
5. Great topic-enhancing quotes spruced throughout the book. "Easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled. - Mark Twain"
6. Great job of defining terms. "Science: The systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation."
7. Great examples of what constitutes bad science. "Focusing on the conclusions of single studies is a hallmark of bad science. You must check the scientific literature--all of it--not just one singular study that conforms to your worldview on a particular subject."
8. Hard-hitting clear language. "Given what we know, for homeopathy to be true, everything we know about physics, chemistry, and biology must be shown to be false; our facts must not be facts; our theories must all be disproven and science must be, well, not science--at least as we understand it today."
9. Great examples of what constitutes good science. "Dr. James Powell, seeking an answer to this question, performed a meta-analysis of 13,950 scientific articles from 1991 to 2012 on climate change. Of those 13,950 articles, there were 13,926 peer-reviewed studies that accept climate change, and only 24 that rejected it. That is, 0.17% rejected the premise of climate change, while 99.83% found it to be real." Wow!
10. Who loves evolution? This guy..." A recent poll of scientists involved in the biological sciences reveals 99.85% of scientists understand evolution to be true."
11. Sound accessible explanation on what constitutes good and bad use of statistics. "Remember good science must have controlled variables, sound statistical analysis, un-biased peer review and most importantly a sound hypothesis, to even suggest such causation."
12. The reality of pesticides. "Assuming the body of our 50lb child is hopelessly unable to break down or flush out any of the pesticides, it would require the ingestion of 16.5 pounds of peach every day for 78 years to reach the lethal dose (LD50) at which he or she stands a 50/50 chance of finally keeling over."
13. Enlightening and eye-opening discussion on the reality of organic farming. "If organic farming was expanded to be the primary means of food production, it would be a humanitarian and environmental disaster."
14. Vaccines and autism. "Vaccines do not now, nor ever did, cause autism." "To further refute those who claim a link between vaccinations and autism, consider this: in the wake of Wakefield's study, thimerosal was removed from all vaccine shots (except for the flu shot), yet autism rates continued on their upward trajectory, instead of down as would be the case if they were really the cause (a confusion of correlation with causation)."
15. Do foods cause cancer? Find out. Good stuff.
16. Reality versus perception. "We are living better now than at any other time in history, yet we view the recent past through the filters of our amygdala (controls your fight-or-flight reflex) and negatively charged entertainment."
17. Biases. "Our brains evolved to cope with the level of information present on the African Savannah, not New York City. That is why all information first passes through the amygdala, which controls your fight-or-flight mechanism, and that is why we are biased to negative information."
18. Excellent conclusion chapter that ties a nice bow on this gift of a book. "GMOs are safe; homeopathy is useless; climate change is real; evolution happened; organic foods are twice the price for the same nutrients; vaccines are the most important--and safest--medical invention of all time; cancer is far more complicated than the foods one eats; and we are living in humanity's silver age."
19. Links provided.
20. Further reading material provided.
21. Great Kindle value!

Negatives:
1. The book lacks depth. It is intended for laypersons.

In summary, this turned out to be a delightful book. Science writer Fourat Janabi succeeds to provide an accessible book to the masses that succinctly shows what good science is from bad science. Fun and easy to read, the author surprises with many sound and memorable tidbits. A tremendous Kindle value that's worth reading, I highly recommend it!

Further recommendations: "Do You Believe in Magic?: The Sense and Nonsense of Alternative Medicine" by Paul A. Offit, "Think: Why You Should Question Everything" and "50 Popular Beliefs People Think Are True" by Guy P. Harrison, "Why Evolution Is True" by Jerry A. Coyne, "An Appetite for Wonder" and "The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True" by Richard Dawkins, "The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark" by Carl Sagan, "This Explains Everything: Deep, Beautiful, and Elegant Theories of How the World Works" edited by John Brockman, "Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming 1st (first) Edition by Oreskes, Naomi, Conway, Erik M. (2010)" by Naomi Oreskes & Erik M. Conway, "Nonsense: A Handbook of Logical Fallacies" by Robert J. Gula, "Tales of the Rational" by Massimo Pigliucci, "Voodoo Science" by Robert Park, "Science Matters" by Robert M. Hazen "Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America" by Shawn Lawrence, "Lies, Damned Lies, and Science: How to Sort Through the Noise Around Global Warming, the Latest Health Claims, and Other Scientific Controversies (FT Press Science)" by Sherry Seethaler, and "Science Under Siege" by Kendrick Frazier.

[Al · Rating 4 out of 5]

We’re constantly bombarded by those claiming to have proof of one thing or another with someone else claiming to have proof of just the opposite. Those offering this “proof,” often scientific (or at least scientific appearing) or statistical, can’t both be right. So does this mean we don’t’ know the answers? Two conflicting sets of evidence are rarely equally accurate. In this book Fourat
Janabi attempts to show us how to ferret out the truth in these contradictory claims.

When conflicting scientific claims happen, it is usually due to multiple groups having their respective axes to grind, due to religious, political, or business reasons. (This is not new, it’s happened since the earliest days of scientific inquiry when science and the church disagreed on whether the Earth was the center of the universe or not.) Janabi looks at some of the more controversial scientific subjects of our age and explains why one position or the other is correct based on the available evidence. Regardless of your current thinking on these issues, some of the answers are likely to surprise you. At least that was what I found.

However, the more important knowledge to be gleaned from this book is a generic approach to use when investigating for yourself. A Mark Twain quote from the beginning of the book says, “a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” S3 … gives us some tools to recognize those lies while we continue to seek out the truth.

**Originally written for "Books and Pals" book blog. May have received a free review copy. **

[uosɯɐS · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall I liked the book, but I felt it needed better editing. Also, sometimes claims were made without a supporting footnote, for a book like this that was surprising.

Basically, he is showing how a poor understanding of science causes the public to easily believe such things as: homeopathy and the organic movement, while dismissing such things as: evolution, climate science, and the advantages of GMo-agriculture.

Things to keep in mind: one study is never enough! Metastudies are where it's at! A well designed study should have many data points, control groups, and be peer-reviewed. There are many kinds of bias that human beings are subject to. Science aims to combat these biases. While scientists as human beings may be individually biased, peer-review helps to mitigate this. As a layman, beware your own biases when reading about new "scientific" findings.

[Rebecca · Rating 1 out of 5]

(See my full review at: http://www.bookkaholic.com/what-shoul...)

Janabi’s conclusions are shallow and predetermined. The writing is poor: repetitive; overly reliant on quotations; by turns informal to the point of flippancy, insultingly obvious, and (strangely) both arrogant and self-deprecating. (Plus the book is atrociously edited.) Perhaps the best that can be said for it is that, at 91 pages, it's a mercifully brief summary of some controversial scientific matters.

[Bookkaholic Magazine · Rating 2 out of 5]

(See our full review over at Bookkaholic.) It’s fully apparent that Janabi is passionate about eliminating subjectivity and ignorance when it comes to science, and wants to see reason and information trump superstition. Yet all too frequently he fails to engage in in-depth analysis, relying instead on shallow or implicit knowledge. He acts as if his opinions are foregone conclusions; his “it goes without saying” approach both patronizes readers and assumes too much.