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Nonscience Returns: WITH THE PSEUDOTRANSMOGRIFICATIONALIFIC EGOCENTRIFIED REORIENTATIONAL PROCLIVITIES INHERENTLY INTRACORPORATED IN EXPERTISTICAL ... PROFESSIONALISM, OR HOW TO RULE THE WORLD
The original Nonscience dates from 1971, and caused a sensation. It was translated, featured on television, and enthusiastically reviewed. To cele¬brate its fiftieth birthday it is being republished, with updates for each chapter to show how its predictions came true―and the COVID-19 pandemic makes it particularly timely.
This extraordinary book reveals a world dominated by Experts. For these all-powerful people, public image and media exposure are all that matters. Scientists, devoted to discovering the truth, have been superseded by Experts who use confusing language to dominate us and lay claim to colossal grants in their quest for power. Integrity and objectivity are gone; opportunism and duplicity reign.
Experts study weird things, like a bird called Bugeranus, a fungus Spongiforma squarepantsii, a beetle called Agra cadabra, and Pieza rhea, a fly. They are all real! There are articles like 'Fifty Ways to Love Your Lever' and 'Fantastic Yeasts and where to find Them', and papers with multiple authors (in 2015 Nature published one with 5,154 authors). Encyclopaedias copy facts from each other, and are dotted with mistakes, so you will find biographies of Dag Henrik Esrum-Hellerup and Lillian Virginia Mountweazel―in¬vented to fill the pages. Neither was real.
Experts prey on the public who are ignorant of what's going on and they ensure that we are surrounded by fake news. The Amazon is not the 'lungs of the world' (it contributes no oxygen whatever to our atmosphere) and our hysteria about plastic is similarly misplaced.
British people say they don't want American chicken, and wouldn't eat chlorine-washed food. Yet they do, every day. People follow those bake-off programmes, though the fatty food they promote kills people. Ford believes these shows should have a health warning and is surprised we don't have the 'Great Tobacco Smoking Challenge' or the 'Blindfold Railway-Crossing Elimination Game'.
This book should be read by everybody wishing to understand the modern world. Huge enterprises (like the Human Genome Project and the Large Hadron Collider) have conned us out of billions of pounds, while smaller teams had better results at a fraction of the cost. It is time to call a halt to this global confidence trick―and Nonscience Returns is the book that will guide us.
This extraordinary book reveals a world dominated by Experts. For these all-powerful people, public image and media exposure are all that matters. Scientists, devoted to discovering the truth, have been superseded by Experts who use confusing language to dominate us and lay claim to colossal grants in their quest for power. Integrity and objectivity are gone; opportunism and duplicity reign.
Experts study weird things, like a bird called Bugeranus, a fungus Spongiforma squarepantsii, a beetle called Agra cadabra, and Pieza rhea, a fly. They are all real! There are articles like 'Fifty Ways to Love Your Lever' and 'Fantastic Yeasts and where to find Them', and papers with multiple authors (in 2015 Nature published one with 5,154 authors). Encyclopaedias copy facts from each other, and are dotted with mistakes, so you will find biographies of Dag Henrik Esrum-Hellerup and Lillian Virginia Mountweazel―in¬vented to fill the pages. Neither was real.
Experts prey on the public who are ignorant of what's going on and they ensure that we are surrounded by fake news. The Amazon is not the 'lungs of the world' (it contributes no oxygen whatever to our atmosphere) and our hysteria about plastic is similarly misplaced.
British people say they don't want American chicken, and wouldn't eat chlorine-washed food. Yet they do, every day. People follow those bake-off programmes, though the fatty food they promote kills people. Ford believes these shows should have a health warning and is surprised we don't have the 'Great Tobacco Smoking Challenge' or the 'Blindfold Railway-Crossing Elimination Game'.
This book should be read by everybody wishing to understand the modern world. Huge enterprises (like the Human Genome Project and the Large Hadron Collider) have conned us out of billions of pounds, while smaller teams had better results at a fraction of the cost. It is time to call a halt to this global confidence trick―and Nonscience Returns is the book that will guide us.
312 pages, Hardcover
Published December 1, 2020
2 people are currently reading
24 people want to read
About the author
Brian J. Ford
42 books4 followersBrian J. Ford is a research biologist, author and lecturer, who is known for popular science publications and select works on TV.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
October 1, 2020
This is a book of two halves, or more accurately two interlaced parts. Biologist and science communicator Brian Ford published a book called Nonscience in 1971. What we have here is that original book, but with a new introduction, while every chapter has an extra section on the end of it written in 2020 including text that is up-to-date enough to include, for example, the COVID-19 pandemic. The four star rating of Nonscience Returns is entirely and only for the extra material. I'm afraid the old material has not aged well, but the book is still worth reading for the modern parts.
What we have here is a satirical look at the way that what used to be simple science has increasingly become a field where 'Experts' hold forth to the public and work primarily to forward their careers rather than carry out research that has any value. In the modern section, which we'll return to, Ford is great at bringing down pomposity and irrelevance. But let's get the original book out of the way first.
Back in the late 1940s and 1950s, the author Stephen Potter wrote a number of parodies of self-help books, notably including Gamesmanship, Lifemanship and One-Upmanship. Portrayed on the screen as School for Scoundrels in 1960, the underlying idea was that Potter ran a self-help correspondence school that helped people get on in the world by being devious and totally self-centred. Ford seems to have modelled the original Nonscience on this approach, portraying it as a guide to becoming an Expert. Unfortunately, it has a very dated feel and a style of humour that is better suited to the 1940s than the present: I found it hard going.
The modern sections are far better written and not trying so hard to be funny. This would have been so much better a book if Ford had simply based a new book on the old one, adopting his new style throughout. However, I do think it's worth reading, because underlying both old and new parts is a very real problem. There are plenty of people out there, often portrayed in the media as experts, who as Ford suggests practice not science but nonscience. They are engaged in pointless research, put out widely exaggerated press releases and are loved by the media as portraying expertise that is often not based on solid grounds.
Ford gives strong examples, including some from the response to the pandemic. I have a lot of sympathy with his assertion that we (and the media) need to move away from putting too much trust (and public money) in the direction of these self-proclaimed experts, focussing more on the real science.
There's more that Ford could have done. He makes no mention of what is surely the biggest example of nonscience (and dodgy experts), economics. And while there is plenty of negativity in criticising such people, there's no concrete suggestion of how academia could be reinvented to get it back to more of a true scientific approach. Even so, in an era of fake news, this is a timely reminder that science is not without its own flaws in this regard.
What we have here is a satirical look at the way that what used to be simple science has increasingly become a field where 'Experts' hold forth to the public and work primarily to forward their careers rather than carry out research that has any value. In the modern section, which we'll return to, Ford is great at bringing down pomposity and irrelevance. But let's get the original book out of the way first.
Back in the late 1940s and 1950s, the author Stephen Potter wrote a number of parodies of self-help books, notably including Gamesmanship, Lifemanship and One-Upmanship. Portrayed on the screen as School for Scoundrels in 1960, the underlying idea was that Potter ran a self-help correspondence school that helped people get on in the world by being devious and totally self-centred. Ford seems to have modelled the original Nonscience on this approach, portraying it as a guide to becoming an Expert. Unfortunately, it has a very dated feel and a style of humour that is better suited to the 1940s than the present: I found it hard going.
The modern sections are far better written and not trying so hard to be funny. This would have been so much better a book if Ford had simply based a new book on the old one, adopting his new style throughout. However, I do think it's worth reading, because underlying both old and new parts is a very real problem. There are plenty of people out there, often portrayed in the media as experts, who as Ford suggests practice not science but nonscience. They are engaged in pointless research, put out widely exaggerated press releases and are loved by the media as portraying expertise that is often not based on solid grounds.
Ford gives strong examples, including some from the response to the pandemic. I have a lot of sympathy with his assertion that we (and the media) need to move away from putting too much trust (and public money) in the direction of these self-proclaimed experts, focussing more on the real science.
There's more that Ford could have done. He makes no mention of what is surely the biggest example of nonscience (and dodgy experts), economics. And while there is plenty of negativity in criticising such people, there's no concrete suggestion of how academia could be reinvented to get it back to more of a true scientific approach. Even so, in an era of fake news, this is a timely reminder that science is not without its own flaws in this regard.
October 1, 2020
Nonscience Returns by Brian J Ford
The original Nonscience dates from 1971 and caused a sensation upon publication. To celebrate the books fiftieth birthday, it is being republished, with updates for each chapter to show how its predictions came true-and the COVID-19 pandemic makes it particularly timely. This extraordinary book reveals a world dominated by Experts. For these all-powerful people, public image and media exposure are all that matters. Scientists, devoted to discovering the truth, have been superseded by Experts who use confusing language to dominate us and lay claim to colossal grants in their quest for power. Integrity and objectivity are gone; opportunism and duplicity reign.
Experts rule the banks and, when the system collapsed, the government bailed them out with borrowed money so that they could pay themselves huge bonuses, as before, Professor Ford had a much better idea of what to do with the money which would have provided a stimulus to the economy. Experts study weird things, like a bird called Bugeranus, a fungus Spongiforma squarepantsii, a beetle called Agra Cadabra, and Pieza rhea, a fly. They are all real!
In some countries, one-third of the research has been copied from somebody else. Experts prey on the public who are ignorant of what's going on, and they ensure that we are surrounded by fake news. Experts take decisions that kill people, yet are immune to blame-saying 'lessons have been learned' means they're off the hook. British people say they don't want American chicken, and wouldn't eat chlorine-washed food. Yet they do, every day. They approve of quiche while avoiding a fried breakfast-even though the ingredients are similar, and the quiche can be more deadly. People follow those bake-off programmes, though the fatty food they promote kills people. Ford believes these shows should have a health warning and is surprised we don't have the 'Great Tobacco Smoking Challenge' or the 'Blindfold Railway-Crossing Elimination Game'.
Being only 5 when the original book came out, I was just getting to grips with Topsy and Tim, so the concept of reading Nonsience would have been a little out of my league! The book is fascinating, many facts are challenged, and I found myself on numerous occasions agreeing with Professor Ford, but not conclusively. I feel I may have led a somewhat blinkered life without realising, I hope I will be savvier in the future. This book should be read by everybody and definitely all those wishing to understand modern speak. I hope the renewed edition is received as well as the first.
I want to thank Neil Shuttlewood for connecting with me and asking if I would like to review the above and for organising the ARC to be sent. It was my pleasure.
The original Nonscience dates from 1971 and caused a sensation upon publication. To celebrate the books fiftieth birthday, it is being republished, with updates for each chapter to show how its predictions came true-and the COVID-19 pandemic makes it particularly timely. This extraordinary book reveals a world dominated by Experts. For these all-powerful people, public image and media exposure are all that matters. Scientists, devoted to discovering the truth, have been superseded by Experts who use confusing language to dominate us and lay claim to colossal grants in their quest for power. Integrity and objectivity are gone; opportunism and duplicity reign.
Experts rule the banks and, when the system collapsed, the government bailed them out with borrowed money so that they could pay themselves huge bonuses, as before, Professor Ford had a much better idea of what to do with the money which would have provided a stimulus to the economy. Experts study weird things, like a bird called Bugeranus, a fungus Spongiforma squarepantsii, a beetle called Agra Cadabra, and Pieza rhea, a fly. They are all real!
In some countries, one-third of the research has been copied from somebody else. Experts prey on the public who are ignorant of what's going on, and they ensure that we are surrounded by fake news. Experts take decisions that kill people, yet are immune to blame-saying 'lessons have been learned' means they're off the hook. British people say they don't want American chicken, and wouldn't eat chlorine-washed food. Yet they do, every day. They approve of quiche while avoiding a fried breakfast-even though the ingredients are similar, and the quiche can be more deadly. People follow those bake-off programmes, though the fatty food they promote kills people. Ford believes these shows should have a health warning and is surprised we don't have the 'Great Tobacco Smoking Challenge' or the 'Blindfold Railway-Crossing Elimination Game'.
Being only 5 when the original book came out, I was just getting to grips with Topsy and Tim, so the concept of reading Nonsience would have been a little out of my league! The book is fascinating, many facts are challenged, and I found myself on numerous occasions agreeing with Professor Ford, but not conclusively. I feel I may have led a somewhat blinkered life without realising, I hope I will be savvier in the future. This book should be read by everybody and definitely all those wishing to understand modern speak. I hope the renewed edition is received as well as the first.
I want to thank Neil Shuttlewood for connecting with me and asking if I would like to review the above and for organising the ARC to be sent. It was my pleasure.
October 1, 2020
I love this book. It is brilliant. I own a copy of the original book and now proudly own the second edition.
Nonscience is essentially a book about what is wrong with our universities, the anti-science incurious money grubbing managerialists running them and many of the incurious and conformist so-called “experts” who work in them. Many examples are given of bad science presented as good. Ford’s myth busting in that regard is so toe curlingly excruciating at times that I had to put the book down. Sometimes to laugh, other times to curse and most times just to sit and think. Astoundingly shocking facts that I was unaware of just keep coming at you from out of the pages like rat-a-tat-tat machine gun fire over the deep trenches of previous credulity.
Whatever impression this book review gives you hereafter I whole heartedly recommend you buy Nonscience and read it carefully on mythbusting and general veracity seeking grounds. Prepare to be shocked!
There will be few spoilers in this review. I am not giving out the very best of Ford’s myth busting examples for free. But I will let slip just a few others as a taster.
In a world that is increasingly polluted by fake news, serial lying politicians and incompetent science “experts” and historians of science, Nonscience (Ford pronounces it rather like nonchalance) is a concept after my own brain. It has essentially the same meaning as ‘dysology’, another word we surely need to add to our rationally sceptical lexicon if we are to stand any chance of not joining the zombie horde of credulous fake-fact believing celebrity TV “expert” presenters with their beaming beatific grins and their incuriously faithful fan base. And a few of these bubbly celebrity vacuous dullards come in for a righteous veracity shock in this excellent book. For example, the popular TV physicist Brian Cox is exposed for broadcasting total claptrap and Cox’s own science hero Charles Darwin quite rightfully has his Victorian trousers pulled down to expose serial lies about his shameless science fraud plagiarism of Patrick Matthew, the true originator of the theory of macroevolution by natural selection.
The book is repetitive, but only in parts and only on rare occasions.
In one case regarding the Amazon rainforest not being the “lungs of the planet” it only provides fully detailed accurate answers to inaccuracies noted in the claims of others on that idea much later in the book. But I have nothing against some delay and repetition in a book that wants its readers to remember the most important points. Who would complain too much about that other than a nit-picking incurious pedant or someone with a genuine photographic memory?
What could better emphasise the importance of veracity regarding what goes on in our universities, science facts and the history of scientific discovery than finding and exposing publications that contain errors on such matters? What then of a book on that very topic that also contains a small number of errors? Should we mock it, dismiss it, tell everyone not to buy or read it, even though most of it is razor sharp, funny, and essential reading in the field? No, I do not think so. But I do think it is the painful and unfortunate duty of a fair and honest reviewer to admit errors exist and to point them out. To do anything else would be nonscience. Thereafter, it is the duty of the book’s author, in my opinion, to write a new addition in the not far distant future that admits to and then corrects those errors. What better full function for a great book on the problem of nonscience is that? Because at that stage the criticised book starts to become the solution to the problem outlined. So here goes for my part:
(1) Universities today do in fact train their lecturers to lecture, most insisting they undertake, in post, several teaching qualifications.
(2) In many (but not all) universities today, tutorials are no longer characterised by small groups. In many greed-mongering universities they can – shockingly – each contain up to 70 students!
(3) The claim that Spanish Flu originated in Spain has been debunked by many writers. Current “knowledge” has it that it originated either in China or the USA. And it was called ‘Spanish flu’ only because Spain was neutral in WW1 And, accordingly, had no propaganda machine to protect it from such claims.
(4) Modern plagiarism detection software does now detect plagiarist substituting words with synonyms.
(5) Ford’s science informed hard and certain reasoning that face coverings do not protect wearers and those around them from COVID 19 in the 2020 pandemic is at least open to deeper new evidence-led debate, because current research has it that the virus is spread mainly through coughed and otherwise exhaled infected water droplets, which masks to tend to trap.
(6) Alfred Russel Wallace (once mistyped as Russel Wallace in Nonscience) never originated the full theory of evolution by natural selection. Patrick Matthew did that in 1831 and the book where he wrote it was even cited many times by Selby in 1842 – who then edited the very journal that published Wallace’s (1855) Sarawak paper on the theory Wallace in fact replicated and then claimed, as did Darwin, to have conceived independently.
If you buy this excellent book and find other examples that you think need correction – or deeper consideration – then please write a review of it to let Ford know. I am sure he wants you to. If not, what on Earth would be the point of a book on ‘nonscience’? Here is a chance for all of us to tackle the serious problems of nonscience that Ford so brilliantly authors for our own good.
Nonscience is essentially a book about what is wrong with our universities, the anti-science incurious money grubbing managerialists running them and many of the incurious and conformist so-called “experts” who work in them. Many examples are given of bad science presented as good. Ford’s myth busting in that regard is so toe curlingly excruciating at times that I had to put the book down. Sometimes to laugh, other times to curse and most times just to sit and think. Astoundingly shocking facts that I was unaware of just keep coming at you from out of the pages like rat-a-tat-tat machine gun fire over the deep trenches of previous credulity.
Whatever impression this book review gives you hereafter I whole heartedly recommend you buy Nonscience and read it carefully on mythbusting and general veracity seeking grounds. Prepare to be shocked!
There will be few spoilers in this review. I am not giving out the very best of Ford’s myth busting examples for free. But I will let slip just a few others as a taster.
In a world that is increasingly polluted by fake news, serial lying politicians and incompetent science “experts” and historians of science, Nonscience (Ford pronounces it rather like nonchalance) is a concept after my own brain. It has essentially the same meaning as ‘dysology’, another word we surely need to add to our rationally sceptical lexicon if we are to stand any chance of not joining the zombie horde of credulous fake-fact believing celebrity TV “expert” presenters with their beaming beatific grins and their incuriously faithful fan base. And a few of these bubbly celebrity vacuous dullards come in for a righteous veracity shock in this excellent book. For example, the popular TV physicist Brian Cox is exposed for broadcasting total claptrap and Cox’s own science hero Charles Darwin quite rightfully has his Victorian trousers pulled down to expose serial lies about his shameless science fraud plagiarism of Patrick Matthew, the true originator of the theory of macroevolution by natural selection.
The book is repetitive, but only in parts and only on rare occasions.
In one case regarding the Amazon rainforest not being the “lungs of the planet” it only provides fully detailed accurate answers to inaccuracies noted in the claims of others on that idea much later in the book. But I have nothing against some delay and repetition in a book that wants its readers to remember the most important points. Who would complain too much about that other than a nit-picking incurious pedant or someone with a genuine photographic memory?
What could better emphasise the importance of veracity regarding what goes on in our universities, science facts and the history of scientific discovery than finding and exposing publications that contain errors on such matters? What then of a book on that very topic that also contains a small number of errors? Should we mock it, dismiss it, tell everyone not to buy or read it, even though most of it is razor sharp, funny, and essential reading in the field? No, I do not think so. But I do think it is the painful and unfortunate duty of a fair and honest reviewer to admit errors exist and to point them out. To do anything else would be nonscience. Thereafter, it is the duty of the book’s author, in my opinion, to write a new addition in the not far distant future that admits to and then corrects those errors. What better full function for a great book on the problem of nonscience is that? Because at that stage the criticised book starts to become the solution to the problem outlined. So here goes for my part:
(1) Universities today do in fact train their lecturers to lecture, most insisting they undertake, in post, several teaching qualifications.
(2) In many (but not all) universities today, tutorials are no longer characterised by small groups. In many greed-mongering universities they can – shockingly – each contain up to 70 students!
(3) The claim that Spanish Flu originated in Spain has been debunked by many writers. Current “knowledge” has it that it originated either in China or the USA. And it was called ‘Spanish flu’ only because Spain was neutral in WW1 And, accordingly, had no propaganda machine to protect it from such claims.
(4) Modern plagiarism detection software does now detect plagiarist substituting words with synonyms.
(5) Ford’s science informed hard and certain reasoning that face coverings do not protect wearers and those around them from COVID 19 in the 2020 pandemic is at least open to deeper new evidence-led debate, because current research has it that the virus is spread mainly through coughed and otherwise exhaled infected water droplets, which masks to tend to trap.
(6) Alfred Russel Wallace (once mistyped as Russel Wallace in Nonscience) never originated the full theory of evolution by natural selection. Patrick Matthew did that in 1831 and the book where he wrote it was even cited many times by Selby in 1842 – who then edited the very journal that published Wallace’s (1855) Sarawak paper on the theory Wallace in fact replicated and then claimed, as did Darwin, to have conceived independently.
If you buy this excellent book and find other examples that you think need correction – or deeper consideration – then please write a review of it to let Ford know. I am sure he wants you to. If not, what on Earth would be the point of a book on ‘nonscience’? Here is a chance for all of us to tackle the serious problems of nonscience that Ford so brilliantly authors for our own good.
October 18, 2020
In todays world, we place more importance on experts than we do science. When science would guide us, the people in the know choose to mislead and rely on opinions. Our leader believes in buzz words, not scientific evidence. When did we toss scientists and their work aside? We need these scientists work to navigate the world.
This book is filled with information. It has evidence to support the claims they make. Check it out and you will be enlightened.
I did find issues. The average person will not understand this book. The way it is written, it's more of manifesto. It's rambling, monotonous and repetitive.
I gave this one 2 cheers out of 5. I'm still curious what Spina Bifida has to do with this.
copy of book provided by author and I voluntarily reviewed it.
This book is filled with information. It has evidence to support the claims they make. Check it out and you will be enlightened.
I did find issues. The average person will not understand this book. The way it is written, it's more of manifesto. It's rambling, monotonous and repetitive.
I gave this one 2 cheers out of 5. I'm still curious what Spina Bifida has to do with this.
copy of book provided by author and I voluntarily reviewed it.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews