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Manuale di sopravvivenza nell'era della disinformazione : La buona abitudine al ragionamento scientifico
Viviamo nell’era dell’informazione, con miliardi di dati che continuamente stimolano il nostro cervello dallo schermo del pc o da quello dello smartphone. Come distinguere informazione, disinformazione e misinformazione? Browser, social e motori di ricerca non sono in grado di farlo, e così una valanga di disinformazione inquina il discorso pubblico necessario ad affrontare i complessi problemi sociali che abbiamo davanti: il cambiamento climatico, la crisi alimentare e idrica, il collasso della biodiversità e le minacce emergenti per la salute pubblica, a cominciare dal covid. Questo libro è un vaccino contro l’epidemia della disinformazione, un vaccino che stimola i nostri anticorpi educandoci – per il tramite delle riflessioni di uno scienziato di successo – alle abitudini mentali necessarie a non cadere nelle trappole della disinformazione.
Il Manuale di sopravvivenza nell’era della disinformazione ci fornisce strumenti essenziali, contrastando la paura dei numeri, demistificando i grafici, chiarendo i concetti chiave della probabilità, e incentivando l’uso preciso del linguaggio e della logica. David J. Helfand, uno dei principali astronomi ed educatori scientifici statunitensi, ha insegnato abitudini scientifiche della mente a generazioni di studenti, in una provocatoria battaglia contro il pensiero sciatto e l’invasione della disinformazione.
Il Manuale di sopravvivenza nell’era della disinformazione ci fornisce strumenti essenziali, contrastando la paura dei numeri, demistificando i grafici, chiarendo i concetti chiave della probabilità, e incentivando l’uso preciso del linguaggio e della logica. David J. Helfand, uno dei principali astronomi ed educatori scientifici statunitensi, ha insegnato abitudini scientifiche della mente a generazioni di studenti, in una provocatoria battaglia contro il pensiero sciatto e l’invasione della disinformazione.
384 pages, Paperback
First published February 23, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews
August 25, 2017
To begin with, let me clarify that I regard the ideas promoted in this book utterly exciting, and the tools so essential and useful that they should be embraced by every qualified citizen in an ideal world. However, this book may not be an effective guide to develop "scientific habits of mind".
First, I personally suspect that some critical materials in certain chapters could hardly be absorbed by many targeted readers. In my opinion, the most meaty part is the chapter on "back-on-an-envelope" estimation, because it merely requires the very basic mathematical knowledge from readers, and the skill is widely applicable. Unfortunately, an average reader may not be able to fully comprehend many important concepts in the rest of the book, i.e. standard deviation or Poisson distribution, without a background of theory of probability and statistics. As a result, many readers may not be able to apply the skills introduced in Chapter 6 to 8 in reality because they don't have a steady foundation at the first place. Furthermore, how could they take for granted that the "ambiguous" terminology isn't another example of "misinformation", if they get the spirit of the book? The readers with such math and statistics background may get enlightened by experiencing several why-didn't-I-think-this-way moments if they have the patience not to skip these chapters altogether.
Second, understanding the rationale behind the scientific habits promoted in the book is different from getting the mindset. The author made an applaudable attempt to apply them in everyday life by providing an example with eight different scenes in Chapter 10. Although the process of analysis was fascinating and the topic of earth's future was relatable to everyone, I suspect most readers may still unconsciously categorize them as tools for scientific research instead of "living" them as their habits. The data on which the analysis rely was accessible only after a search in some database in the main branch of your municipal library; no one will calculate the correlation coefficient for you; and you can't draw the same conclusion as the author did unless you have his knowledge of isotopes. A deep analysis on statistics of presidential election voters and voting results may be a more suitable case to shatter some stereotypes/prejudices. And what's more, it takes years or even decades of influence and training to develop a mindset (this should be irrelevant to my review on the book, because change of the education system is usually beyond the power of a book).
Chapeau to the author, who promote dispassionate skepticism in a culture which rewards passion!
First, I personally suspect that some critical materials in certain chapters could hardly be absorbed by many targeted readers. In my opinion, the most meaty part is the chapter on "back-on-an-envelope" estimation, because it merely requires the very basic mathematical knowledge from readers, and the skill is widely applicable. Unfortunately, an average reader may not be able to fully comprehend many important concepts in the rest of the book, i.e. standard deviation or Poisson distribution, without a background of theory of probability and statistics. As a result, many readers may not be able to apply the skills introduced in Chapter 6 to 8 in reality because they don't have a steady foundation at the first place. Furthermore, how could they take for granted that the "ambiguous" terminology isn't another example of "misinformation", if they get the spirit of the book? The readers with such math and statistics background may get enlightened by experiencing several why-didn't-I-think-this-way moments if they have the patience not to skip these chapters altogether.
Second, understanding the rationale behind the scientific habits promoted in the book is different from getting the mindset. The author made an applaudable attempt to apply them in everyday life by providing an example with eight different scenes in Chapter 10. Although the process of analysis was fascinating and the topic of earth's future was relatable to everyone, I suspect most readers may still unconsciously categorize them as tools for scientific research instead of "living" them as their habits. The data on which the analysis rely was accessible only after a search in some database in the main branch of your municipal library; no one will calculate the correlation coefficient for you; and you can't draw the same conclusion as the author did unless you have his knowledge of isotopes. A deep analysis on statistics of presidential election voters and voting results may be a more suitable case to shatter some stereotypes/prejudices. And what's more, it takes years or even decades of influence and training to develop a mindset (this should be irrelevant to my review on the book, because change of the education system is usually beyond the power of a book).
Chapeau to the author, who promote dispassionate skepticism in a culture which rewards passion!
February 4, 2017
It took me a very long while to finish this book, and I have to admit, it was difficult for me to get through. Although I don't think that was completely the fault of the writing, indeed, the subject matter and the treatment of it were both professional and thorough. Unfortunately, the version I had didn't include any of the graphs and the text which should have accompanied the graphs was interspersed between the actual text of the book, sometimes splitting sentences in two and making it very difficult to follow the flow. Of course, this is a problem that wouldn't have occurred in the actual published version of the book so I did my very best not to judge the book on the poor layout of the Netgalley copy I received.
In terms of the subject matter, I completely applaud the attempt that academics and scientists make to try to get people to think critically about so many of the bogus and idiotic claims that are made about scientific issues. The internet is diabolical for spreading rumour and conspiracy theory, pseudoscience and pure bunk without any kind of filter or edit. The only way that anyone can determine the true from the false is using many of the techniques that the author outlined in this book. However, a book like this is necessary for the average proverbial man on the Clapham omnibus and in this, the book fell short of the mark. It was just too technical, too mathematical and too confusing for the general reader. I found myself switching off and I have multiple degrees, come from a scientific family, and have a deep and profound interest in current scientific issues, in particular climate change.
For this book to work, it needed to be simplified further. That, I know, is anathema to many academics but to get people to be able to absorb books such as this, they need to be introduced to critical thinking in terms which aren't scary or make people feel they're too dumb to understand. Perhaps this books was pitched to the choir rather than the congregation (so to speak), but it isn't the choir who needs the information contained within it - they're convinced already. For it to succeed, it needs to find that fine line between scientific academia and your average person, and I think it was pitched too high.
There were a number of very interesting points made in the third to last chapter about climate change which I found interesting, but following on from the advice of the author, I would need to go and check up because they were claims I had never heard before. That is not to say they were incorrect, but the author is an astrophysicist rather than a climatologist. In his favour, it has given me foot for thought and further lines of research, so that was definitely a plus for me.
Overall, I feel that this book misses the audience it was perhaps intended for.
I was given a free copy of this book via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
In terms of the subject matter, I completely applaud the attempt that academics and scientists make to try to get people to think critically about so many of the bogus and idiotic claims that are made about scientific issues. The internet is diabolical for spreading rumour and conspiracy theory, pseudoscience and pure bunk without any kind of filter or edit. The only way that anyone can determine the true from the false is using many of the techniques that the author outlined in this book. However, a book like this is necessary for the average proverbial man on the Clapham omnibus and in this, the book fell short of the mark. It was just too technical, too mathematical and too confusing for the general reader. I found myself switching off and I have multiple degrees, come from a scientific family, and have a deep and profound interest in current scientific issues, in particular climate change.
For this book to work, it needed to be simplified further. That, I know, is anathema to many academics but to get people to be able to absorb books such as this, they need to be introduced to critical thinking in terms which aren't scary or make people feel they're too dumb to understand. Perhaps this books was pitched to the choir rather than the congregation (so to speak), but it isn't the choir who needs the information contained within it - they're convinced already. For it to succeed, it needs to find that fine line between scientific academia and your average person, and I think it was pitched too high.
There were a number of very interesting points made in the third to last chapter about climate change which I found interesting, but following on from the advice of the author, I would need to go and check up because they were claims I had never heard before. That is not to say they were incorrect, but the author is an astrophysicist rather than a climatologist. In his favour, it has given me foot for thought and further lines of research, so that was definitely a plus for me.
Overall, I feel that this book misses the audience it was perhaps intended for.
I was given a free copy of this book via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
February 21, 2016
Politicians. The media. Your crazy aunt’s Facebook feed. Everyone today tries to inform, but most do so poorly. The book begins with explaining just how much misinformation we are exposed to throughout our lives, makes a strong pitch for empiricism, then walks the reader through the causes and types of misinformation and ways to deal with it. The book is not simply a list of various kinds of misinformation. Instead, it tells Dr. David Hefland’s story of how he has helped his own students at Columbia to see through misinformation. He seems to be a dream professor, and throughout this book he conveys complex information to a simpleton like myself with ease.
The text has a perfect balance of explanations and examples. Not only does Dr. Hefland rip apart misinformation, but he also provides the reader with the tools to correct it. As an illustration, I used one of his methods (and a bit of searching) to demonstrate to students in one of my classes that the number of students who reported food poisoning on the day of an examination (all eating at different places, I should add) was serious enough that the CDC should have come into our town to do a study. Had I not read A SURVIVAL GUIDE FOR THE MISINFORMATION AGE, I would not have even thought of doing that and calculating those odds would have been less intuitive.
Dr. Hefland takes a few shots at social scientists, suggesting that their post-positivism fails to deliver with the objectivity of physics. I would counter that if we try to meet Dr. Hefland’s scientific standards that we would know virtually nothing about human behavior because we would not be able to study it. Nonetheless, I have to admit that I am mostly trying to justify my own existence (I’m a social scientist) here, and I acknowledge that he makes some excellent critiques.
While some parts are heavy in physics, this is the type of book that should be required reading in any research methods course (ideally read before students even begin). While textbooks explain how research is conducted, A SURVIVAL GUIDE FOR THE MISINFORMATION AGE is the ideal pitch for why students should take such a class--people out there are lying to them. Having the tools to counter that misinformation, or at least to spot it, will serve them well.
The text has a perfect balance of explanations and examples. Not only does Dr. Hefland rip apart misinformation, but he also provides the reader with the tools to correct it. As an illustration, I used one of his methods (and a bit of searching) to demonstrate to students in one of my classes that the number of students who reported food poisoning on the day of an examination (all eating at different places, I should add) was serious enough that the CDC should have come into our town to do a study. Had I not read A SURVIVAL GUIDE FOR THE MISINFORMATION AGE, I would not have even thought of doing that and calculating those odds would have been less intuitive.
Dr. Hefland takes a few shots at social scientists, suggesting that their post-positivism fails to deliver with the objectivity of physics. I would counter that if we try to meet Dr. Hefland’s scientific standards that we would know virtually nothing about human behavior because we would not be able to study it. Nonetheless, I have to admit that I am mostly trying to justify my own existence (I’m a social scientist) here, and I acknowledge that he makes some excellent critiques.
While some parts are heavy in physics, this is the type of book that should be required reading in any research methods course (ideally read before students even begin). While textbooks explain how research is conducted, A SURVIVAL GUIDE FOR THE MISINFORMATION AGE is the ideal pitch for why students should take such a class--people out there are lying to them. Having the tools to counter that misinformation, or at least to spot it, will serve them well.
April 1, 2016
I was so disappointed in this book. As a librarian who teaches a for-credit information literacy course, I had high hopes that this would be something I could point students to. Alas, Helfand comes off as a condescending, curmudgeonly old man. His prose is sure to alienate the very audience this "survival guide" is meant to enlighten. Such potential, utterly wasted.
March 22, 2017
We live in a strange age. We have more information than ever at our fingertips, yet most of it is utterly wrong or misleading. Worse, a lot of us seem to take everything at face value or only believe what suits our own agenda and fits in with our own beliefs. So, I welcome any attempts to help people think critically and tell the truth from a lie.
This book didn't do this for me. While it's obvious he knows what's talking about and he is passionate about helping the average reader develop scientific habits of mind, the way he does it completely alienates the audience he's trying to reach.
To start with, it seems like every lie can be unmasked with complicated math calculations. This may be true, but math is something most of us struggle with. I don't know anyone that, when reading a newspaper, would take out her calculator to understand if death by sharks is really something she should worry about (are the odds it'll happen to you really that high?) or calculate the odds that three people in her street should die of cancer (apparently, that's possible and doesn't mean there's anything dodgy going on in your area).
All the examples he cites are related to the scientific fields. For examples, he cites quasars, spending half the time to explain what they are because most people have never heard of them. If you're trying to reach laymen, it would be best to use simpler examples and concepts people are already familiar with. As it is, I thought Helfand had written the book more to show off his vast scientific knowledge (which is very impressive and fascinating) than actually explaining to me how to develop the scientific habits of mind that will help me survive the misinformation age.
At this point, you've probably guessed I don't have a scientific background. But I'm very fascinated by psychology and was very surprised to find out this area was overlooked in the book. Tables and math only go so far in helping us navigate the misinformation age. As I've said, no one wants to spend time resolving complicated, or even simple, mathematical problems to see if a journalist has lied to you. Instead, we tend to believe or discredit something based on our emotions and feelings about that topic. If you believe in Creationism, for example, simply showing people the facts won't do. You also need to understand what motivates a person to fall for misinformations and half-truths, too. After all, the people who are purposefully misinforming us, especially during elections, do so by manipulating our emotions. I would have liked to see a chapter addressing this, or even the latest neuroscientific research about misinformation (did you know that reducing stress can help you absorb less misinformation? - now that's something everyone can try).
I'm not saying that what Helfand teaches isn't important. It is. He's right on most points. But his advice just isn't practical enough for most people to implement. If you have a background in science, you probably don't need this book. But you will enjoy it anyway. If any talks of numbers and mathematical problems makes your head spin, look elsewhere. This book will just give you a headache.
This book didn't do this for me. While it's obvious he knows what's talking about and he is passionate about helping the average reader develop scientific habits of mind, the way he does it completely alienates the audience he's trying to reach.
To start with, it seems like every lie can be unmasked with complicated math calculations. This may be true, but math is something most of us struggle with. I don't know anyone that, when reading a newspaper, would take out her calculator to understand if death by sharks is really something she should worry about (are the odds it'll happen to you really that high?) or calculate the odds that three people in her street should die of cancer (apparently, that's possible and doesn't mean there's anything dodgy going on in your area).
All the examples he cites are related to the scientific fields. For examples, he cites quasars, spending half the time to explain what they are because most people have never heard of them. If you're trying to reach laymen, it would be best to use simpler examples and concepts people are already familiar with. As it is, I thought Helfand had written the book more to show off his vast scientific knowledge (which is very impressive and fascinating) than actually explaining to me how to develop the scientific habits of mind that will help me survive the misinformation age.
At this point, you've probably guessed I don't have a scientific background. But I'm very fascinated by psychology and was very surprised to find out this area was overlooked in the book. Tables and math only go so far in helping us navigate the misinformation age. As I've said, no one wants to spend time resolving complicated, or even simple, mathematical problems to see if a journalist has lied to you. Instead, we tend to believe or discredit something based on our emotions and feelings about that topic. If you believe in Creationism, for example, simply showing people the facts won't do. You also need to understand what motivates a person to fall for misinformations and half-truths, too. After all, the people who are purposefully misinforming us, especially during elections, do so by manipulating our emotions. I would have liked to see a chapter addressing this, or even the latest neuroscientific research about misinformation (did you know that reducing stress can help you absorb less misinformation? - now that's something everyone can try).
I'm not saying that what Helfand teaches isn't important. It is. He's right on most points. But his advice just isn't practical enough for most people to implement. If you have a background in science, you probably don't need this book. But you will enjoy it anyway. If any talks of numbers and mathematical problems makes your head spin, look elsewhere. This book will just give you a headache.
October 17, 2019
This is an important subject but this book is going to have limited appeal. Overall, most readers will find the content, as presented, inaccessible even though the examples of “misinformation” are drawn from everyday news events.
It has some significant errors and omissions about the nature of science. For example, “When a theory is around for a long time and continues to explain successfully a large body data, it is sometimes promoted to the status of a law of Nature (p. 198).” This does not happen—theories do not become laws, they are different types of knowledge constructs. Theories are broad explanatory frameworks. Laws are embedded in theories but one does not evolve into the other. The Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection and the Special Theory of Relativity will always be theories regardless of how much data they explain. Laws are considered axioms or empirical rules like Newton’s Laws of Motion (axioms) and Boyle’s gas law (a relationship of gas volume and pressure data/measurements).
The author does not go into depth on significant “habits” of science thinking. There is little development of the idea of “science” as a naturalistic philosophy, that seeks replicable methods of research, repeatable results and generally works towards consensus among dedicated researchers. The book does not describe how hypotheses are created, or how experiments are designed (no discussion of concepts of independent, dependent variables and designing control of variable investigations) or how theories of explanations are constructed. A discussion of these ideas should be at the heart of a book on “scientific habits of mind” but the book focuses on mathematical ideas used to assess information which is often called “numeracy”. This is all fine and appropriate, except, the examples are many times beyond the reader and in some places even the mathematical ideas are misleading: bars graphs and histograms are confused; some graphs are misleading because of not including (0, 0); also, some graphs do not use equal intervals on their axes.
The author is a significant astrophysicist and science educator. The topic is worthy and important. Parts of this book might be good for interested students in a college curriculum.
It has some significant errors and omissions about the nature of science. For example, “When a theory is around for a long time and continues to explain successfully a large body data, it is sometimes promoted to the status of a law of Nature (p. 198).” This does not happen—theories do not become laws, they are different types of knowledge constructs. Theories are broad explanatory frameworks. Laws are embedded in theories but one does not evolve into the other. The Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection and the Special Theory of Relativity will always be theories regardless of how much data they explain. Laws are considered axioms or empirical rules like Newton’s Laws of Motion (axioms) and Boyle’s gas law (a relationship of gas volume and pressure data/measurements).
The author does not go into depth on significant “habits” of science thinking. There is little development of the idea of “science” as a naturalistic philosophy, that seeks replicable methods of research, repeatable results and generally works towards consensus among dedicated researchers. The book does not describe how hypotheses are created, or how experiments are designed (no discussion of concepts of independent, dependent variables and designing control of variable investigations) or how theories of explanations are constructed. A discussion of these ideas should be at the heart of a book on “scientific habits of mind” but the book focuses on mathematical ideas used to assess information which is often called “numeracy”. This is all fine and appropriate, except, the examples are many times beyond the reader and in some places even the mathematical ideas are misleading: bars graphs and histograms are confused; some graphs are misleading because of not including (0, 0); also, some graphs do not use equal intervals on their axes.
The author is a significant astrophysicist and science educator. The topic is worthy and important. Parts of this book might be good for interested students in a college curriculum.
May 12, 2019
Though the science in this book is definitely correct it does nothing to help the average person distinguish fact from fiction. It is full of facts and math that will send most people up a wall trying to understand. If you get the math, you probably already know how to use science to check the truth. There is quite a bit of discussion of science vs pseudoscience and some other good information. It also explains what science is, a method of trying to figure out the truth about the universe using models that have falsifiability (they can be disproved). Scientific knowledge is not the absolute truth but only what is presently perceived as truth until it is disproven. Now I still need a book that can give me some useful criteria to discover the truth in this crazy world full of information and misinformation.
June 8, 2019
Essential reading for combating informational bullshit. Thank you for the recommendation Sarah R! I love this text and find it a helpful recap of everything covered in my graduate research methods course. Plus the astronomy examples had me nerding out pretty good. :)
Everyone read this to combat bullshit!
Everyone read this to combat bullshit!
July 2, 2025
When I bought this book, I assumed from the title that it was going to give me some tips about how to detect AI images from “actual” images and how to detect fake news ...maybe generated by AI ....from “real” news. In this, I was disappointed. It is really just about applying the scientific process to information/data/stories etc. And I was familiar with pretty much all of this....Not that I didn’t learn anything. There are a few gems in there such as This: “Experiments have been used ever since Simon Stevin dropped two weights from a tower in Delft and found that, contrary to two thousand years of Aristotelian dogma, they fell at the same rate independent of their masses.... [This experiment is often attributed to Galileo, who is said to have dropped weights off the Leaning Tower of Pisa. There is, however, no documentary evidence that Galileo ever performed such an experiment. He did investigate the problem of falling bodies with different masses by rolling balls down inclined planes]”.
But I did think that his dismissal of the entire post modernist critique of science was a little too glib and smacked of a lack of understanding. I must confess that my sympathies lie entirely with Helfand but I think he could have addressed the criticisms of science much better. As it is there is the whiff of arrogance and ignorance.
I’ve extracted a few of the passages that grabbed my attention below: (this is really for my own benefit and if you’re interested in my overall verdict you can jump right to the end).
“We are now creating 2.5 quintillion bytes of new data every day (that’s 2,500,000,000,000,000,000 bytes or the equivalent of five trillion books the length of this one, enough to fill bookshelves half a kilometer high stretching around the Earth at the equator)......Information is virtually unlimited but often of very low reliability...Some of this misinformation masquerades as science, adopting technical jargon, holding conferences, and publishing journals.
Truth is a human invention; Nature is the primary object of my concern. My finite mind can comprehend only a tiny fraction of Nature.....But we no longer need to wait, as my hunter–gatherer ancestors did, for the Moon to rise each evening to see what shape it will be (or, indeed, to see whether it will rise at all). I have a mathematical model that predicts its shape and motions with great accuracy......This does not, however, mean I have found the Truth—about the weather, about disease, or even about the Moon’s orbit. I do have knowledge, and that makes life easier than in caveman times, but “Truth”?
Mathematicians are the ones who can prove things to be true. They have constructed axioms that define a system of reasoning within which it is possible to prove rigorously that an assertion (often called a theorem) is the Truth, with a fully justifiable capital“T.” Mathematics, like the concept of Truth, is a creation of the human mind. We have defined all the terms, specified the rules, and so can, within this closed system that we alone control, define Truth. ...The mathematicians’ Truth will still be true 1,000 years, or 10 billion years, from now. [I’m not sure that philosophers of mathematics would necessarily go along with this: I recall one of my philosophy teachers (in logic) asking the question whether we could ever envisage a world where 2 plus 2 did not make 4? Apparently not all philosophers are in agreement on the answer].
Popper summarized his conclusions about theories as follows: “One can sum up all this by saying that the criterion of the scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability, or refutability, or testability......And myths can become testable,......Philosophers and sociologists of science are, in general, not fond of Popper’s strict falsifiability criterion. The philosopher Susan Haack lists “a preoccupation with demarcation” (dividing science from other forms of inquiry) as one of her “six signs of scientism,” which she decries as an “overly enthusiastic and uncritically deferential attitude toward science.”
I, however, still find falsifiability a useful test [and so do I ..the reviewer]...... Scientific understanding must always be tentative, but this does not make it un-useful. Indeed, it is easy to argue that science has led to more useful things than any other invention of humankind.
But the essence of science is that the only authority is Nature itself.....Jacob Bronowski put it succinctly:”It must encourage the single scientist to be independent, and the body of scientists to be tolerant.
Not all data are equal. An anecdote cannot substitute for a carefully designed, double-blind study;.....Data without their associated uncertainties are useless. ...The ratio of the smallest distance you can directly perceive to the largest distance you might directly experience is a factor of a billion.....One cannot “see” anything happen on a timescale shorter than about 1/ 25th of a second ...The ear has a similar limitation in distinguishing separate sounds—at roughly twenty ticks per second. Indeed, a fundamental limitation of all our senses is set by the speed at which signals travel through our nervous system (between roughly 10 and 100 m per second) and the rate at which individual neurons respond (a few milliseconds)...Thus, we cannot perceive directly any timescale shorter than about 0.02 seconds.
The flood of misinformation that thrives online as a consequence of a condition that affects very large segments of the population: innumeracy—lacking basic knowledge of arithmetic and elementary mathematics.
One of the distinguishing habits of a scientific mind is the ability—and the willingness—to make rough estimates of unknown (and often unknowable) quantities.
“Back-of-the-envelope” calculations can be extremely useful. .....Without one’s numerical radar always turned on, it is easy to be misled by someone—a journalist, a politician, or even an obstreperous neighbour—trying to make a point....One tool to make sense out of nonsense, is the back of an envelope.
We are so good at seeing patterns that we often see them where none exist.. Most measurements include a range of uncertainty or error and error bars are most often displayed as representing some confidence interval. Statistics have a bad reputation; their misuse, deliberate or otherwise, can easily mislead the innumerate and confound all but the most careful scientist. The simplest trick, often found in newspaper articles, is the suppressed zero. The neglect of logical reasoning, and the sloppy use of language also contribute significantly to the glut of nonsense with which we are bombarded in the Misinformation Age.
Melting Arctic sea ice has no direct effect on sea level There are numerous examples of simple physical principles such as this that are violated by “common wisdom.”......And while we are skewering widely held myths, we do not have seasons because we are closer to the Sun in summer; in fact, we are farthest from the Sun during the first week of July. Seasons arise because of the tilt of the Earth’s axis.
By convention, probabilities run from zero to one, with zero denoting impossibility and one equalling certainty. The probability of the occurrence of an outcome from one of two mutually exclusive sets of outcomes is the sum of the probabilities of those two outcomes. = P( A) + P( B)......The total probability of two independent events both happening is the product of the probabilities of the events.....We need both A and B to happen if we are to be satisfied and are looking for the probability of both events occurring.
A third rule is implied by our definition of probability: the probability of something not happening is equal to one minus the probability of it happening
(1) improbable things happen all the time, and (2) rare things happen.
What you have failed to note [with a lottery] is that the odds are also five million to one for everyone else buying tickets, and if ten million tickets are sold, it is hardly surprising that someone wins. Improbable things happen all the time....Yes, it is a rare event, but no, it does not require an explanation—we should expect such coincidences to happen. If it happens to you… yes, well, it has to happen to somebody.
In science, we place far greater value on a priori calculations than on a posteriori ones.
Contrary to another bit of common—and incorrect—folk wisdom, the Moon does not have phases because the Earth is casting shadows on it. As it orbits the Earth over a month, it also rotates once on its axis, so that the same side is always facing the Earth. Statistical reasoning to adjudicate between competing theories is a hallmark of good science and a vital tool for surviving the Misinformation Age.
Quoting the average human body temperature as 98.6 ° F, conveys misinformation about the precision with which this quantity is known....Leading zeros are not significant. The numbers 0.54 and 0.0032 both have two significant figures. Trailing zeros to the right of the decimal are significant. There are four significant figures in 92.00.....
Systematic errors arise from such problems as the fact that the two rulers will not be precisely the same length,.....Random errors may also be difficult to eliminate, but they are both quantifiable and reducible, and the subject of statistics holds the key. In the case of measuring the length of the desk, random errors arise from such things as not perfectly aligning the ruler.
Although the distribution of errors, and thus the range of probabilities, is not always easy to determine, in many cases of interest it is safe to assume that the individual measurements are distributed in a “normal distribution.......The usual practice in quoting the statistical error of a measurement is to quote plus or minus one sigma, that is plus or minus one standard deviation. Integrating under the Gaussian curve reveals that 68 percent of its area lies within plus or minus one sigma of the mean.
We now know the age of the Earth to better than 1 percent through the application of such techniques and have dated the Shroud of Turin (the putative burial cloth of Jesus) to the 1350s (when church documents show it was forged by an artist in the employment of a corrupt bishop).
The Gaussian distribution is useful when our sample size is large.....As noted earlier, the world of science is not about proofs (that’s the realm of mathematics and philosophy).
One of the most widely misused and misunderstood mathematical arrows in the scientist’s quiver: correlation analysis......co-( r) relation is just that: a relationship between two quantities that vary together. It is not a statement about cause and effect
Just as correlation is not causation, correlation is not destiny. Just as many different factors contributed to a student’s final SAT scores, many different and new factors will contribute to his or her success in college
Although the Bible and many other books—religious, philosophical, and otherwise—do offer alternative views of the world and its creation, they do not offer a “theory” in the scientific sense of the word. What is this scientific sense? Indeed, what are the defining features that make science science?
Contrary to the views of some postmodern literary theorists, scientists generally accept the notion that an objective reality exists and that one can sample that reality with measurements and observations that produce “data.”....In most branches of science, data are quantified; i.e., they are represented by numbers.....Furthermore, all good measurements include an uncertainty or “error”:.....Data are the raw materials of science........Science divorced from data is not science........In many cases we resort to using “proxies,” stand-ins for the true quantities of interest.
Paleoclimatologists have developed highly reliable proxies for temperature in prehistoric times. One such indicator is the ratio of heavy-to normal-type oxygen atoms in isotopes).
Selection effects can come in many guises. The most obvious, and most egregious, is selectively reporting the results of one’s experiment or observation, displaying only those data that support one’s hypothesis and discarding the rest. Fortunately, in most scientific fields, generalized skepticism is sufficiently strong that surprising results are tested many times, and negative conclusions do get published—theories get falsified.
Models provide the conceptual framework for interpreting the data we collect.
It is always important to keep in mind that a model is not the real thing. .The model is an abstract human construction that attempts to incorporate the essential ingredients of a natural process or system and then to make predictions about future behavior.
.One of my favorite fictions to skewer is the claim that rising temperatures lead to stronger hurricanes and other storms.......There is no evidence that tropical cyclones have increased in frequency or intensity in step with the rapid global warming of the last fifty years. This mantra is fictional.
Consistent with my skeptical, scientific, detached perspective on the issue of climate change, I do not draw a conclusion for my audience. The goal of my presentation—and the goal of this book—is to provide you with the tools for coming to informed and independent judgments
I do share, however, a comparison of the list of things my audiences are conditioned by the media to worry about and the list of things I actually worry about. In the former category I include stronger and more frequent hurricanes, rising sea levels, hotter summers and more deaths from heat stroke, and the demise of polar bears. He also skewers; Astrology, Homeopathy, Acupuncture, Paranormal effects,
On the topic of hurricanes, the “new theory” is the mantra that storms draw their energy from warm water, and the warmer the water, the stronger the storms will be. Instead, the number of strong storms has decreased.....The standard rhetoric (adopted interestingly by climate change deniers and creationists alike) is to “teach the controversy.” But there is no controversy. There is much vigorous and healthy debate within the scientific community about the details of climate models and their predictions, etc., but there is no controversy about whether human activity is changing the composition of the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans and, as a consequence, altering the climate.
The largest amount of bad science being produced today—and probably that with the largest impact—comes from small clinical and preclinical studies (e.g., the use of mouse models or cancer cell cultures)
Fifty-three articles with supposedly “landmark” status (major results, were duplicated but forty-seven of the fifty-three studies (89 percent!) were irreproducible—.A similar attempt to replicate forty-seven different cancer study results found more than three-quarters of them to be irreproducible. The conclusion is inescapable: this work represents bad science.......While all incidents of scientific fraud are abhorrent, none of the media coverage noted the tiny fraction of papers involved and the even smaller fraction of scientists
The impact of a fraud [relationship of vaccination to autism] on public health was, and continues to be, enormous. Vaccination rates in the United Kingdom fell from 92 percent in 1996 to 78.9 percent in early 2003.
It seems that the application of reason is increasingly succumbing to identity politics—if you identify with a political party, special interest group, or other social entity, you just adopt the “facts” that entity espouses
Science is teleological. It has a goal toward which it strives—an ever-more accurate and all-encompassing understanding of the universe.
The reason for this progress is that wrong ideas in science never triumph in the end. Nature is always standing by as the arbiter.....The enterprise of science has developed several habits and techniques for enhancing the pace of correcting false ideas. Perhaps foremost among these is skepticism.....When one’s data agree with one’s model, euphoria must be tempered by a thorough and skeptical critique of both....This highly social enterprise with this highly skeptical ethos is central to the rapid growth of scientific understanding.
Each week, the science section of the New York Times needs half a dozen “news” stories, and if they can use words like “stunning,” “and “theory overturned” . Scientists are complicit in this misrepresentation, all too easily using phrases such as “breakthrough.”
So what’s my overall verdict on the book. It’s good and there is a lot of interesting stuff there but it didn’t deal with the sort of misinformation that I was expecting. I already knew most of this stuff...certainly the scientific methodology and I hope I generally practice it. But still looking for something to help me in the age of AI. Still five stars from me.
But I did think that his dismissal of the entire post modernist critique of science was a little too glib and smacked of a lack of understanding. I must confess that my sympathies lie entirely with Helfand but I think he could have addressed the criticisms of science much better. As it is there is the whiff of arrogance and ignorance.
I’ve extracted a few of the passages that grabbed my attention below: (this is really for my own benefit and if you’re interested in my overall verdict you can jump right to the end).
“We are now creating 2.5 quintillion bytes of new data every day (that’s 2,500,000,000,000,000,000 bytes or the equivalent of five trillion books the length of this one, enough to fill bookshelves half a kilometer high stretching around the Earth at the equator)......Information is virtually unlimited but often of very low reliability...Some of this misinformation masquerades as science, adopting technical jargon, holding conferences, and publishing journals.
Truth is a human invention; Nature is the primary object of my concern. My finite mind can comprehend only a tiny fraction of Nature.....But we no longer need to wait, as my hunter–gatherer ancestors did, for the Moon to rise each evening to see what shape it will be (or, indeed, to see whether it will rise at all). I have a mathematical model that predicts its shape and motions with great accuracy......This does not, however, mean I have found the Truth—about the weather, about disease, or even about the Moon’s orbit. I do have knowledge, and that makes life easier than in caveman times, but “Truth”?
Mathematicians are the ones who can prove things to be true. They have constructed axioms that define a system of reasoning within which it is possible to prove rigorously that an assertion (often called a theorem) is the Truth, with a fully justifiable capital“T.” Mathematics, like the concept of Truth, is a creation of the human mind. We have defined all the terms, specified the rules, and so can, within this closed system that we alone control, define Truth. ...The mathematicians’ Truth will still be true 1,000 years, or 10 billion years, from now. [I’m not sure that philosophers of mathematics would necessarily go along with this: I recall one of my philosophy teachers (in logic) asking the question whether we could ever envisage a world where 2 plus 2 did not make 4? Apparently not all philosophers are in agreement on the answer].
Popper summarized his conclusions about theories as follows: “One can sum up all this by saying that the criterion of the scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability, or refutability, or testability......And myths can become testable,......Philosophers and sociologists of science are, in general, not fond of Popper’s strict falsifiability criterion. The philosopher Susan Haack lists “a preoccupation with demarcation” (dividing science from other forms of inquiry) as one of her “six signs of scientism,” which she decries as an “overly enthusiastic and uncritically deferential attitude toward science.”
I, however, still find falsifiability a useful test [and so do I ..the reviewer]...... Scientific understanding must always be tentative, but this does not make it un-useful. Indeed, it is easy to argue that science has led to more useful things than any other invention of humankind.
But the essence of science is that the only authority is Nature itself.....Jacob Bronowski put it succinctly:”It must encourage the single scientist to be independent, and the body of scientists to be tolerant.
Not all data are equal. An anecdote cannot substitute for a carefully designed, double-blind study;.....Data without their associated uncertainties are useless. ...The ratio of the smallest distance you can directly perceive to the largest distance you might directly experience is a factor of a billion.....One cannot “see” anything happen on a timescale shorter than about 1/ 25th of a second ...The ear has a similar limitation in distinguishing separate sounds—at roughly twenty ticks per second. Indeed, a fundamental limitation of all our senses is set by the speed at which signals travel through our nervous system (between roughly 10 and 100 m per second) and the rate at which individual neurons respond (a few milliseconds)...Thus, we cannot perceive directly any timescale shorter than about 0.02 seconds.
The flood of misinformation that thrives online as a consequence of a condition that affects very large segments of the population: innumeracy—lacking basic knowledge of arithmetic and elementary mathematics.
One of the distinguishing habits of a scientific mind is the ability—and the willingness—to make rough estimates of unknown (and often unknowable) quantities.
“Back-of-the-envelope” calculations can be extremely useful. .....Without one’s numerical radar always turned on, it is easy to be misled by someone—a journalist, a politician, or even an obstreperous neighbour—trying to make a point....One tool to make sense out of nonsense, is the back of an envelope.
We are so good at seeing patterns that we often see them where none exist.. Most measurements include a range of uncertainty or error and error bars are most often displayed as representing some confidence interval. Statistics have a bad reputation; their misuse, deliberate or otherwise, can easily mislead the innumerate and confound all but the most careful scientist. The simplest trick, often found in newspaper articles, is the suppressed zero. The neglect of logical reasoning, and the sloppy use of language also contribute significantly to the glut of nonsense with which we are bombarded in the Misinformation Age.
Melting Arctic sea ice has no direct effect on sea level There are numerous examples of simple physical principles such as this that are violated by “common wisdom.”......And while we are skewering widely held myths, we do not have seasons because we are closer to the Sun in summer; in fact, we are farthest from the Sun during the first week of July. Seasons arise because of the tilt of the Earth’s axis.
By convention, probabilities run from zero to one, with zero denoting impossibility and one equalling certainty. The probability of the occurrence of an outcome from one of two mutually exclusive sets of outcomes is the sum of the probabilities of those two outcomes. = P( A) + P( B)......The total probability of two independent events both happening is the product of the probabilities of the events.....We need both A and B to happen if we are to be satisfied and are looking for the probability of both events occurring.
A third rule is implied by our definition of probability: the probability of something not happening is equal to one minus the probability of it happening
(1) improbable things happen all the time, and (2) rare things happen.
What you have failed to note [with a lottery] is that the odds are also five million to one for everyone else buying tickets, and if ten million tickets are sold, it is hardly surprising that someone wins. Improbable things happen all the time....Yes, it is a rare event, but no, it does not require an explanation—we should expect such coincidences to happen. If it happens to you… yes, well, it has to happen to somebody.
In science, we place far greater value on a priori calculations than on a posteriori ones.
Contrary to another bit of common—and incorrect—folk wisdom, the Moon does not have phases because the Earth is casting shadows on it. As it orbits the Earth over a month, it also rotates once on its axis, so that the same side is always facing the Earth. Statistical reasoning to adjudicate between competing theories is a hallmark of good science and a vital tool for surviving the Misinformation Age.
Quoting the average human body temperature as 98.6 ° F, conveys misinformation about the precision with which this quantity is known....Leading zeros are not significant. The numbers 0.54 and 0.0032 both have two significant figures. Trailing zeros to the right of the decimal are significant. There are four significant figures in 92.00.....
Systematic errors arise from such problems as the fact that the two rulers will not be precisely the same length,.....Random errors may also be difficult to eliminate, but they are both quantifiable and reducible, and the subject of statistics holds the key. In the case of measuring the length of the desk, random errors arise from such things as not perfectly aligning the ruler.
Although the distribution of errors, and thus the range of probabilities, is not always easy to determine, in many cases of interest it is safe to assume that the individual measurements are distributed in a “normal distribution.......The usual practice in quoting the statistical error of a measurement is to quote plus or minus one sigma, that is plus or minus one standard deviation. Integrating under the Gaussian curve reveals that 68 percent of its area lies within plus or minus one sigma of the mean.
We now know the age of the Earth to better than 1 percent through the application of such techniques and have dated the Shroud of Turin (the putative burial cloth of Jesus) to the 1350s (when church documents show it was forged by an artist in the employment of a corrupt bishop).
The Gaussian distribution is useful when our sample size is large.....As noted earlier, the world of science is not about proofs (that’s the realm of mathematics and philosophy).
One of the most widely misused and misunderstood mathematical arrows in the scientist’s quiver: correlation analysis......co-( r) relation is just that: a relationship between two quantities that vary together. It is not a statement about cause and effect
Just as correlation is not causation, correlation is not destiny. Just as many different factors contributed to a student’s final SAT scores, many different and new factors will contribute to his or her success in college
Although the Bible and many other books—religious, philosophical, and otherwise—do offer alternative views of the world and its creation, they do not offer a “theory” in the scientific sense of the word. What is this scientific sense? Indeed, what are the defining features that make science science?
Contrary to the views of some postmodern literary theorists, scientists generally accept the notion that an objective reality exists and that one can sample that reality with measurements and observations that produce “data.”....In most branches of science, data are quantified; i.e., they are represented by numbers.....Furthermore, all good measurements include an uncertainty or “error”:.....Data are the raw materials of science........Science divorced from data is not science........In many cases we resort to using “proxies,” stand-ins for the true quantities of interest.
Paleoclimatologists have developed highly reliable proxies for temperature in prehistoric times. One such indicator is the ratio of heavy-to normal-type oxygen atoms in isotopes).
Selection effects can come in many guises. The most obvious, and most egregious, is selectively reporting the results of one’s experiment or observation, displaying only those data that support one’s hypothesis and discarding the rest. Fortunately, in most scientific fields, generalized skepticism is sufficiently strong that surprising results are tested many times, and negative conclusions do get published—theories get falsified.
Models provide the conceptual framework for interpreting the data we collect.
It is always important to keep in mind that a model is not the real thing. .The model is an abstract human construction that attempts to incorporate the essential ingredients of a natural process or system and then to make predictions about future behavior.
.One of my favorite fictions to skewer is the claim that rising temperatures lead to stronger hurricanes and other storms.......There is no evidence that tropical cyclones have increased in frequency or intensity in step with the rapid global warming of the last fifty years. This mantra is fictional.
Consistent with my skeptical, scientific, detached perspective on the issue of climate change, I do not draw a conclusion for my audience. The goal of my presentation—and the goal of this book—is to provide you with the tools for coming to informed and independent judgments
I do share, however, a comparison of the list of things my audiences are conditioned by the media to worry about and the list of things I actually worry about. In the former category I include stronger and more frequent hurricanes, rising sea levels, hotter summers and more deaths from heat stroke, and the demise of polar bears. He also skewers; Astrology, Homeopathy, Acupuncture, Paranormal effects,
On the topic of hurricanes, the “new theory” is the mantra that storms draw their energy from warm water, and the warmer the water, the stronger the storms will be. Instead, the number of strong storms has decreased.....The standard rhetoric (adopted interestingly by climate change deniers and creationists alike) is to “teach the controversy.” But there is no controversy. There is much vigorous and healthy debate within the scientific community about the details of climate models and their predictions, etc., but there is no controversy about whether human activity is changing the composition of the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans and, as a consequence, altering the climate.
The largest amount of bad science being produced today—and probably that with the largest impact—comes from small clinical and preclinical studies (e.g., the use of mouse models or cancer cell cultures)
Fifty-three articles with supposedly “landmark” status (major results, were duplicated but forty-seven of the fifty-three studies (89 percent!) were irreproducible—.A similar attempt to replicate forty-seven different cancer study results found more than three-quarters of them to be irreproducible. The conclusion is inescapable: this work represents bad science.......While all incidents of scientific fraud are abhorrent, none of the media coverage noted the tiny fraction of papers involved and the even smaller fraction of scientists
The impact of a fraud [relationship of vaccination to autism] on public health was, and continues to be, enormous. Vaccination rates in the United Kingdom fell from 92 percent in 1996 to 78.9 percent in early 2003.
It seems that the application of reason is increasingly succumbing to identity politics—if you identify with a political party, special interest group, or other social entity, you just adopt the “facts” that entity espouses
Science is teleological. It has a goal toward which it strives—an ever-more accurate and all-encompassing understanding of the universe.
The reason for this progress is that wrong ideas in science never triumph in the end. Nature is always standing by as the arbiter.....The enterprise of science has developed several habits and techniques for enhancing the pace of correcting false ideas. Perhaps foremost among these is skepticism.....When one’s data agree with one’s model, euphoria must be tempered by a thorough and skeptical critique of both....This highly social enterprise with this highly skeptical ethos is central to the rapid growth of scientific understanding.
Each week, the science section of the New York Times needs half a dozen “news” stories, and if they can use words like “stunning,” “and “theory overturned” . Scientists are complicit in this misrepresentation, all too easily using phrases such as “breakthrough.”
So what’s my overall verdict on the book. It’s good and there is a lot of interesting stuff there but it didn’t deal with the sort of misinformation that I was expecting. I already knew most of this stuff...certainly the scientific methodology and I hope I generally practice it. But still looking for something to help me in the age of AI. Still five stars from me.
August 8, 2020
You can find anything out on the internet. Unfortunately, much of it is untrue - and how do you tell the truth from the lies, exaggerations or misleading manipulations?
This book will help.
A book you can read through, or just dip in to, you can find out how to understand the data that is being presented to you and how you can work out the truth (if there is any) behind it.
It's also surprisingly easy to read, concepts being explained thoroughly yet simply.
Recommended to everyone who wonders about how to work out the truth behind "facts" as presented on the internet, and recommended especially for those who believe everything they read!
This book will help.
A book you can read through, or just dip in to, you can find out how to understand the data that is being presented to you and how you can work out the truth (if there is any) behind it.
It's also surprisingly easy to read, concepts being explained thoroughly yet simply.
Recommended to everyone who wonders about how to work out the truth behind "facts" as presented on the internet, and recommended especially for those who believe everything they read!
February 22, 2016
Information is everywhere and we are being swamped by it, even if we don’t actively seek it out. This can easily turn into an avalanche when you do start looking for it. It can feel sometimes that the bit of information you are searching for is just impossible to find. One of the bigger risks is how misinformation or disinformation can exist, just to make things even more troubling…
The author has produced a very interesting book that encourages what could be called information scepticism; clearly the average reader is not going to be able to second-guess the information given by a government, although there can be times when the supplier of data is purposefully putting a positive spin on their data, possibly overly interpreting things or being incredibly optimistic. The same can happen, of course, with companies and various pressure groups who want to encourage a certain line. Other data can be manipulated by those with a clear malicious mind, or just for fun, by passing off incredulous data as fact and seeing how far it spreads.
Yet this is not some high-brow book that looks at matters from an ivory tower. It is a book written for the average reader who might be curious about things. Of course, learned professionals should also be heeding the advice on offer and adopting a more neutral, sceptical approach to received data. The author has managed to produce a great book that takes you beyond the sheet of numbers, well-designed graphs and carefully written language to let you see that what is necessarily projected might not necessarily be the black and white reality.
This was an enjoyable book. It is written in a more narrative, rambling style that manages to retain its focus. It is not a polished machine-gun fed constant fire of facts, but a more wavering, talkative, observational approach and yet it is not boring. By the end of the journey you may be surprised just how much you have learned without even trying and the “stroll in the park” was hardly onerous or something to avoid. This is not a veiled criticism. The approach felt perfect. It “just worked.”
This review is deliberately short. The book surpassed one’s expectations, brought a lot of interesting thoughts to the fore and certainly helped confirm the reviewer’s existing views (or should that be prejudices?). Sometimes you may feel that you are overly sceptical, so when the author can confirm that scepticism can be justified and in fact be essential, it is nice to know one is in such good company. It is a celebration and collection of miscellany, a forensic examination of the ‘facts’ that we might otherwise know and a pleasant series of fireside talks at the same time. It is all quite addictive.
The author has produced a very interesting book that encourages what could be called information scepticism; clearly the average reader is not going to be able to second-guess the information given by a government, although there can be times when the supplier of data is purposefully putting a positive spin on their data, possibly overly interpreting things or being incredibly optimistic. The same can happen, of course, with companies and various pressure groups who want to encourage a certain line. Other data can be manipulated by those with a clear malicious mind, or just for fun, by passing off incredulous data as fact and seeing how far it spreads.
Yet this is not some high-brow book that looks at matters from an ivory tower. It is a book written for the average reader who might be curious about things. Of course, learned professionals should also be heeding the advice on offer and adopting a more neutral, sceptical approach to received data. The author has managed to produce a great book that takes you beyond the sheet of numbers, well-designed graphs and carefully written language to let you see that what is necessarily projected might not necessarily be the black and white reality.
This was an enjoyable book. It is written in a more narrative, rambling style that manages to retain its focus. It is not a polished machine-gun fed constant fire of facts, but a more wavering, talkative, observational approach and yet it is not boring. By the end of the journey you may be surprised just how much you have learned without even trying and the “stroll in the park” was hardly onerous or something to avoid. This is not a veiled criticism. The approach felt perfect. It “just worked.”
This review is deliberately short. The book surpassed one’s expectations, brought a lot of interesting thoughts to the fore and certainly helped confirm the reviewer’s existing views (or should that be prejudices?). Sometimes you may feel that you are overly sceptical, so when the author can confirm that scepticism can be justified and in fact be essential, it is nice to know one is in such good company. It is a celebration and collection of miscellany, a forensic examination of the ‘facts’ that we might otherwise know and a pleasant series of fireside talks at the same time. It is all quite addictive.
May 14, 2016
What makes good science? What makes bad science? What makes something that sort of looks like science not really science at all? These are the kinds of questions David Helfand attempts to answer in this book. He talks about probability, statistics, correlation, estimation, data collection and representation.... All good stuff, but if the goal of this book is to explain to the general public why science is the best tool we have for acquiring knowledge, it has some flaws.
I have no issues over the things he's saying, but the way he's saying them is another matter.
I never heard of Professor Helfand before reading this, although I'm sure he's a wonderful man, but the tone of his book is often that of a curmudgeon. Yes, I know scientific literacy isn't what is should be, and that distresses me too, but you can't reach the people who need to be reached by deriding them about the mistakes they've been making, most of which are cultural flaws rather than personal ones (the American reluctance about using the metric system, for example). And if the aim is to inform the uninformed, it should be done in terms familiar to them. Formulas and tables are probably not the best method, nor is using data about quasars and PhD earners as examples. I'm sure other things, everyday things—weather forecasts, household budgets, claims made in advertising—could be used as examples to demonstrate points about probability, estimation, and correlation instead.
Still, the point of the book is valid. It is important to be wary of our assumptions, to maintain a healthy skepticism, and to question the claims and assertions we see reported in the media.
I have no issues over the things he's saying, but the way he's saying them is another matter.
I never heard of Professor Helfand before reading this, although I'm sure he's a wonderful man, but the tone of his book is often that of a curmudgeon. Yes, I know scientific literacy isn't what is should be, and that distresses me too, but you can't reach the people who need to be reached by deriding them about the mistakes they've been making, most of which are cultural flaws rather than personal ones (the American reluctance about using the metric system, for example). And if the aim is to inform the uninformed, it should be done in terms familiar to them. Formulas and tables are probably not the best method, nor is using data about quasars and PhD earners as examples. I'm sure other things, everyday things—weather forecasts, household budgets, claims made in advertising—could be used as examples to demonstrate points about probability, estimation, and correlation instead.
Still, the point of the book is valid. It is important to be wary of our assumptions, to maintain a healthy skepticism, and to question the claims and assertions we see reported in the media.
December 26, 2015
Dr. Helfand's book is based on his experience as an educator, and he is out to educate the country with this book. It makes for an excellent course of study, whether you're just interested in informally tuning up your info sorting or studying gen-ed level science. He covers what science is and what it isn't, and how scientists think and how that's different from patterns of thought elsewhere. He goes over how to represent data graphically and how to know that someone left something important out in their statistics. Then he goes over a few specific issues like global warming and autism and vaccinations. The appendices include some exercises in case you want to test yourself on some basic estimations and info processing (or in case a professor wants to use it in an unusual but useful gen ed class).
I enjoyed Helfand's voice. He is very sure of himself and dismissive of people who aren't careful in their thinking, but somehow still explictly allows for reasonable people to disagree with him on the particulars. He has the voice of a teacher who is used to working with gifted but non-scientific students. He wants us to know that some answers are wrong and some are right, but also wants us to discovers the process of arriving at those right answers, not just the answers themselves. His is a welcome contribution to the effort to help us sort the good from the bad information in a time when both flood us everyday, and often every bit of info looks the same.
I got a free copy of this from Net Galley.
I enjoyed Helfand's voice. He is very sure of himself and dismissive of people who aren't careful in their thinking, but somehow still explictly allows for reasonable people to disagree with him on the particulars. He has the voice of a teacher who is used to working with gifted but non-scientific students. He wants us to know that some answers are wrong and some are right, but also wants us to discovers the process of arriving at those right answers, not just the answers themselves. His is a welcome contribution to the effort to help us sort the good from the bad information in a time when both flood us everyday, and often every bit of info looks the same.
I got a free copy of this from Net Galley.
February 3, 2016
I received a complimentary Kindle copy of this book courtesy of Net Galley and the publisher. This was with the understanding that I would write a review and post it on Net Galley, Goodreads, Amazon, and my blog. I expanded it to include by Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Plus pages.
I requested this book as I have an interest in in science, information and how the mind works. This is the first book by David Helfand that I have read.
This is not the book for you if you are looking for a light, breezy treatment of the subject. It is best taken in short chunks like a chapter at a time. While the author does a very good job with the subject it is very apparent that he has a background in astronomy and it is helpful if the reader has an understanding of the subject.
The best part of the book overall is the short vignettes that the author uses at the beginning of each chapter to set the tone for that chapter.
I recommend this book to anyone who is serious about understanding critical thinking from a scientific point of view.
I requested this book as I have an interest in in science, information and how the mind works. This is the first book by David Helfand that I have read.
This is not the book for you if you are looking for a light, breezy treatment of the subject. It is best taken in short chunks like a chapter at a time. While the author does a very good job with the subject it is very apparent that he has a background in astronomy and it is helpful if the reader has an understanding of the subject.
The best part of the book overall is the short vignettes that the author uses at the beginning of each chapter to set the tone for that chapter.
I recommend this book to anyone who is serious about understanding critical thinking from a scientific point of view.
December 13, 2015
This is a book to be taken slowly. I have a relatively strong interest in math and science, but less than average ability, so reading large segments at a time proved quite difficult. My brain wandered significantly while reading.
I appreciate what the author is trying to do. He is using the first several chapters to try to train your brain for the final few where he presents science vs. pseudoscience. It's similar in structure to Portal where the first 13 levels are actually tutorial levels for the final 10% of the game. He's even given several sample problems in the appendix (and their answers) for further mental exercise.
So, if you're looking for a refresher in math, science and/or critical thinking, this is a good exercise. Be prepared to take it slow, though. Helfand says he understands that his audience probably hasn't doesn't these kinds of mental exercises in some time, but I still felt that he was overestimating my abilities.
I appreciate what the author is trying to do. He is using the first several chapters to try to train your brain for the final few where he presents science vs. pseudoscience. It's similar in structure to Portal where the first 13 levels are actually tutorial levels for the final 10% of the game. He's even given several sample problems in the appendix (and their answers) for further mental exercise.
So, if you're looking for a refresher in math, science and/or critical thinking, this is a good exercise. Be prepared to take it slow, though. Helfand says he understands that his audience probably hasn't doesn't these kinds of mental exercises in some time, but I still felt that he was overestimating my abilities.
March 16, 2016
Nicely done and satisfyingly curmudgeonly; also, accurate. I fear the math might scare the audience that really should read this book but truly it's quite straightforward and people should persevere.
April 8, 2018
Be as curious as a five-year-old and work like a thirty-five-year-old.
Observations. Summary. Quotes.
I went to a talk the other day by this professor. We chatted about Paul Davies and then I purchased the book. The book's content is strong, but I think there are two things that set it back:
1. The book has the wrong title.
2. From a hardened data deist, I chuckle at the underlying reverence for Nature and the scientific method from. The assumptions and underlying set of required dogmatic points that go along with the belief that science is the ultimate guide are the same that are mocked in religion.
Wrong Title
When I think "Survival Guide" I think OK, if zombies are coming what should I do? Or rather, I'm camping, what do I need, what are the steps required. A how to, if you will.
The book is not a how to guide your way through the avalanche of bullshit and overstimulation amplified by screens. It's more of an informational pamphlet to the Church of Science. That's fine, but keep that in mind if you think it's about ways to build up how to rationally and skeptically analyze the world.
The Church of Science
Let's talk about the universe. Everything around us, the sea of beings moving around a rocky planet, flying around a nuclear explosion we call a sun that keeps us warm, suspended in a galaxy, as part of a beautiful and ordered Cosmos. What are those sea of beings doing? Building, creating, expressing love to the divine.
That description could be articulated by Einstein or St. Augustine or countless scientists, artists, and mystics through the ages.
Helfand in fact describes the scientific process as standing on the shoulders of giants, building a more and more beautiful cathedral. The metaphor is apt. My only hope is that those who are building the cathedral keep in mind that the real marvel is what lies beyond it and beyond our feeble intellectual abilities to figure "it" out. We get better and better, but we'll never figure it all out and the "we" (us) + the "figuring" (our actions) will never weigh more than the "it" (the unspeakable, the cosmos, the unity).
He also makes Nature a proper noun in the entire book. So if that which we study is divine (or at least worthy of a proper noun) and the process by which we contemplate it is akin to building a cathedral, what's the difference between that and the mystical meditations of a monk? Perhaps one has a more consistent output of the factor (there are more tools and technologies than there are paintings and songs) but it's part of the same process. When science (the yin) flatly denies its reciprocal relationship to the spiritual (the yang) it's silly. This author does it repeatedly.
Quotes
Qualitative quantitative reasoning. 55
According to IMB] Roughly 90% of all the information that exists in the world today was created in the past two years. Not too much time for editing, testing, and serious reflection. 3
Throughout most of human prehistory, validating information and sharing it was both valued and rewarded. Information may have been quite limited, but its quality was high. 3
In a target market of seventy million consumers - or sevel billion - there is no incentive for altruism. If more profit - in dollars, in power, in fame - is to be gained from misinformation why not go for it? And when dollars, power, and fame are combined (as they often are in politics), the incentive is all the stronger. Misinformation predominates. 3
Only human imagination and ingenuity, channeled by the systematic and skeptical curiosity we call science, provide a viable path forward for our species. 13 [This sentence is simply incorrect. Unchecked science gives us nuclear weapons, the efficiency of death camps, the technology that allows a state to spy on its citizens, and an excuse to torment gay people. Science without religion is lame. The spirit to guide, law and politics to put checks and balances, humans to cooperate not over compete.]
Truth - with a capital "T" - is not a matter of great interest. Truth is a human invention; Nature is the primary object of my concern. My finite mind can comprehend only a tiny fraction of Nature. 17 [Hilarious double think. Truth doesn't deserve a capital letter, but Nature does.]
CO2 concentration peaks in May and bottoms out in October. This is a consequence of the plant life on Earth breathing. 218 [Flipping wow]
Observations. Summary. Quotes.
I went to a talk the other day by this professor. We chatted about Paul Davies and then I purchased the book. The book's content is strong, but I think there are two things that set it back:
1. The book has the wrong title.
2. From a hardened data deist, I chuckle at the underlying reverence for Nature and the scientific method from. The assumptions and underlying set of required dogmatic points that go along with the belief that science is the ultimate guide are the same that are mocked in religion.
Wrong Title
When I think "Survival Guide" I think OK, if zombies are coming what should I do? Or rather, I'm camping, what do I need, what are the steps required. A how to, if you will.
The book is not a how to guide your way through the avalanche of bullshit and overstimulation amplified by screens. It's more of an informational pamphlet to the Church of Science. That's fine, but keep that in mind if you think it's about ways to build up how to rationally and skeptically analyze the world.
The Church of Science
Let's talk about the universe. Everything around us, the sea of beings moving around a rocky planet, flying around a nuclear explosion we call a sun that keeps us warm, suspended in a galaxy, as part of a beautiful and ordered Cosmos. What are those sea of beings doing? Building, creating, expressing love to the divine.
That description could be articulated by Einstein or St. Augustine or countless scientists, artists, and mystics through the ages.
Helfand in fact describes the scientific process as standing on the shoulders of giants, building a more and more beautiful cathedral. The metaphor is apt. My only hope is that those who are building the cathedral keep in mind that the real marvel is what lies beyond it and beyond our feeble intellectual abilities to figure "it" out. We get better and better, but we'll never figure it all out and the "we" (us) + the "figuring" (our actions) will never weigh more than the "it" (the unspeakable, the cosmos, the unity).
He also makes Nature a proper noun in the entire book. So if that which we study is divine (or at least worthy of a proper noun) and the process by which we contemplate it is akin to building a cathedral, what's the difference between that and the mystical meditations of a monk? Perhaps one has a more consistent output of the factor (there are more tools and technologies than there are paintings and songs) but it's part of the same process. When science (the yin) flatly denies its reciprocal relationship to the spiritual (the yang) it's silly. This author does it repeatedly.
Quotes
Qualitative quantitative reasoning. 55
According to IMB] Roughly 90% of all the information that exists in the world today was created in the past two years. Not too much time for editing, testing, and serious reflection. 3
Throughout most of human prehistory, validating information and sharing it was both valued and rewarded. Information may have been quite limited, but its quality was high. 3
In a target market of seventy million consumers - or sevel billion - there is no incentive for altruism. If more profit - in dollars, in power, in fame - is to be gained from misinformation why not go for it? And when dollars, power, and fame are combined (as they often are in politics), the incentive is all the stronger. Misinformation predominates. 3
Only human imagination and ingenuity, channeled by the systematic and skeptical curiosity we call science, provide a viable path forward for our species. 13 [This sentence is simply incorrect. Unchecked science gives us nuclear weapons, the efficiency of death camps, the technology that allows a state to spy on its citizens, and an excuse to torment gay people. Science without religion is lame. The spirit to guide, law and politics to put checks and balances, humans to cooperate not over compete.]
Truth - with a capital "T" - is not a matter of great interest. Truth is a human invention; Nature is the primary object of my concern. My finite mind can comprehend only a tiny fraction of Nature. 17 [Hilarious double think. Truth doesn't deserve a capital letter, but Nature does.]
CO2 concentration peaks in May and bottoms out in October. This is a consequence of the plant life on Earth breathing. 218 [Flipping wow]
August 19, 2019
Intelligence is becoming increasingly rarer in these days of lived experiences, personal truths, social media echo chambers, and emotional appeals. David Helfand, author of A Survival Guide to the Misinformation Age, brings to light how one who is aware of their biases can navigate the multitude of half-baked claims about reality permeating modern (hopefully never post-modern) society.
With alacrity and a knack for quantitative calculations, Helfand delves into certain aspects of information handling, and by extension information fumbling. At the core of the persistence and spread of misinformation are innate human foibles, made manifest through logical fallacies and inherent biases. With stunning examples, Helfand highlights our propensity for such phenomena as groupthink, anecdotes overriding empirical evidence, stubbornness, and the ever-so-irritating yet never-ending unfalsifiable claims.
What is truly, mindbogglingly astonishing – and Helfand strikes out against this as well – is the codification of misinformation, or disinformation, by the politically and economically powerful. With great consternation, Helfand unpacks how the lack of rigorous scientific education, particularly in North America, has lead to the rise of contrarianism. That contrarianism has been reinforced via the marketplace, a place backed by the aforementioned growth of intellectual bubbles. These bubbles can take many forms, and Helfand is no slave to the bubbles blown from his own sphere of academia: religions, cultural enclaves, social media cults, and self-reinforcing fields of “expertise”.
It was quite refreshing to see Helfand, a staunch logical positivist and empirical rationalist if this book is any indication, not spare his academic compatriots from criticism. Indeed, it is certainly low-hanging fruit to go after religious literalists, or individuals who shirked their education in favor of shallow pursuits, or politicos looking for votes from any angle. With practiced ease, Helfand certainly does dispel their tired arguments. But where A Survival Guide to the Misinformation Age really shines is when the author tackles attacks on science by pseudoscientists, most notably climate change deniers and postmodernist academics. Whether it’s an analysis on how the increased CO2 emissions are circulated through a complex biosphere, or on how self-proclaimed victim groups (usually proclaimed by unelected activists) present flimsy evidence for supposed injustices, Helfand tackles the quantitative and qualitative with a flair for exactness and a knack for handling numerous elements in a system.
At times the “back of the envelope” calculations got tedious, and were a sign of someone out-of-touch with current technologies. Nobody in their right mind would actually expect an employee (or prospective employee in the authors interview example) to calculate solutions to complex systems on a napkin anymore; the key these days is to have a knack for delineating the procedure with the utilization of simple resources, which would include the Internet. Nonetheless, A Survival Guide to the Misinformation Age is a taut, logical read that gives hope for the future.
Particular to this reader, who lives in the realm of university academia, was Helfand’s surgical digs at how fields self-reinforce their knowledge, and utilize the same fallacies to arrive at conclusions. It is no harder or easier to be surrounded by lunatics married to the intellectual cancer that is identity politics. Postmodernist academics wrap their nonsensical scripture concerning the cancer in the traditional academic outputs: journals, conferences, departments, theoretical frameworks. Yet with just a small application of skepticism and reason – the same skepticism and reason that one typically uses to critique supernatural religious claims – anyone can see through the nonsense. Question is, will they? Or are we ultimately to be tied-down by groupthink, anecdotes overriding empirical evidence, stubbornness, and the ever-so-irritating yet never-ending unfalsifiable claim?
With alacrity and a knack for quantitative calculations, Helfand delves into certain aspects of information handling, and by extension information fumbling. At the core of the persistence and spread of misinformation are innate human foibles, made manifest through logical fallacies and inherent biases. With stunning examples, Helfand highlights our propensity for such phenomena as groupthink, anecdotes overriding empirical evidence, stubbornness, and the ever-so-irritating yet never-ending unfalsifiable claims.
What is truly, mindbogglingly astonishing – and Helfand strikes out against this as well – is the codification of misinformation, or disinformation, by the politically and economically powerful. With great consternation, Helfand unpacks how the lack of rigorous scientific education, particularly in North America, has lead to the rise of contrarianism. That contrarianism has been reinforced via the marketplace, a place backed by the aforementioned growth of intellectual bubbles. These bubbles can take many forms, and Helfand is no slave to the bubbles blown from his own sphere of academia: religions, cultural enclaves, social media cults, and self-reinforcing fields of “expertise”.
It was quite refreshing to see Helfand, a staunch logical positivist and empirical rationalist if this book is any indication, not spare his academic compatriots from criticism. Indeed, it is certainly low-hanging fruit to go after religious literalists, or individuals who shirked their education in favor of shallow pursuits, or politicos looking for votes from any angle. With practiced ease, Helfand certainly does dispel their tired arguments. But where A Survival Guide to the Misinformation Age really shines is when the author tackles attacks on science by pseudoscientists, most notably climate change deniers and postmodernist academics. Whether it’s an analysis on how the increased CO2 emissions are circulated through a complex biosphere, or on how self-proclaimed victim groups (usually proclaimed by unelected activists) present flimsy evidence for supposed injustices, Helfand tackles the quantitative and qualitative with a flair for exactness and a knack for handling numerous elements in a system.
At times the “back of the envelope” calculations got tedious, and were a sign of someone out-of-touch with current technologies. Nobody in their right mind would actually expect an employee (or prospective employee in the authors interview example) to calculate solutions to complex systems on a napkin anymore; the key these days is to have a knack for delineating the procedure with the utilization of simple resources, which would include the Internet. Nonetheless, A Survival Guide to the Misinformation Age is a taut, logical read that gives hope for the future.
Particular to this reader, who lives in the realm of university academia, was Helfand’s surgical digs at how fields self-reinforce their knowledge, and utilize the same fallacies to arrive at conclusions. It is no harder or easier to be surrounded by lunatics married to the intellectual cancer that is identity politics. Postmodernist academics wrap their nonsensical scripture concerning the cancer in the traditional academic outputs: journals, conferences, departments, theoretical frameworks. Yet with just a small application of skepticism and reason – the same skepticism and reason that one typically uses to critique supernatural religious claims – anyone can see through the nonsense. Question is, will they? Or are we ultimately to be tied-down by groupthink, anecdotes overriding empirical evidence, stubbornness, and the ever-so-irritating yet never-ending unfalsifiable claim?
December 24, 2016
A Survival Guide to the Misinformation Age is a guide to inculcating scientific habits of mind. It’s rather like The Demon-Haunted World, in presenting the virtues of the scientific method and skepticism, but is much more detailed. The author hails from a technical profession, astronomy, and in addition to teaching the reader to think critically about numbers and fault-check claims, he attempts to guide readers through interpreting statistics and reading graphs. It thus combines more general practices (scrutinizing a claim to see how it might be falsifiable) with training in more detailed analysis. The skills involved have much broader use than just in thinking critically about science journalism; they apply just as well to evaluating economic charts. I am not nearly as optimistic as the author that people can be prompted to start giving news reports more scrutiny, but even learning that million, billion, and trillion are not synonyms for “a lot” would be a help. He ends the book with an argument for a scientific claim that uses the mental ‘apps’ taught prior. His passionate for science will carry over well, even if readers don’t respond to the challenge of breaking out paper and pencil to break down every graph for what the data really means.
October 2, 2021
An essential and downright funny book about interpreting data in an age when we are inundated with information.
Helfand has a lot of the same beliefs and criticisms of science that I do and I enjoyed reading his dry humor throughout this book. I love that his favorite word is "why" and the delight he takes in discovery. He writes eloquently about the importance of curiosity and how science is a celebration of nature and human imagination.
This book does a fantastic job of explaining how to identify bad data. The chapter on interpreting graphs is worth the price of the book. The chapters on understanding probability, distributions, and statistics were just as valuable.
The problem with this book is not in its writing, but in the topic. This is essentially a math book. And if you want to understand math you need to calculate problems. If you want to get good at understanding graphs you have to practice interpreting them.
This book on its own is a wonderful introduction on data interpretation. To be truly useful to the reader they should use it as a stepping stone to other topics. Since the focus of the book is math that means cracking open a statistics book.
Helfand has a lot of the same beliefs and criticisms of science that I do and I enjoyed reading his dry humor throughout this book. I love that his favorite word is "why" and the delight he takes in discovery. He writes eloquently about the importance of curiosity and how science is a celebration of nature and human imagination.
This book does a fantastic job of explaining how to identify bad data. The chapter on interpreting graphs is worth the price of the book. The chapters on understanding probability, distributions, and statistics were just as valuable.
The problem with this book is not in its writing, but in the topic. This is essentially a math book. And if you want to understand math you need to calculate problems. If you want to get good at understanding graphs you have to practice interpreting them.
This book on its own is a wonderful introduction on data interpretation. To be truly useful to the reader they should use it as a stepping stone to other topics. Since the focus of the book is math that means cracking open a statistics book.
December 30, 2020
I had hoped this book would cover more of the Misinformation Age. Instead, we get a lot of science and math. I confess I had to skim over some of it as I did not have the time to refresh on the necessary foundations of science and math. There are some useful everyday tips:
- People, including journalists, often confuse millions and billions. So check any numbers using these measures.
- Back of the envelope calculations-don't worry about calculating a figure exactly, use rounded numbers because often you just need a "ballpark" number.
- Check probabilities because we often accept the improbable.
- Question: are 2 things correlated, or does one cause another?
The book has a good definition of what is science and what is not science. It also goes into detail regarding climate change and the fear that vaccines cause autism.
Bottom line: Be skeptical about everything, and be willing to do the work to figure out if something is right or if it is wrong.
Recommended only if you have a strong math and science background.
- People, including journalists, often confuse millions and billions. So check any numbers using these measures.
- Back of the envelope calculations-don't worry about calculating a figure exactly, use rounded numbers because often you just need a "ballpark" number.
- Check probabilities because we often accept the improbable.
- Question: are 2 things correlated, or does one cause another?
The book has a good definition of what is science and what is not science. It also goes into detail regarding climate change and the fear that vaccines cause autism.
Bottom line: Be skeptical about everything, and be willing to do the work to figure out if something is right or if it is wrong.
Recommended only if you have a strong math and science background.
August 6, 2022
Un bel libro che spiega come funziona davvero la scienza
Nell'introduzione che David Helfand ha scritto espressamente per l'edizione italiana di questo suo libro, l'autore spiega che è uscito nell'anno in cui Donald Trump vinse le elezioni presidenziali USA e contribuì a rendere abituale il concetto di "fatti alternativi", metafora che come spesso accade nasconde il vero significato di "menzogne". Il libro nasce proprio per aiutare i lettori a riconoscere quali tra le affermazioni apparentemente scientifiche quelle che in realtà sono disinformazione o misinformazione: la differenza - che purtroppo non è ancora stata recepita in italiano - tra le falsità condivise apposta e quelle che sono involontarie. Entrambe sono pericolose, anche se in modo diverso: io posso evitare di credere a quanto scritto da persone notoriamente inaffidabili, ma cascare e condividere a mia volta errori pubblicati da persone di cui mi fido.
Helfand è un astrofisico, e molti esempi arrivano dal suo campo, e risulteranno pertanto ostici a chi non ha un'esperienza specifica. Ma è anche stato un convinto fautore della necessità di dare una formazione scientifica a tutti gli universitari, tanto che dopo una battaglia trentennale è riuscito a rendere obbligatorio nella sua Columbia University il corso di Frontiere della scienza, per cui preparò il pamphlet "La buona abitudine al ragionamento scientifico". Il suo punto di vista riprende, aggiornandolo, il pensiero di Edward O. Wilson che afferme che anche se un egoista vince contro un altruista, un gruppo di altruisti vincerà contro un gruppo di egoisti. Secondo Helfand questo è vero solo quando i gruppi sono relativamente piccoli, di una trentina di persone o al massimo qualche centinaio: purtroppo oggi,
Ma cos'è la scienza? Helfand non è molto convinto del mantra sul "metodo scientifico" che riempie le nostre bocche e propone un decalogo di caratteristiche in parte caotiche, come del resto è caotico lo sviluppo della scienza. Soprattutto ci insegna che per cominciare ad avere un approccio scientifico occorre costruirsi un senso delle proporzioni, che aiuta a mettere le cose in prospettiva e permette per esempio di accorgerci quando i milioni vengono scambiati con i miliardi: un capitolo è anche dedicato alla spannometria (i conti fatti sul retro di una busta, come si dice in inglese) e a imparare come si legge davvero un grafico.
I capitoli dedicati a probabilità, statistica e correlazioni possono essere di utilità per coloro che non hanno una formazione specifica sugli argomenti, e un buon ripasso per chi conosce la teoria ma non è abituato ad applicarla nella pratica. In questi capitoli, oltre all'importantissimo concetto di proxy (una variabile osservabile che consideriamo al posto di quella che ci occorre davvero, ma non possiamo osservare), Helfand spiega in modo semplice i concetti di p-value e di deviazioni standard, che spesso vengono taciuti o inseriti come dati di fatto nelle presentazioni di un risultato, quando in realtà dovrebbero essere un indicatore da usare insieme a tanti altri per sapere quanto fidarci di quei dati.
Ma il capitolo senza dubbio più importante del libro è il decimo, "Le buone abitudini al ragionamento scientifico e il futuro della Terra". Non solo troverete un riassunto dei temi trattati nel corso del libro, con le parole chiave in grassetto per notarle meglio, ma vedrete come non tutti gli argomenti portati per dimostrare come la situazione del nostro pianeta stia precipitando sono validi. Attenzione: Helfand non dice che vada tutto bene, anzi. Però, da buon scienziato, non può e non vuole esimersi dal verificare tutte le affermazioni, e usare solo quelle scientificamente valide. Ricordate la differenza tra disinformazione e misinformazione?
Ho alcune riserve sulla traduzione di Fernanda Flamigni, che in vari punti non mi è sembrata all'altezza di un testo divulgativo come questo di Helfand: va bene invitare il lettore a mettere in pratica le strategie descritte nel testo, ma magari non farlo proprio subito sarebbe stato meglio. Molto positivo invece il modo in cui Scienza Express ha deciso di implementare la sitografia: una pagina del loro sito raccoglie tutti i link presentati nel testo, permettendo così anche a chi ha acquistato una copia cartacea di evitare di copiare - e magari sbagliare a scrivere... - una sfilza di URL. Consiglio il libro a tutti, ma sopratutto a chi non ha una formazione scientifica: Helfand ha perfettamente ragione quando dice che anche se siamo unamisti e non intendiamo fare scienza dobbiamo sapere come funziona.
Nell'introduzione che David Helfand ha scritto espressamente per l'edizione italiana di questo suo libro, l'autore spiega che è uscito nell'anno in cui Donald Trump vinse le elezioni presidenziali USA e contribuì a rendere abituale il concetto di "fatti alternativi", metafora che come spesso accade nasconde il vero significato di "menzogne". Il libro nasce proprio per aiutare i lettori a riconoscere quali tra le affermazioni apparentemente scientifiche quelle che in realtà sono disinformazione o misinformazione: la differenza - che purtroppo non è ancora stata recepita in italiano - tra le falsità condivise apposta e quelle che sono involontarie. Entrambe sono pericolose, anche se in modo diverso: io posso evitare di credere a quanto scritto da persone notoriamente inaffidabili, ma cascare e condividere a mia volta errori pubblicati da persone di cui mi fido.
Helfand è un astrofisico, e molti esempi arrivano dal suo campo, e risulteranno pertanto ostici a chi non ha un'esperienza specifica. Ma è anche stato un convinto fautore della necessità di dare una formazione scientifica a tutti gli universitari, tanto che dopo una battaglia trentennale è riuscito a rendere obbligatorio nella sua Columbia University il corso di Frontiere della scienza, per cui preparò il pamphlet "La buona abitudine al ragionamento scientifico". Il suo punto di vista riprende, aggiornandolo, il pensiero di Edward O. Wilson che afferme che anche se un egoista vince contro un altruista, un gruppo di altruisti vincerà contro un gruppo di egoisti. Secondo Helfand questo è vero solo quando i gruppi sono relativamente piccoli, di una trentina di persone o al massimo qualche centinaio: purtroppo oggi,
quando il target è un mercato composto da settanta milioni (o sette miliardi) di consumatori, non c’è alcuno stimolo all’altruismo.
Ma cos'è la scienza? Helfand non è molto convinto del mantra sul "metodo scientifico" che riempie le nostre bocche e propone un decalogo di caratteristiche in parte caotiche, come del resto è caotico lo sviluppo della scienza. Soprattutto ci insegna che per cominciare ad avere un approccio scientifico occorre costruirsi un senso delle proporzioni, che aiuta a mettere le cose in prospettiva e permette per esempio di accorgerci quando i milioni vengono scambiati con i miliardi: un capitolo è anche dedicato alla spannometria (i conti fatti sul retro di una busta, come si dice in inglese) e a imparare come si legge davvero un grafico.
I capitoli dedicati a probabilità, statistica e correlazioni possono essere di utilità per coloro che non hanno una formazione specifica sugli argomenti, e un buon ripasso per chi conosce la teoria ma non è abituato ad applicarla nella pratica. In questi capitoli, oltre all'importantissimo concetto di proxy (una variabile osservabile che consideriamo al posto di quella che ci occorre davvero, ma non possiamo osservare), Helfand spiega in modo semplice i concetti di p-value e di deviazioni standard, che spesso vengono taciuti o inseriti come dati di fatto nelle presentazioni di un risultato, quando in realtà dovrebbero essere un indicatore da usare insieme a tanti altri per sapere quanto fidarci di quei dati.
Ma il capitolo senza dubbio più importante del libro è il decimo, "Le buone abitudini al ragionamento scientifico e il futuro della Terra". Non solo troverete un riassunto dei temi trattati nel corso del libro, con le parole chiave in grassetto per notarle meglio, ma vedrete come non tutti gli argomenti portati per dimostrare come la situazione del nostro pianeta stia precipitando sono validi. Attenzione: Helfand non dice che vada tutto bene, anzi. Però, da buon scienziato, non può e non vuole esimersi dal verificare tutte le affermazioni, e usare solo quelle scientificamente valide. Ricordate la differenza tra disinformazione e misinformazione?
Ho alcune riserve sulla traduzione di Fernanda Flamigni, che in vari punti non mi è sembrata all'altezza di un testo divulgativo come questo di Helfand: va bene invitare il lettore a mettere in pratica le strategie descritte nel testo, ma magari non farlo proprio subito sarebbe stato meglio. Molto positivo invece il modo in cui Scienza Express ha deciso di implementare la sitografia: una pagina del loro sito raccoglie tutti i link presentati nel testo, permettendo così anche a chi ha acquistato una copia cartacea di evitare di copiare - e magari sbagliare a scrivere... - una sfilza di URL. Consiglio il libro a tutti, ma sopratutto a chi non ha una formazione scientifica: Helfand ha perfettamente ragione quando dice che anche se siamo unamisti e non intendiamo fare scienza dobbiamo sapere come funziona.
October 5, 2017
I am really confused who the audience for this is. Focusing on simple scientific methods and statistics this book covers well trodden ground of how humans are not good at measures of scale or estimating probability. The title suggests a that there will be concrete action items for how to deal with the rise or misinformation not just how to calculate a probability.
Anyone with any training in math or science or who has read any Malcolm Gladwell book or any statistics think-piece will know all of this book covers.
Anyone with any training in math or science or who has read any Malcolm Gladwell book or any statistics think-piece will know all of this book covers.
November 18, 2021
I like this kind of book but I had a harder time with this one. It is a book that talks about a lot of statistical methods and concepts but is written by a non-statistician. Written by a professor in astronomy there are a lot of astronomy related examples to illustrate his points. There is a weird chapter on climate change that is basically his Powerpoint presentation on why climate change is a real thing based on the data. It is meant as an example but it sticks out and breaks up the cohesiveness of the book. He is big on science as a way to cut through misinformation.
June 27, 2022
Admittedly took a long hiatus before finishing this book. I am definitely forgetting how some of the earlier chapters went, but nevertheless this book is quite detailed and stressed the importance of skepticism. Too often, we take news headlines, journal articles and more, as grounded and true, forgetting to question what we read. This book highlights why this is dangerous, and especially nowadays why this is so important. Thanks to technology we have so much knowledge at our fingertips, but deciphering that which is accurate/useful is a must have skill.
August 30, 2025
Very good examination of the nature of science and how disinformation is rampant in our modern world. Lots of math in the early chapters, will be tough slugging for those not good at math, luckily I have a pretty decent math background. Good discussion of climate change. Appendix has problems to practice the various approaches in the text.
Read
August 17, 2021Good book, but read only up to Chapter 7 before it had to be returned to the library. May check it out again sometime to finish. Good examples of bad thinking, although I doubt that anyone who needs to learn this will.
April 11, 2023
This book has a good lesson on how information can be given in multiple ways that can be misleading as well as real information on science related topics that are often covered by the media.
A great lesson on interpreting data to find the truth for yourself.
A great lesson on interpreting data to find the truth for yourself.
November 26, 2018
This should be required reading.
Want to read
April 17, 2021Note: I received a digital review copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley.
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