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Panicology: Two Statisticians Explain What's Worth Worrying About (and What's Not) in the 21st Century
Are you afraid you might succumb to bird flu? Worried that a life of poverty awaits you in old age? Concerned that you might not be having as much sex as the French? Anxious that our planet is under threat from climate change or a collision with an asteroid? If any, or all, of these things worry you, you're not alone. Anxiety is a part of modern life. But why? We're living longer, safer, and healthier lives than at any time in human history. So what is there to worry about?
In this witty and revealing book, Simon Briscoe and Hugh Aldersey-Williams strip away the hysteria that surrounds over forty of today's most common scare stories, from overpopulation and murder rates to fish shortages and obesity levels, and show the extraordinary extent to which statistics are manipulated or misrepresented by vested interests and the media, eager to exploit our fears. And most importantly they offer a toolkit for skepticism—ways of helping readers sort out what really is worth panicking about from the stuff that really isn't.
In this witty and revealing book, Simon Briscoe and Hugh Aldersey-Williams strip away the hysteria that surrounds over forty of today's most common scare stories, from overpopulation and murder rates to fish shortages and obesity levels, and show the extraordinary extent to which statistics are manipulated or misrepresented by vested interests and the media, eager to exploit our fears. And most importantly they offer a toolkit for skepticism—ways of helping readers sort out what really is worth panicking about from the stuff that really isn't.
290 pages, Hardcover
First published February 28, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
August 29, 2009
I should have backed away slowly when I saw the blurb that started "In the spirit of Freakonomics" because I didn't much like that either.
This is a cute pop-science explanation of statistics, the media and why we as a culture have such difficulty understanding what our risks for various things actually are. Fun but ultimately too simple. Might be helpful for people who watch the TV news a lot.
This is a cute pop-science explanation of statistics, the media and why we as a culture have such difficulty understanding what our risks for various things actually are. Fun but ultimately too simple. Might be helpful for people who watch the TV news a lot.
July 7, 2009
It has taken me WEEKS to read the first half of this book, but I don't think it's the fault of the book. I think it's not a good idea for me to try to read a book on statistics in the summer! There are some really interesting parts, and I'd like to get back to it sometime, but I'm not going to try to force myself to keep reading it right now.
February 21, 2026
There were many reasons to stop this book, including:
- The authors' blatant bias in the introduction, omitting certain statistics and telling one-sided stories about nuanced issues
- The inevitability that it is extremely dated, having been written pre-Trump, pre-Covid, and pre-AI
- The embarrassing grammar mistakes, such as "it plays a contribution," verbs with no subject, incomplete clauses masquerading as sentences, and run-on sentences with dangling modifiers
- The way that each section often meandered through loosely-related relevant facts without really concluding much or providing a coherent through line or argument
- The fact that one of the authors is currently on the board of an openly transphobic organization
I considered stopping it several times, but I also learned some interesting things, mostly about salt and bird flu. I thought maybe it was worth skimming, even if I didn't read the whole thing in depth. However, I finally gave up after the section on the gender pay gap. It's difficult to succinctly describe everything that was wrong with it, but here's a few things the authors concluded:
- Given that the Equal Pay Act was passed in 1963, it's entirely possible that gender discrimination simply doesn't exist anymore and discrimination is a thing of the past (yes, literally they said this)
- Even if the pay gap exists, does that mean it's an unfair pay gap? Maybe women should be paid less.
- Yes, the jobs dominated by women are usually paid less than the jobs men dominate, but that doesn't mean it has anything to do with discrimination. It's not discrimination that women's labor is consistently undervalued, or that as women enter a field, median wages typically fall, or that historically female jobs (like computing) only became high-paying when they became male-dominated. This is irrelevant to the authors.
- Women are underpaid because they don't ask for raises, and this is simply due to inherent personality differences between men and women, which has nothing to do with discrimination. No attempt is made at reasoning out whether women might have different attitudes than men towards asking for a raise due to differences in how women are socialized. No critical thinking about how a patriarchal system that teaches men to go after what they want but teaches women not to make a fuss could contribute to this disparity.
- At the end of each section, the authors provide some ratings on a scale of 1 to 5: how much risk is associated with this problem if it is not solved and how important is personal responsibility in solving this problem? For example, terrorism has moderate to severe risks if it happens, but individual private citizens have very little effect on preventing it. For the issue of the gender pay gap, the authors found that the risk was 1 out of 5, while personal responsibility is 4 out of 5. Really driving home the complete disregard for any systemic challenges women face.
So, basically the overall takeaway for this entire section was that women simply need to make different choices, and the gender gap will go away. No responsibility for their male coworkers or their husbands or their employers. Just women who should overcome the patriarchy and be better and then their problems will be solved. It was so uninformed, dated, and incomplete – not to mention offensive, given that it was written by two men who clearly had no understanding of a working woman's experience – that I simply had to stop reading it and give it up.
- The authors' blatant bias in the introduction, omitting certain statistics and telling one-sided stories about nuanced issues
- The inevitability that it is extremely dated, having been written pre-Trump, pre-Covid, and pre-AI
- The embarrassing grammar mistakes, such as "it plays a contribution," verbs with no subject, incomplete clauses masquerading as sentences, and run-on sentences with dangling modifiers
- The way that each section often meandered through loosely-related relevant facts without really concluding much or providing a coherent through line or argument
- The fact that one of the authors is currently on the board of an openly transphobic organization
I considered stopping it several times, but I also learned some interesting things, mostly about salt and bird flu. I thought maybe it was worth skimming, even if I didn't read the whole thing in depth. However, I finally gave up after the section on the gender pay gap. It's difficult to succinctly describe everything that was wrong with it, but here's a few things the authors concluded:
- Given that the Equal Pay Act was passed in 1963, it's entirely possible that gender discrimination simply doesn't exist anymore and discrimination is a thing of the past (yes, literally they said this)
- Even if the pay gap exists, does that mean it's an unfair pay gap? Maybe women should be paid less.
- Yes, the jobs dominated by women are usually paid less than the jobs men dominate, but that doesn't mean it has anything to do with discrimination. It's not discrimination that women's labor is consistently undervalued, or that as women enter a field, median wages typically fall, or that historically female jobs (like computing) only became high-paying when they became male-dominated. This is irrelevant to the authors.
- Women are underpaid because they don't ask for raises, and this is simply due to inherent personality differences between men and women, which has nothing to do with discrimination. No attempt is made at reasoning out whether women might have different attitudes than men towards asking for a raise due to differences in how women are socialized. No critical thinking about how a patriarchal system that teaches men to go after what they want but teaches women not to make a fuss could contribute to this disparity.
- At the end of each section, the authors provide some ratings on a scale of 1 to 5: how much risk is associated with this problem if it is not solved and how important is personal responsibility in solving this problem? For example, terrorism has moderate to severe risks if it happens, but individual private citizens have very little effect on preventing it. For the issue of the gender pay gap, the authors found that the risk was 1 out of 5, while personal responsibility is 4 out of 5. Really driving home the complete disregard for any systemic challenges women face.
So, basically the overall takeaway for this entire section was that women simply need to make different choices, and the gender gap will go away. No responsibility for their male coworkers or their husbands or their employers. Just women who should overcome the patriarchy and be better and then their problems will be solved. It was so uninformed, dated, and incomplete – not to mention offensive, given that it was written by two men who clearly had no understanding of a working woman's experience – that I simply had to stop reading it and give it up.
June 3, 2012
Aldersey-Williams, Hugh e Simon Briscoe (2009). Panicology: Two Statisticians Explain What’s Worth Worrying About (and What’s Not) in the 21st Century. New York: Skyhorse. 2009. ISBN 9781602396449. Pagine 304. 10,30
Quello di cui questo libro ha da dire è ben riassunto dal sottotitolo: liberamente traducibile in “Due statistici spiegano di che cosa preoccuparsi (e di che cosa invece no) nel XXI secolo.” Ancora di più ci aiuta la sinossi resa disponibile da Amazon:
What exactly are your chances of being struck by a meteorite?
Think you’re having less sex than the French?
How high will sea levels actually rise?
We live in an increasingly uncertain world. There’s so much to worry about it is often hard to know what to really panic about. But stay calm! For Panicology is the perfect answer to the conundrums and questions that bedevil modern life. Putting a lit match to the lies, headlines and statistical twaddle that seeks to frighten us, it explores 40 reasons for worry: from binge-drinking to Frankenstein foods, bird flu to alien abductions – and explores what, if any, effect they will have on your life.
Why worry in ignorance when you can be a happy, informed sceptic?
I due scrivono molto bene (sono inglesi, non americani, e questo aggiunge in humour senza togliere nulla alla chiarezza), ma il libro è a volte un po’ superficiale. Non mi piace per nulla (lo trovo troppo puerile) la piccola trovata di dare un punteggio da 1 a 5 ai diversi aspetti del panico (rappresentato da una gallina in fuga), del rischio (i dadi) e di quanto in nostro potere (un pugno chiuso).
Per me, anche per motivi professionali, la parte più interessante è l’Introduzione, dove gli autori spiegano chiaramente la loro filosofia e che cosa li ha spinti a scrivere il libro: il panico è una pulsione forte e irrazionale, che non soltanto ci fa stare male, ma è anche una pessimo consigliere nelle scelte da fare. Soltanto il senso critico e l’informazione quantitativa attendibile ci possono aiutare: in questo, i temi di Aldersley-Williams (l’autore di Periodic Tales, che sto leggendo) e Briscoe (ex Statistics Editor del Financial Times e attualmente vice-presidente di Timetric) sono affini a quelli trattati da Dan Gardner in Risk, che ho recensito di recente.
Il loro spirito è ben riassunto (sempre nell’Introduzione) da una citazione tratta da Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds di Charles Mackay Il libro è nel pubblico dominio e lo trovate qui):
Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.
***
Qualche citazione. Il riferimento è come di consueto alle posizioni sul Kindle:
Numbers are the “fact” generator in today’s society and the currency in any debate about risk. But they are not all of equal quality – some are manipulated by governments while others are produced by people with a vested interest. Often, proper figures don’t exist – they are opinion surveys or come from administrative systems that do not give us data on the definition we want, leading to poor policy and weaker assessment.Yet those who wish to make a point on television or in the newspapers do it using numbers. Sound-bite statistics, sometimes invented and often inaccurate, seize the imagination even if they crumble under close inspection. [106]
The only alternative is to retreat into anecdote and hopelessly selective assumptions. [115]
Temporary migration, based on a permit system, might be appealing to a skeptical public and might be acceptable for some categories of low-skilled workers, but such newcomers are likely to be less adaptable and integrate more slowly. Ongoing, regular labor needs are unlikely to be met most satisfactorily by recycling temporary workers. [1327]
It will then become clearer that globalization is about massive waves of income redistribution: from workers to consumers, as they can shop around ever more widely for cheaper goods;from expensive labor to cheap labor, as employment expands rapidly in developing countries; and from energy users toward energy producers, as the demand for energy soars in developing countries. [1522]
[…] the key labor market divide going forward will not be between high-skilled and low-skilled workers, but between services that can be delivered electronically from off-shore and those that cannot be. [1532]
“It is a profound privilege to die from stress-related diseases,” says a professor from Stanford University. The point he makes, of course, is that in developed countries we have never had it so good, and that worrying about stress is itself a sign of how charmed our lives are. As a society we have wealth, job choice, and travel opportunities unimaginable only a generation ago, and in our free time we can gamble, drink, surf the Internet, and watch television on super-sized plasma screens to our heart’s content. We have legal safeguards against many of society’s ills, and the hard toil and infectious diseases that filled the Victorian graveyards with youthful corpses have all but gone.And yet it seems we are as nuserable as sin and bogged down with stress. [1596]
A study by Britain’s Health and Safety Executive, the government body responsible for health and safety regulation, suggested that about half a million workers suffered from work-related stress in the latest year, the largest category after backache. [1622]
Do we mean overwork, acute boredom, or something more medical, such as depression or anxiety? [1656: a proposito della troppo vaga definizione di stress]
The National Weather Service puts the average U.S. death toll due to lightning at seventy-three people a year; the global figure must be over a thousand. [1717]
Ideally, we should focus on conserving habitat – then the species that live there will be saved automatically. But being the sentimental souls we are, we prefer to cherish glamorous species of rare orchid or the iconic panda. Fortunately, this is almost as good. If the Chinese succeed in saving the panda – despite the country’s galloping industrialization, conservation efforts are doing well, and recent fieldwork has shown there are more pandas than were thought – it will be because they saved enough of its habitat, and with it hundreds of other species without really trying. [2415]
Arthur C. Clarke famously wrote that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. So why is the magic now black? [2557]
[…] agriculture always has a detrimental effect on the natural ecology-that, in a sense, is its purpose. [2602]
It is impossible to prove a negative, however, and so doubts persist […] [2765]
[…] official agencies are increasingly taking into account not only scientific evidence but also the vagaries of public opinion, evidence-based or not. [2769]
Quello di cui questo libro ha da dire è ben riassunto dal sottotitolo: liberamente traducibile in “Due statistici spiegano di che cosa preoccuparsi (e di che cosa invece no) nel XXI secolo.” Ancora di più ci aiuta la sinossi resa disponibile da Amazon:
What exactly are your chances of being struck by a meteorite?
Think you’re having less sex than the French?
How high will sea levels actually rise?
We live in an increasingly uncertain world. There’s so much to worry about it is often hard to know what to really panic about. But stay calm! For Panicology is the perfect answer to the conundrums and questions that bedevil modern life. Putting a lit match to the lies, headlines and statistical twaddle that seeks to frighten us, it explores 40 reasons for worry: from binge-drinking to Frankenstein foods, bird flu to alien abductions – and explores what, if any, effect they will have on your life.
Why worry in ignorance when you can be a happy, informed sceptic?
I due scrivono molto bene (sono inglesi, non americani, e questo aggiunge in humour senza togliere nulla alla chiarezza), ma il libro è a volte un po’ superficiale. Non mi piace per nulla (lo trovo troppo puerile) la piccola trovata di dare un punteggio da 1 a 5 ai diversi aspetti del panico (rappresentato da una gallina in fuga), del rischio (i dadi) e di quanto in nostro potere (un pugno chiuso).
Per me, anche per motivi professionali, la parte più interessante è l’Introduzione, dove gli autori spiegano chiaramente la loro filosofia e che cosa li ha spinti a scrivere il libro: il panico è una pulsione forte e irrazionale, che non soltanto ci fa stare male, ma è anche una pessimo consigliere nelle scelte da fare. Soltanto il senso critico e l’informazione quantitativa attendibile ci possono aiutare: in questo, i temi di Aldersley-Williams (l’autore di Periodic Tales, che sto leggendo) e Briscoe (ex Statistics Editor del Financial Times e attualmente vice-presidente di Timetric) sono affini a quelli trattati da Dan Gardner in Risk, che ho recensito di recente.
Il loro spirito è ben riassunto (sempre nell’Introduzione) da una citazione tratta da Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds di Charles Mackay Il libro è nel pubblico dominio e lo trovate qui):
Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.
***
Qualche citazione. Il riferimento è come di consueto alle posizioni sul Kindle:
Numbers are the “fact” generator in today’s society and the currency in any debate about risk. But they are not all of equal quality – some are manipulated by governments while others are produced by people with a vested interest. Often, proper figures don’t exist – they are opinion surveys or come from administrative systems that do not give us data on the definition we want, leading to poor policy and weaker assessment.Yet those who wish to make a point on television or in the newspapers do it using numbers. Sound-bite statistics, sometimes invented and often inaccurate, seize the imagination even if they crumble under close inspection. [106]
The only alternative is to retreat into anecdote and hopelessly selective assumptions. [115]
Temporary migration, based on a permit system, might be appealing to a skeptical public and might be acceptable for some categories of low-skilled workers, but such newcomers are likely to be less adaptable and integrate more slowly. Ongoing, regular labor needs are unlikely to be met most satisfactorily by recycling temporary workers. [1327]
It will then become clearer that globalization is about massive waves of income redistribution: from workers to consumers, as they can shop around ever more widely for cheaper goods;from expensive labor to cheap labor, as employment expands rapidly in developing countries; and from energy users toward energy producers, as the demand for energy soars in developing countries. [1522]
[…] the key labor market divide going forward will not be between high-skilled and low-skilled workers, but between services that can be delivered electronically from off-shore and those that cannot be. [1532]
“It is a profound privilege to die from stress-related diseases,” says a professor from Stanford University. The point he makes, of course, is that in developed countries we have never had it so good, and that worrying about stress is itself a sign of how charmed our lives are. As a society we have wealth, job choice, and travel opportunities unimaginable only a generation ago, and in our free time we can gamble, drink, surf the Internet, and watch television on super-sized plasma screens to our heart’s content. We have legal safeguards against many of society’s ills, and the hard toil and infectious diseases that filled the Victorian graveyards with youthful corpses have all but gone.And yet it seems we are as nuserable as sin and bogged down with stress. [1596]
A study by Britain’s Health and Safety Executive, the government body responsible for health and safety regulation, suggested that about half a million workers suffered from work-related stress in the latest year, the largest category after backache. [1622]
Do we mean overwork, acute boredom, or something more medical, such as depression or anxiety? [1656: a proposito della troppo vaga definizione di stress]
The National Weather Service puts the average U.S. death toll due to lightning at seventy-three people a year; the global figure must be over a thousand. [1717]
Ideally, we should focus on conserving habitat – then the species that live there will be saved automatically. But being the sentimental souls we are, we prefer to cherish glamorous species of rare orchid or the iconic panda. Fortunately, this is almost as good. If the Chinese succeed in saving the panda – despite the country’s galloping industrialization, conservation efforts are doing well, and recent fieldwork has shown there are more pandas than were thought – it will be because they saved enough of its habitat, and with it hundreds of other species without really trying. [2415]
Arthur C. Clarke famously wrote that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. So why is the magic now black? [2557]
[…] agriculture always has a detrimental effect on the natural ecology-that, in a sense, is its purpose. [2602]
It is impossible to prove a negative, however, and so doubts persist […] [2765]
[…] official agencies are increasingly taking into account not only scientific evidence but also the vagaries of public opinion, evidence-based or not. [2769]
March 28, 2020
Started it thinking ah some of this has been proven already. Ended it during a pandemic lol
August 24, 2021
interesting in some parts
April 12, 2025
Good, but way less than expected based on the cover.
January 4, 2014
This is a fairly interesting book that attempts to cover all the things that people fret, worry and panic about and tries to explain why the media portrays events and risks and what the reality behind these are, although sadly it doesn't always succeed. This is partly because it makes huge assumptions about what concerns the reader (admittedly there will be bits that 'appeal' to everyone but not everything in here is relevant to all...either that or I worry far far too little!) and partly because this was written before the global recession (making some of the predictions true and others now irrelevant). The difference between the writing styles of the two authors also makes this a little harder to read as the text doesn't always flow well and can jump from one to the other. On the other hand the bits that I did find interesting (largely the environmental ones) were pretty good and did make a good starting point for finding out more. Worth a browse if nothing else.
February 3, 2012
I was quite sorely disappointed by this book that has a lovely cover and synopsis. "Why worry in ignorance when you can be a happy, informed sceptic?"
The read did make me a little more informed but not any happier. It read like Micro Trends but the topics the writers have brought up for discussion do not interest me much. Asteroids, UFOs, underpaid women, viruses, dying cinemas. Err, not interested. If I were to conduct a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) analysis for this book, my net promoter score (NPS) would definitely be in the detractor zone. I am not likely to recommend this to a friend.
The read did make me a little more informed but not any happier. It read like Micro Trends but the topics the writers have brought up for discussion do not interest me much. Asteroids, UFOs, underpaid women, viruses, dying cinemas. Err, not interested. If I were to conduct a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) analysis for this book, my net promoter score (NPS) would definitely be in the detractor zone. I am not likely to recommend this to a friend.
January 1, 2015
The writers of this book rank the panic (public hype), the risk & your own ability to do something/anything about the items that they cover. From declining birth rates to asteroids destroying life on Earth, how realistic is the danger and what it can mean to the human race. It's an interesting read & makes you think about how much self - interest is involved in modern news "headlines." The last chapter covers actions you can take to determine if there is an actual risk associated with a given event/item/behavior/etc.
January 4, 2012
Panicology had the potential to be a good book, the idea was pretty sound, sadly the actual writing of the book lets it down somewhat. One of the authors appears to write coherently whilst the other rather struggles. Numerous paragraphs within the sections of this book seem to fail to make any clear point at all.
February 13, 2016
I enjoyed what I read of this - chapters about how the media exaggerates risk and danger, and creates public panic about statistically improbable or unproven issues. It did get a little 'samey' half way through and I wanted to read fiction instead, so I abandoned this and may come back to it. Interesting subject, could have been better written.
March 10, 2016
While this books plays a bit fast and loose with the word 'panic' (Panini stickers, really?), it's a great collection of reasons not to read the Daily Mail (though it also shows that no media outlet is infallible). Definitely a great book for a sceptic.
November 16, 2009
borrowed from BCPL: due 2009.1114
renewed: due 2009.1208ish
renewed: due 2009.1208ish
October 20, 2014
With the ebola loose out there this books makes a lot of sense. Keep Calm and Carry Forward
February 4, 2024
Dated, for me, but it’s the knowledge of reading and expressing caution. Clickbait is a drug in today’s parlance.
April 30, 2017
I struggled to stay interested in this book which was supposed to explain what things are and aren't worth worrying about. The writing is poor and the analysis didn't impress me.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews