Is That a Fact?
Frauds, Quacks, and the Real Science of Everyday Life
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4.3 • 3 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
The bestselling “quackbuster” and “tireless tub-thumper against pseudoscience” fishes for the facts in a flood of misinformation (Maclean’s).
Eat this and live to 100. Don’t, and die. Today, hyperboles dominate the media, which makes parsing science from fiction an arduous task when deciding what to eat, what chemicals to avoid, and what’s best for the environment. In Is That a Fact?, bestselling author Dr. Joe Schwarcz carefully navigates through the storm of misinformation to help us separate fact from folly and shrewdness from foolishness.
Are GMOs really harmful? Or could they help developing countries? Which “miracle weight-loss foods” gained popularity through exuberant data dredging? Is BPA dangerous or just a victim of unforgiving media hype? Is organic better? Schwarcz questions the reliability and motives of “experts” in this “easy-to-understand yet critical look at what’s fact and what’s plain nonsense.
“Takes its readers through the carnival of pseudoscience, the morass of half-truths and, finally, the relatively safe road of reproducible scientific knowledge. This journey is made all the more enjoyable by Dr. Schwarcz’s surgical use of words and his mastery of public writing . . . [He] can always be counted on to write about the chemistry of the world in a way that is both entertaining and educational.” —Cracked Science
“Written with a light touch and refreshing humor, this book provides a solid, authoritative starting point for anyone beginning to look at the world with a skeptical eye and a refresher for those further along that path.” —Library Journal
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Schwarcz (Dr. Joe and What You Didn't Know), director of McGill University's office for science and society, provides the straight dope on a collection of chemical cases that range from fiction to fact. In mostly simple language, he provides good criticism of celebrity pseudoscience, Health Canada's implicit endorsements of homeopathic products as effective, and California's Proposition 65, which would declare bisphenol A (BPA) a reproductive hazard. More attention is focused on homeopathy to more fully skewer it as a practice that cannot be supported by science. Calling out individual scientific claims as "scientifically bankrupt slop," "garbled rhetoric," "unsubstantiated blather," and "nonsense" makes for entertaining reading, but may be less effective in the stated goal of teaching "how to separate sense from nonsense" than describing in a more general fashion how readers may properly apply critical reasoning skills to recognize false claims for themselves. That's something Schwarcz does do in some cases, for example, when contrasting criteria currently used to define risk to human health and the criteria we more rationally should be using, instead. Readers looking for curious light anecdotes about science being used and misused will be satisfied.
