Science Fictions Science Fictions

Science Fictions

How Fraud, Bias, Negligence, and Hype Undermine the Search for Truth

    • 4.5 • 4 Ratings
    • $11.99
    • $11.99

Publisher Description

An insider’s view of science reveals why many scientific results cannot be relied upon – and how the system can be reformed.

Science is how we understand the world. Yet failures in peer review and mistakes in statistics have rendered a shocking number of scientific studies useless – or, worse, badly misleading. Such errors have distorted our knowledge in fields as wide-ranging as medicine, physics, nutrition, education, genetics, economics, and the search for extraterrestrial life. As Science Fictions makes clear, the current system of research funding and publication not only fails to safeguard us from blunders but actively encourages bad science – with sometimes deadly consequences.

Stuart Ritchie’s own work challenging an infamous psychology experiment helped spark what is now widely known as the “replication crisis,” the realization that supposed scientific truths are often just plain wrong. Now, he reveals the very human biases, misunderstandings, and deceptions that undermine the scientific endeavor: from contamination in science labs to the secret vaults of failed studies that nobody gets to see; from outright cheating with fake data to the more common, but still ruinous, temptation to exaggerate mediocre results for a shot at scientific fame.

Yet Science Fictions is far from a counsel of despair. Rather, it’s a defense of the scientific method against the pressures and perverse incentives that lead scientists to bend the rules. By illustrating the many ways that scientists go wrong, Ritchie gives us the knowledge we need to spot dubious research and points the way to reforms that could make science trustworthy once again.

GENRE
Science & Nature
RELEASED
2020
July 21
LANGUAGE
EN
English
LENGTH
320
Pages
PUBLISHER
Henry Holt and Co.
SELLER
Macmillan
SIZE
5.5
MB

More Books Like This

Why Trust Science? Why Trust Science?
2021
Statistics Done Wrong Statistics Done Wrong
2015
Gregory Petsko in Genome Biology Gregory Petsko in Genome Biology
2010
Failure Failure
2015
Reality Check Reality Check
2013
Are We All Scientific Experts Now? Are We All Scientific Experts Now?
2014

More Books by Stuart Ritchie

Customers Also Bought

A Survival Guide to the Misinformation Age A Survival Guide to the Misinformation Age
2016
The Shape of a Life The Shape of a Life
2019
The Elements We Live By The Elements We Live By
2020
The Scientific Attitude The Scientific Attitude
2019
13.8 13.8
2016
North Pole, South Pole North Pole, South Pole
2011