11 min · 11 chaptersNarrated in your voice
What it's about
Ben Goldacre dissects how bad science infiltrates media, medicine, and public policy, teaching readers to spot the difference between real evidence and its counterfeit. Drawing on his 'Bad Science' newspaper column, he argues that most people, including journalists and doctors, misunderstand basic statistical and methodological concepts, leaving them vulnerable to nutritionists, homeopaths, pharmaceutical marketing, and sensationalist reporting. The book matters because it gives ordinary readers tools to evaluate health claims critically rather than deferring to authority or anecdote.
Reading plan
Pick a finish date and Genius lays out the days — the plan shows today's target and keeps you honest.
Read together
Start a circle and share the code — everyone sees everyone's honest place in the book. Accountability, not leaderboards.
Who it's for
- Anyone who has ever been confused by conflicting health headlines and wants to know why - Students and professionals who need a plain-language grounding in how clinical evidence is actually tested - Skeptics of alternative medicine who want rigorous, specific ammunition rather than vague dismissal
What’s inside
- 1The Allure of the Quack1 min
Alternative medicine practitioners succeed not because their remedies work but because they offer patients time, attention, and narrative meaning that conventional medicine often withholds.
- 2Why Anecdote Feels Like Proof1 min
Personal testimony and single case stories are systematically unreliable as evidence because human memory and perception are shaped by expectation, not just by what happened.
- 3The Logic of the Randomized Controlled Trial1 min
The randomized controlled trial is not bureaucratic overkill but the only reliable way to separate a treatment's real effect from coincidence, bias, and placebo.
- 4The Nutritionist's Trick1 min
Popular nutritionism dresses up selective, unreplicated, or fabricated science in the language of research to sell products and personal brands, exploiting public trust in anything that sounds scientific.
- 5How Journalists Manufacture Panic1 min
Health journalism systematically distorts science because the incentives of newsrooms reward dramatic, simple stories over accurate, complicated ones.
- 6The Placebo Effect Weaponized by Industry1 min
Placebo and expectation effects are not just an obstacle for researchers to control for, but a phenomenon that unscrupulous marketers and even some doctors deliberately exploit for profit.
- 7Big Pharma and the Games Within the Rules1 min
The pharmaceutical industry does not need to break scientific rules to mislead the public; it can distort evidence entirely through legal manipulation of trial design, selective publication, and marketing dressed as education.
- 8Fixing the System: Registries, Transparency, and Skepticism1 min
The solution to bad science is structural reform, mandatory trial registration and full publication, combined with widespread public statistical literacy, not merely catching individual villains.
About Ben Goldacre
Ben Goldacre is a British physician, academic, and science writer known for his Guardian column 'Bad Science' and his work on evidence-based medicine and research transparency, including the AllTrials campaign against selective publication of clinical trial results. He trained in medicine and later epidemiology, giving him both clinical and statistical grounding for his critiques.
