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In Bad Advice, Paul A. Offit shares hard-earned wisdom on the dos and don'ts of battling misinformation. For the past twenty years, Offit has been on the front lines in the fight for sound science and public heath. Stepping into the media spotlight as few scientists have done, he found himself in the crosshairs of powerful groups intent on promoting pseudoscience. Bad Advice discusses science and its adversaries: not just the manias stoked by slick charlatans and their miracle cures but also corrosive, dangerous ideologies such as Holocaust and climate-change denial. Written with wit and passion, Offit's often humorous guide to taking on quack experts and self-appointed activists is a must-read for any American disturbed by the recent uptick in politicized attacks on science.
List of contents
Prologue: On Being Naïve
1. What Science Is—and What It Isn’t
2. White Mice and Windowless Rooms
3. An Alibi for Ignorance
4. Feeding the Beast
5. To Debate or Not to Debate
6. Make ’Em Laugh
7. Science Goes to the Movies
8. The Emperor’s New Clothes
9. Judgment Day
10. The Nuclear Option
11. Pharma Shill
12. A Ray of Hope
Epilogue: The End of the Tour
Acknowledgments
Appendix: Blogs and Podcasts
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
About the author
Paul Offit is Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He holds a BS in Psychology from Tufts University (1973) and an MD from University of Maryland School of Medicine (1977). He is the author of Autism's False Prophets (CUP 2008) and, most recently, Pandora's Lab (Nat Geo 2017).
Summary
Science doesn’t speak for itself. Neck-deep in work that can be messy and confounding and naïve in the ways of public communication, scientists are often unable to package their insights into the neat narratives that the public requires. Enter celebrities, advocates, lobbyists, and the funders behind them, who take advantage of scientists’ reluctance to provide easy answers, flooding the media with misleading or incorrect claims about health risks. Amid this onslaught of spurious information, Americans are more confused than ever about what’s good for them and what isn’t.
In Bad Advice, Paul A. Offit shares hard-earned wisdom on the dos and don’ts of battling misinformation. For the past twenty years, Offit has been on the front lines in the fight for sound science and public heath. Stepping into the media spotlight as few scientists have done—such as being one of the first to speak out against conspiracy theories linking vaccines to autism—he found himself in the crosshairs of powerful groups intent on promoting pseudoscience. Bad Advice discusses science and its adversaries: not just the manias stoked by slick charlatans and their miracle cures but also corrosive, dangerous ideologies such as Holocaust and climate-change denial. Written with wit and passion, Offit’s often humorous guide to taking on quack experts and self-appointed activists is a must-read for any American disturbed by the uptick in politicized attacks on science.
Additional text
The author's droll account of attempts to inform the public about vaccines and even before a congressional hearing make for compelling reading....Recommended
Report
With humor and a unique perspective, Offit takes us step by step through our culture's missteps (and some of his own), relating stories of real science and the difficulties of communicating complicated concepts clearly to a skeptical and sometimes hostile public. Bad Advice shows us how we can succeed in the battle against pseudoscience, seductive gurus with simple messages, and snake oil-hawking celebrities. Adam Ratner, M.D., New York University
