Bad Science – Ben Goldacre

skattejakt-25I purchased Bad Science a while back (quite possibly as much as four years back) with the intention of reading it immediately. For some reason or another that didn’t happen, and it’s been hanging around on the shelf ever since. Now that I finally got around to it I’m very glad I did, and a little annoyed that I didn’t before.

Quite frankly, it’s brilliant. It should be mandatory reading, probably, as it would innoculate (ironically) most sensible people against falling for the more glaring whackery – and some of the not-so-glaring, too.

Goldacre has written what amounts to a textbook on scientific method, explaining by example how tests are supposed to work and how they quite frequently are mangled beyond belief. He also explains why important, but unspectacular results are frequently not published (that a given drug doesn NOT work is important, but it’s hardly exciting). And he teaches you how to tell a good science story in the news from a meaningless one (clue: the way numbers are reported, whether it seems to provide an easy solution to a complex problem and whether sources are referenced so that you could go and check them if you felt like it). Along the way he demonstrates that the human mind is mind-bogglingly strange (why clever people believe stupid things) and that its relationship with the body is even stranger (placebo).

I sure wish I could have read something like this when I was fifteen or so, it would have saved me reading about all the various religious and ‘New Age’ solutions to how the world works and wondering if there was something in it. I never really believed it, but I sure tried hard to convince myself about a few things, mostly religion. In the meantime I somehow grew up and decided I no longer needed a grand answer to life, the universe and everything (or rather a grand question, as we know the answer is in fact 42), and now I can smile in recognition at Goldacre’s waxing lyrical about photosyntesis and how our lungs work:

Like most things in the story the natural sciences can tell about the world, it’s all so beautiful, so gracefully simple, yet so rewardingly complex, so neatly connected – not to mention true –that I can’t even begin to imagine why anyone would ever want to believe some New Age ‘alternative’ nonsense instead. I would go so far as to say that even if we are all under the control of a benevolent God, and the whole of reality turns out to be down to some flaky spiritual ‘energy’ that only alternative therapists can truly harness, that’s still neither so interesting nor so graceful as the most basic stuff I was taught at school about how plants work.

(p. 117. This in response to various ‘alternative’ claims about things that will ‘really oxygenate your blood’ and such.)

Which isn’t to say I nodded in recognition to everything in this book, because it also told me a lot of stuff that I only vaguely knew or that was news to me. The bit about the placebo effect, for example, is fascinating. I mean, the placebo effect is fascinating, did you know it even works on animals? I need to read more about it! Also, the sections on how to read statistics were very helpful. I sort of want to do a statistics course at some point, because not getting things like ‘correcting for cluserting’ annoys me. Even if Ben Goldacre describes it this way:

This is done with clever maths which makes everyone’s head hurt.

(p. 265)

All in all, heartily recommended!

Postscript: Other sections are not so much illuminating as infuriating. I read the chapter on Matthias Rath – The doctor will sue you now – just before bedtime, and it made me so angry I could hardly sleep. A short summary (though it will probably make you angry, too, apologies for that): Rath, not satisfied with selling ‘alternative’ cures to stupid Europeans who ought to know better because they have access to education and information, has taken his ‘cures’ to South Africa and managed to worm his way in to the already disasterous government mindset that HIV is some sort of conspiracy cooked up by the west, that HIV doesn’t cause AIDS and besides the drugs are really poison meant to kill off all Africans. Better spend the money on Rath’s wonder cures. Selling snake-oil to the victims of the HIV epidemic is simply criminal and Rath, from what I can tell, ought to be brought before the International Court of Justice in Haag.

Smakebit på søndag: Bad Science

Nå er det lenge siden jeg sist serverte en smakebit, men her er i alle fall et lite utdrag fra Ben Goldacres Bad Science.

skattejakt-25En del av Goldacres prosjekt er å forklare vitenskapsteori med eksempler fra det vi leser om i media – særlig medisin, både alternativ og etablert – for å gi leseren verktøy til å plukke fra hverandre dårlig vitenskap og dermed unngå å bli lurt. Følgende eksempel kommer fra ganske tidlig i boka og omhandler fuktighetskremer, der Goldacres poeng er at det faktisk er veldig få ting som egentlig hjelper huden bli hydrert og disse er såpass generelt kjent at selv den billigste fuktighetskremen inneholder alt du trenger. Det produsentene gjør for å kunne ta mer penger for produktet sitt eller kapre markedsandeler er å hive inn alle mulige merkelige ingredienser i et vagt håp om at de vil virke og pakke det hele inn i en kvasivitenskapelig sjargong.

(…) on any trip to the chemist (I recommend it) you can find a phenomenal array of magic ingredients on the market. Valmont Cellular DNA Complex is made from ‘specially treated salmon roe DNA’ (‘Unfortunately, smearing salmon on your face won’t have quite the same effect,’ said The Times in their review), but it’s spectacularly unlikely that DNA – a very large molecule indeed – would be absorbed by your skin, or indeed be any use for the synthetic activity happening in it, even if it was. You’re probably not short of the building blocks of DNA in your body. There’s a hell of a lot of it in there already.

Thinking it through, if salmon DNA was absorbed whole by your skin, then you would be absorbing alien, or rather fish, design blueprints into your cells – that is, the instructions for making fish cells, which might not be helpful for you as a human.

(s. 24) Her må man jo få lov til å påpeke at Goldacres innvendinger er så opplagte – hvordan skulle lakse-DNA kunne hjelpe huden min? – at vi må konkludere med at journalisten i The Times enten bare skrev av pressemeldingen fra produsenten uten overhode å absorbere informasjonen eller virkelig ikke har noen anelse om hva DNA er, bare at det høres vitenskapelig og flott ut.

Og nettopp medias framstilling av vitenskap, enten det er seriøs forskning eller kvasivitenskap fra kvakksalvere og andre som hovedsakelig er ute etter å tjene penger, er en av Goldacres ‘pet peeves’ som det heter på nynorsk. Og hvis du virkelig skjønner det han skriver blir det fort en av dine også, om det ikke var det fra før.

Her føles det passende å lenke til en kronikk i Aftenposten i går av Sunniva Rose: Skremmende at det er «greit» å skryte av hvor lite realfag man kan.

Flere smakebiter finner du hos Flukten fra virkeligheten.

Hytteboken – Atle Nielsen

hyttebokenMamma hadde kjøpt Hytteboken på Mammutsalget, tror jeg. Den gikk meg hus forbi på salget, men når den lå der så tilforlatelig på hyttebordet i påsken måtte jeg kikke litt, og endte med å lese den – mer eller mindre – fra perm til perm. Akkurat det er den slett ikke egentlig designet for. Hytteboken er en bok som er lagd for å småleses i litt her og litt der. Når det er sagt gikk det helt fint å lese den som jeg gjorde også.

Innholdet består av en rekke ting det kan være kjekt å ha på en hytte. Her er historien om hvordan vi endte med så mye ferie som vi kan tilbringe på hytta. Her er bilder av fine hytter, og av mennesker som går på ski og røyker (et av mine favorittoppslag). Her er quiz-spørsmål med en rekke temaer, som er vanskelige nok til å være morsomme (jeg klarte vel knapt halvparten av litteraturspørsmålene sånn på sparket, og det synes jeg er ganske passe). Her er historien om plater Atle Nielsen ikke lenger har i samlingen sin (men som han gjerne skulle hatt, altså plater han på en eller annen måte her mistet). Riktig så trivelig synes jeg det var.

Er det stor kunst? Nei. Det er det da heller ikke ment å være (tror jeg). Men det er virkelig en ganske perfekt bok å ha på hytta, for å smålese litt i her og der, eller lese fra perm til perm om man vil.

En feil har den: Den skulle selvsagt hett Hytteboka. Jeg grøsser litt hver gang jeg må skrive Hytteboken. Noen hang-ups har man jo.

London – Tor Åge Bringsværd

london_bringsværdNå har jeg i alle fall lest den ene London-boka. Siste halvpart av Rutherfurd får bli med på turen (ja, jeg har begått bokmord, jeg har splittet den tjukke paperback’en i to med papirkniv). Men Bringsværd hadde jeg jo lånt på biblioteket, så han får bli igjen hjemme (hel og fin).

Det var et hyggelig gjensyn. Dette er ikke en reiseguide, akkurat, selv om du sikkert kan legge opp en tur helt og holdent etter Bringsværds anbefalinger. Her er anekdoter, pubanbefalinger og historieforelesninger i et herlig sammensurium, akkurat slik jeg liker det. Og nå GLEDER jeg meg til å sitte på pub i London og bare være der. Ok, det gledet jeg meg vel til uansett, men jeg gleder meg enda mer nå. Kanskje kommer jeg til å føle at Tor Åge Bringsværd er med meg i ånden, så kan vi prate litt om Brumm og om Themsen og slikt mens vi sitter der. Det blir bra.

En dag her i Kew Gardens er en glitrende avkobling – selv for dem som ikke tror de er interessert i hager … for det å sitte ved et utebord ved Pavillion Restaurant (avmerket med nr 31 på gratiskartet du får ved inngangen), drikke kaffe eller hva vet vel jeg, se barn som leker på gresset under skyggefulle trær – og innimellom la øynene hvile på en gigantisk kinesisk pagode som ikke har noen som helst dypere mening, men bare er satt der fordi det passet seg slik … jeg mener, mye kan man si om en slik dag, men bortkastet er den i hvert fall ikke!

(s. 259)

The Possessed – Elif Batuman

batumanI became aware of Elif Batuman’s book The Possessed – Adventures with Russian Books and the People who Read Them through Swedish bookblogs, as it was apparently translated to Swedish last year. It sounded like my sort of book, so I thought I might as well order it.

Elif Batuman seems, judging from this book, to be my kind of person. Her conclusion –  «If I could start over today, I would choose literature again. If the answers exist in the world or in the universe, I still think that’s where we’re going to find them.» – naturally appeals to an incurable bibliophile. For myself, though, I think I might choose differently as far as study goes, I realised during my ‘academic career’ that I’m a reader, first and foremost, not an interpreter, in the academic sense. I care about the story and the language and the structure and the «truth» of literature, but I do not want to spend my life writing essays about it. Even keeping up this blog frequently seems like too much effort, in terms of writing something more than «I read this and it was good/bad/indifferent».

Still, reading about Batuman’s adventures was pleasant. And since I’ve only read a very little Russian literature, I learnt quite a bit along the way, too.

Moranthology – Caitlin Moran

moranthologyHaving loved Caitlin Moran’s How to be a Woman, the only logical consequense was to read Moranthology as soon as I got my hands on it. Moranthology is an anthology, with comments, of selected columns Moran has written for The Times, and the subjects range from big hair and gay moon landings to the welfare state and the eurozone.

As with How to be a Woman, Moran is both profound and side-achingly funny, quite frequently at the same time. Her explanation of why she loves to pay tax is spot on, as is the piece on why a pregnancy, especially an unwanted one, is not ‘a gift’.

In short, I loved it. Read it and learn. Or laugh. Or, even better, both.

Used and Rare – Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone

goldstone_usedI don’t know what prompted me to want to reread Used and Rare (again), but Västmanländskans challenge to read books-about-books in preparation for World Book Day pushed me to actually take it down.

As I’ve only ever blogged about this book on the occasion of another reread, my comment was rather short, and I think it deserves better, as it really is an excellent book.

We follow the authors through their discovery of book-collecting – as in buying specific editions of books rather than just amassing reading copies. The whole «adventure» starts because they challenge each other to spend no more than 20 dollars on birthday presents. One of them decides to get the other a nice hardback copy of War and Peace, which turns out to be pretty impossible without hitting the used book stores. The successful hunt for War and Peace make them realise they can get nicer, more readable copies of books they want to own used than new, and they set out to replace some of their paperbacks with hardbacks. However, and this is eerily familiar, with books – when you’re a bit of a bibliophile – one thing tends to lead to another. The first major hurdle is reachen when they find a copy of Orwell’s 1984:

We took the book off the shelf and opened the cover. «1st US,» it read. «$100.»
We looked it over. It seemed to be in excellent condition.
«Don’t we have this?»
«I don’t think so. Maybe in paperback.»
«Maybe.» We were fondling the book now. «Too bad. This is a great book. You’ve read it, haven’t you?»
«In high school.»
«You should read it again. You can’t appreciate it in high school.»
«It’s a hundred dollars.»
«I know. We can’t buy a hundred-dollar book. It’s out of the question. Let’s just put it back.»
«Right.» The book had not left our hands.
«Too bad. It’s a great book. It’s probably a good deal. Orwell certainly won’t drop in value.»
«No, Orwell won’t.»
«That’s the good thing about firsts. You know they won’t drop in value.»
«That’s true.» As if we had any idea at all of what we were talking about.
«That means that if we wait it will only go up in value.»
«So we’re probably actually saving money if we buy it now.»

(p. 72) Along which I’ve noted in the margin: «Rings a bell.»

On the following page, they take their purchases to the desk, and the owner starts noting down the prices:

…$8.95, $5.00, $6.50. Then he came to Nineteen Eighty-four.

He stopped and looked up. «What exactly do you collect?» he asked.

Up until that moment, we had never felt like we «collected» anything. We were just two people who bought used books.

«Uh, we only buy books we like to read.»

«How unusual.»

One of the reasons I like this book is, I suppose, that my own book-collecting started in much the same way. I remember trying to get hold of The Colour Purple in hardback and realising the only way I could do that was by buying it second-hand. This was way back when, the internet barely existed (Mosaic – a browser showing pictures inline – was hot news), and Norwegian used book stores are not exactly noted for their excellent selection of books in English. I had to settle for The Colour Purple in paperback – I needed it for a course – but over the next few years I increasingly tried to find used hardbacks of books I wanted to own (which, to be honest, was pretty much every book I needed to read).

So the Goldstone’s journey into the bookworld is familiar (though I envy them their local selection of bookshops). The book also serves as a bit of a primer (though not in the dry language of most primers) on book collecting terms and common mistakes. If you’re new to the game you can learn along with the authors, and even if you’re not you’re likely to learn something new.

I also like the way the story is told in the plural «we». It is only very occasionally possible to tell whether it is Lawrence or Nancy speaking, as in the dialogue above.

On the whole then: I like it.

Bokbloggsjerka: Fagbøker

Nå er det lenge siden sist jeg deltok i bokbloggsjerka, men i dag passet det bra. Annika spør:

Läser du facklitteratur ibland och vad är det i så fall som intresserar dig?

Og det gjør jeg jo! Mest reisebeskrivelser, men ellers er jeg ganske altetende når det gjelder populærvitenskapelige bøker og jeg kaster meg alltid over «non-fiction»-hyllene når jeg kommer inn i en engelskspråklig bokhandel.

Men vi snakker altså den typen fagbøker som består hovedsakelig av tekst, er relativt lettlest og kommer ut i pocket. Tunge, tjukke bøker av typen man må lese for å gå opp til eksamen i et fag leser jeg vel ikke akkurat så ofte. En og annen databok blir det, man må jo holde seg litt oppdatert i forbindelse med jobben, men særdeles få.

For å se noe av det jeg har lest kan du kikke under tag’en «non-fiction» her på bloggen.

The Great Escape – Monty Halls

hallsAny book about Scotland is immediately interesting to me, so I didn’t need to think long about purchasing Monty Halls’ The Great Escape: Adventures on the Wild West Coast when I came across it.

The premise is fairly straight-foreward: Monty Halls goes off to the west of Scotland to live «like a crofter» for six months. He finds an old bothy to fix up – renting it from the estate it belongs to – and sets about his task with good cheer. What ensues are plenty of stories involving the locals, the livestock he aquires, the gardening he attempts, and – not least – Scotland’s nature, both inanimate and very much alive. The tales are told with self-deprecating humour and a love of the country and people which is almost palpable, and makes for pleasant reading.

The congers have a reputation for ferocity that is based entirely on its thrashing death troes on the deck of many a fishing vessel. They react in much the same way you or I would if dragged from our homes and clubbed to death, being somewhat miffed by the process.

Indeed.

My one gripe, if gripe it can be called, is that – as Monty Halls himself points out – to really test his mettle as a crofter he should have spent the winter months in the bothy. As it is, he skims the cream, so to say (not to suggest it’s some sort of luxury holiday – it ain’t). As nice as it is to read about the six months sojourn, the book would have been more interesting had he extended his stay to include the next six months as well.

Not that I’d want to do so myself, I’m far too fond of my creature comforts, but then the whole point of books like these is surely to live vicariously through someone else?

Still, a very pleasant and suitably informative read, making me look forward to my next trip to Scotland, whenever that will be.

How to be a Woman – Caitlin Moran

moranLet me just start off by saying this book should probably be mandatory reading for all teenage girls – and it wouldn’t exactly hurt if the boys read it too. In fact, I’m considering purchasing a couple of copies for the library at the lass’ school, and don’t be surprised if I start giving away copies to friends’ daugthers.

Which is not to say you don’t need to read this book if you’re past your teens. Every woman of every age could do with reading it, and you men? If you are really interested in «understanding women» then this book will definitely help.

Now then:

Caitlin Moran has written something which is a cross between an authobiography, a feminist pamphlet, a stand-up comic’s script and a rant. And she has done it in such an eminently readable way that reading it is pure, unalloyed pleasure.

I have a rule of thumb that allows me to judge – when time is pressing, and one needs to make a snap judgement – whether some sexist bullshit is afoot. Obviously it’s not 100 per cent infallible but,  by and large, it definitely points you in the right direction.

And it’s asking this question: ‘ Are the men doing it? Are the men worrying about this as well? Is this taking up the men’s time? Are the men told not to do this, as ‘it’s letting the side down’? Are the men having to write bloody books about this exasperating, retarded, time-wasting bullshit? Is this making Jeremy Clarkson feel insecure?’

Almost always the answer is ‘No. The boys are not being told they have to be a certain way. They’re just getting on with stuff.’

Men are not being informed that they are opressing other men with their comments. It is presumed that men can handle perfectly well the idea of other men bitching about them. I think, on this basis, we can presume women can cope with other women being bitchy about them, too.

Now, there are things Caitlin Moran says I don’t agree with, but not very many. I’m with her on the high heels (just don’t), I’m with her on the muff (and pretty much on the hairyness issue altogether) and I think she has a pretty shrewd analysis on why a lot of women overeat as an addiction, just to mention a few.

In short, read it!

For more quotes and Morany goodness in general, check out Fuck yeah Caitlin Moran on Tumblr.

And you can follow Caitlin Moran on Twitter, too: @caitlinmoran.