A week or two ago we posted this page about Ben Goldacre's book "Bad Science".
At the risk of showing a decidedly un-grumpy enthusiasm and positivity, we take the unusual step of returning to the subject because we are anxious that all our readers should buy and read this incredible book (well, read it, anyway: we don't mind so much where you get it - you can steal it for all we care, so long as you don't steal it from us).
We don't think it's over the top to describe "Bad Science" as life-changing. It has certainly altered the way we think about things. For instance, you're not going to find any more snide comments about hospitals and MRSA super-bugs in these pages. This is not because they don't exist, or because they're not important - they do and they are. It is simply because we now know the background to much of the publicity on the subject, with banner headlines and major scare stories in the press (not just the Daily Mail, either).
Virtually all were based on the findings of one Chris Malyszewicz who they hailed as "the UK's top MRSA expert", a "fully trained microbiologist" and "respected MRSA specialist". One called for him to be given a medal for his rôle in revealing the dreadful plague that was hiding on every hospital door-knob and lavatory seat, and when he received a visit from two government advisers the Sunday Mirror alleged that the Health Secretary was trying to "silence him".
Alerted by the fact that of all the test laboratories used to identify the super-bug, the only one that always found MRSA was Malyszewicz's while the others usually drew a blank, doctors investigated more thoroughly than journalists had done. They found that this "fully trained microbiologist" had a BSc from Leicester Poly and a doctorate he'd bought from America by mail order. His laboratory was a garden shed behind his house, fitted out with kitchen worktops.
And his microbiological investigations were a mere sideline. His main business was flogging "anti-MRSA kits" through the post to anxious patients. A bit of a no-brainer, then, but even when medical experts (proper ones, with degrees and stethoscopes and stuff) told what they had found, the press continued to support the man until he died, heavily in debt, in a car crash. It's always the flamboyant, alarmist scare-story that sells the most papers, of course.
Ben Goldacre's book (and his website, of which more anon) is full of fascinating and revealing anecdotes like this, but the bits that really made us sit up were his explanations of statistics and how they can be manipulated or misunderstood. It was the misuse by Sir Roy Meadows of medical statistics that sent solicitor Sally Clark to prison for killing her two babies, and ultimately killed her as well. It's the misuse of statistics that has kept Dutch nurse Lucia de Berk in prison for killing seven patients. There was precious little evidence, no motive, nothing but the absolute belief that because seven deaths occurred in three years when she was on duty, it must have been her that done it. Statistics proved it, apparently. Sadly the statistics failed to notice that there had been just as many deaths in the same hospital during the preceding three years, before she even came to work there.
Here's a telling little example.
Suppose the statistics show that if you take 100 men of a certain age with normal cholesterol, four of them will suffer a heart attack within a year.
Now suppose that in a similar group of men of a certain age, but with high cholesterol levels from eating turkey twizzlers, six men suffer a heart attack each year.
You can imagine the newspaper headlines, can't you? Six is 150% of four, so "High cholesterol kills 50% more!" shout the front pages, "Diet shock! Government must act!"
But what is the fact, rather than the hype? The fact is that out of a sample of one hundred men, two more will have a heart attack if their cholesterol is high. That's not 50%. Two out of a hundred is an increased risk of just 2%. Bernard Matthews sighs with relief while Jamie Oliver dances on hat.
You see? We all need to know this stuff!
Do buy it. Go on, go on, go on, go on, you know you want to. It'll make you a wiser person. Unfortunately it may make you marginally less grumpy, but what the hell - you win some, you lose some ...
Buy it here
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The GOS says: Oh yes, I promised to mention Ben Goldacre's website. It's good, and it's here ...
http://www.badscience.net/
And here are a couple of other excellent websites on similar lines ...
http://www.dcscience.net/
http://www.quackwatch.org/
either on this site or on the World Wide Web.
Copyright © 2009 The GOS