Ben Goldacre of badscience.net has published a book with some combative and provocative claims and challenges (see standard preamble). Bad Science is overall a good, timely book with some decent content but the derogatory remarks about humanities graduates have probably alienated many readers who might otherwise have been sympathetic to Goldacre’s arguments. For Violetta Crisis: “reading his column often feels like being kicked in the teeth by a favourite uncle”. If she hasn’t yet read the book, then she ought to get ready to experience what it feels like to catch a rabbit-punch, elbow in the solar plexus and knee in the guts.
Picking through the abundant discursive sections that disorient the reader, the occasionally annoying rhetorical devices and messy structure, one might wonder who edited Goldacre’s book. Was it a science-literate person who didn’t notice the errors and the too frequent interminable and impenetrable sentences,(a) or, perish the thought, a humanities graduate who didn’t know any better?
The single greatest oversight is the lack of an index. I skimmed the book before settling down to read it and it was obvious that more stringent editing would have improved the book, highlighted some recurrent themes and strengthened the overall message: an index would have made the book easier to read and allowed the reader to locate relevant explanations. An index might also have helped the editor to spot the inconsistencies (of which, more later) that lodge in the reader’s eye like so many grains of sand. (A frustrated Bad Science blogger has posted a partial index to Bad Science.)
One recurring irritant is the too-frequent omission of titles for the figures and graphs: ordinarily, this would make editors bang bin-lids together like crashing cymbals to accompany their fire and brimstone imprecations. Sometimes it is possible for the reader to work out what the graphs are illustrating from the text but it is annoying, and there are times when it is not clear: all too often the reference for the borrowed graphic is missing, buried in a diversion, or so obscure so it is difficult to check.(b) In an interesting twist, I’m sure Goldacre would argue that humanities graduates treat graphs and figures as optional to the text rather than assistive and integral in the way that right-thinking science graduates do. Yet, here they are, loitering around the text like so many socially-awkward teenagers, refusing to identify themselves clearly or to communicate; neither use nor ornament.
Perhaps some benighted editor or proof-reader did try to mention these matters to the author but was reminded that Goldacre had already taken the full measure of his audience and decreed:
[I]f, by the end, you reckon you might still disagree with me…you’ll still be wrong, but you’ll be wrong with a lot more panache and flair than you could possibly manage right now. [pg xiii, Bad Science.]
Most of the book is good(c) but the less than sympathetic might observe that one of the most annoying thing about some scientists is that when they can’t draw a diagram on a napkin, they can’t come up with an explanation that is sufficiently detailed and easy to read. I have some disagreements that probably arise from shoddy proof-reading and editing but, apparently, I’m wrong, not Goldacre. Was some unfortunate arts or humanities graduate responsible for the proof-reading and so demoralised by the scorn that he or she lost faith in their judgment and let too many annoying errors through? I think we should be told.
Notes
(a) An example of one of my least favourite sentences.
While in the paper it is stated that they were sequential referrals to a clinic, in fact Wakefield was already being paid £50,000 of legal aid money by a firm of solicitors to investigate children whose parents were preparing a case against MMR, and the GMC is further investigating where the patients in the study came from, because it seems that many of Wakefield’s referrals had come to him specifically as someone who could show a link between MMR and autism, whether formally or informally, and was working on a legal case. [pg 281, Bad Science]
(b) Eg, pg 47, this graph has a title but it is not illuminating. As far as I can tell, this graph seems to be from the Ernst and White paper on pg 46 but, after looking at it online, it isn’t.
Pg 53 has a graph without any attempt at a title; without access to the paper, I can’t check more than that. The graph illustrates little to the naive reader unless everyone is expected to know that odds ratio is another way of expressing result.
These mistakes recur regularly with the diagrams throughout the text.
(c) I have no reason to think otherwise but I happily stipulate that: I’m not in a position to comment on some of the more specialist areas of the book; and I have no intention of drawing up an Excel spreadsheet to check the workings for the homeopathy dilutions in chapter 4.
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Tags: Bad Science, Ben Goldacre, editing, publishers' standards, references
October 23, 2008 at 3:33 am
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October 28, 2008 at 2:04 pm
Hey, Good column. It’s true that I’ve not read the book yet (it’s on a long, long list) but I do worry that his columns might exclude a huge section of his potential audience, as do a lot of science bloggers. He’s generally quite good at layman explanations but I can see how it might have got a bit incoherent in the course of writing a full stand-alone book. Nice to hear I’m not alone in all this!
October 29, 2008 at 5:18 am
Thanks – it is interesting to realise how many irritating episodes of sloppy writing or referencing there are in the book. Nothing on the scale of people whom Goldacre (rightly) criticises but enough to make it difficult to follow up some topics.