Retrospective - When Science Turns Bad

I spotted Ben Goldacre's column Bad Science in The Guardian early in December. Even at a glance it was obviously a refreshing change to what generally passes as coverage of stories linked to scientific findings in the press. Here was an intelligently rigorous approach to reviewing various claims supposed to be grounded in research. Here was reporting with no obvious axe to grind other than a sensible regard for accuracy and the truth. And to my delight there was more: a splendid webpage devoted to the various controversies such honest reporting and appraisal was bound to generate, which can be found here.

I'd suggest that this is well worth a look, particularly by anyone who happens to be engaged in the teaching or study of Theory of Knowledge. There's much to be enjoyed about finding out what has been passed off as knowledge by those who have a vested interest in convincing us they really know something and have the scientific evidence to back them up. Reading Mr Goldacre's fizzing book Bad Science, which I spotted in a bookshop a few days after reading his column, was one of the most satisfying, though sort of alarmingly so, experiences of my holiday and also to be recommended to those who suspect the truth is out there and might be accessed by rational means given enough clarity of thought.

The book does two things, amongst others, extraordinarily well. It explains the abuse of statistics in an accessible manner and alerts the reader to the extent of such abuse in the media. It shows the extent of what individuals stand to gain from deliberate misrepresentations of research bringing home the importance of knowing how we know what we know. In a world that sometimes seems to spin around the twin axes of greed and mendacity the study of Theory of Knowledge suddenly seems extraordinarily relevant.