Informative and engaging, if not groundbreaking news to more cynical readers.
A revealing look at the fallibility of “experts,” and tips on how to glean facts from the mass of published misinformation.
Science and business journalist Freedman (Corps Business: The 30 Management Principles of the U.S. Marines, 2000, etc.) begins with the assertion that, statistically, as many as two-thirds of all published studies may be wrong. Medicine, business, economics, social science—no matter the source, area of discipline or director, almost every study is subject to the same variety of factors that contribute to a high percentage of inaccuracy. These include lack of oversight, careless data entry and other forms of human error, as well as more corrupt factors like bias, pandering to a certain audience, manipulating data to achieve a desired outcome, suppressing mistakes to retain funding or earn tenure and industry influence. In addition, the media can distort information, as journals are more interested in publishing new and positive study results to move newsstand copies, and reporters are reluctant to fact-check scientists. The Internet exacerbates error by making information readily accessible, but not necessarily filtered by its reliability and the proliferation of “informal experts” online only blurs the line between fact and presumption. The result is an environment in which many studies get attention, making it difficult for the average information consumer to tell which studies are accurate and which aren’t—especially when many studies on the same topic contradict each other. More dangerously, Freedman points out that medical research, especially on prescription drugs, is based on animal testing that often produces misleading or outright harmful results. Even randomized controlled trials, considered to be the “gold standard” of clinical studies, often yield wrong information. So what can we believe? The author includes “simple never-fail rules for not being misled by experts,” “characteristics of expert advice we should ignore,” etc., to help guide readers toward right information. In good humor, he also includes an appendix detailing “the ways this entire book might be wrong.”
Informative and engaging, if not groundbreaking news to more cynical readers.Pub Date: June 10, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-316-02378-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 23, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
IN THE NEWS
Hiccups aside, a mostly valuable compendium of irrational thinking, with a handful of blanket corrective maneuvers.
A waggish, cautionary compilation of pitfalls associated with systematic cognitive errors, from novelist Dobelli.
To be human is to err, routinely and with bias. We exercise deviation from logic, writes the author, as much as, and possibly more than, we display optimal reasoning. In an effort to bring awareness to this sorry state of affairs, he has gathered here—in three-page, anecdotally saturated squibs—nearly 100 examples of muddied thinking. Many will ring familiar to readers (Dobelli’s illustrations are not startlingly original, but observant)—e.g., herd instinct and groupthink, hindsight, overconfidence, the lack of an intuitive grasp of probability or statistical reality. Others, if not new, are smartly encapsulated: social loafing, the hourly rate trap, decision fatigue, carrying on with a lost cause (the sunk-cost fallacy). Most of his points stick home: the deformation of professional thinking, of which Mark Twain said, “If your only tool is a hammer, all your problems will be nails”; multitasking is the illusion of attention with potentially dire results if you are eating a sloppy sandwich while driving on a busy street. In his quest for clarity, Dobelli mostly brings shrewdness, skepticism and wariness to bear, but he can also be opaque—e.g., shaping the details of history “into a consistent story...we speak about ‘understanding,’ but these things cannot be understood in the traditional sense. We simply build the meaning into them afterward.” Well, yes. And if we are to be wary of stories, what are we to make of his many telling anecdotes when he counsels, “Anecdotes are a particularly tricky sort of cherry picking....To rebuff an anecdote is difficult because it is a mini-story, and we know how vulnerable our brains are to those”?
Hiccups aside, a mostly valuable compendium of irrational thinking, with a handful of blanket corrective maneuvers.Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-221968-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2013
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