Bad Science/Introduction

Bad Science
Introduction

This book is based on articles from the Bad Science column written by Dr. Ben Goldacre. A British doctor and journalist, author of the "Bad Science" column in the Guardian Saturdays newspaper. Most of his writing is focused in telling just how the media sometimes gets it wrong reporting on "pseudoscience" (false science) as true science, this subject is also covered on his website/blog, www.badscience.net.

"Science is all about taking someone's idea, their hypothesis, and then looking at the experimental evidence for that. For example, the genius of Aqua Detox is, they claim the toxins come out of your feet, and the water goes brown: but we can test why the water goes brown for ourselves, with our own experiment. And I reckon your own home-made "detox" equipment will be an awful lot cheaper than their £1000 machine..."
—Ben Goldacre

"Bad Science" for the classroom, created by Planet Science and Dr. Goldacre with the help of teachers: brings fun activities to do with students as a way to demonstrate that not everything you read as science is in reality "proper" science.

These activities are aimed at 14-16 year olds, but there's nothing to say you can't try these with any age group... it's all in the name of scientific literacy... let’s not all get hypnotised by pseudoscience!