Panic Nation - Stanley Feldman

Rant nation

I agree with the negative review below. From the cover, and the blurb on the back, this reads like a worthwhile read; a counterblast against the sort of pseudoscientific nonsense which is used to back up claims about food and health. As the book wore on, however, I quickly came to realise that it falls into the same trap as the complementary therapists and other quacks it criticises: the chapters rarely cite any evidence in support of the claims the authors make; they bizarrely seem to have a limited understanding of basic epidemiology (mis-describing the purpose and nature of meta-analysis and systematic reviews for example); they rely heavily on the authors' own claims without citing supporting evidence; and most seriously, they selectively use or ignore evidence as it suits their purposes.

And their own views are as bizarre as the crystal gazers and dowsers they criticise. Salt, radioactivity, fat, junk food - all good for you apparently. Forget about hearing a balanced argument, or an alternative point of view, or even a scientific, well-informed argument presenting and weighing the evidence. Instead, you get a series of oddly right-wing and generally patronising rants, with little understanding or discussion of why the public make the choices they do.
One of later sections in the book is labelled "Bad Science". A well-worn phrase about motes and beams spring to mind at this point. Overall, this is non-evidence-based pseudoscience masquerading as trenchant observation; and worse, a thinly-disguised right-wing rant.

fascinating!

I completely disagree with the other reviewer who only gave this one star. I thought was an immensely thought-provoking read and certainly worthwhile. It certainly does not endorse eating junk food, etc but unpicks brash generalisations that pervade our media. There is plenty of evidence base here and the selected research is there to highlight the ideas being explored. Highly recommended!

Contradictory and biased

Hmm, although generally I think this book is a good read, I really do feel that often the authors say "don't believe this slant on the evidence, believe our slant instead". Often this will be backed by describing the proponents of other views as "zealots" or "ludicrous". It also contadicts itself - we are told that there is no link between fat and cholesterol and eating fat seems to have no ill-effects then later that serum levels of cholesterol are lowered by a lower fat diet.
I think the authors are riding many backlashes which is always a populist approach as people like nothing better than to find that "experts" saying unpopular things about health are wrong, this was much of the appeal of the Atkins diet. The snag is that they invoke the same kind of conspiracy theories about say the majority view on Cholesterol as they later ridicule themselves as being impossible to refute.
They also miss a key point, for example meat may be only marginally "bad" for my health but if it costs me nothing to avoid it and choose foods I consider to be better for me then what exactly is the problem wih my choosing not to eat it?
In rubbishing the concept of "junk" food we go into the realms of semantic quibbling, I'm sorry but Eric Schlosser's description of one industrially-produced hamburger containing the meat from hundreds or thousands of animals meets my criteria for "junk", its no good saying that as there is some nutritional value in it then it cannot be "junk" - that is their definition, not mine and no amount of PhDs allows them to define meanings of words.
Occasionally they hit the target such as with the "Poo lady" but I feel there is much conservative bias in the writings rather similar to those who like to pretend that climate change does not exist.

Bad science

From the cover, and the blurb on the back, this reads like a worthwhile read; a counterblast against the sort of pseudoscientific nonsense which is used to back up claims about food and health. As the book wore on, however, I quickly came to realise that it falls into the same trap as the complementary therapists and other quacks it criticises: the chapters rarely cite any evidence in support of the claims the authors make; they bizarrely seem to have a limited understanding of basic epidemiology (mis-describing the purpose and nature of meta-analysis and systematic reviews for example); they rely heavily on the authors' own claims without citing supporting evidence; and most seriously, they selectively use or ignore evidence as it suits their purposes.

And their own views are as bizarre as the crystal gazers and dowsers they criticise. Salt, radioactivity, fat, junk food - all good for you apparently. Forget about hearing a balanced argument, or an alternative point of view, or even a scientific, well-informed argument presenting and weighing the evidence. Instead, you get a series of oddly right-wing and generally patronising rants, with little understanding or discussion of why the public make the choices they do. By the end my sympathies started to slide towards the pseudoscientists - and I'm an epidemiologist.
One of later sections in the book is labelled "Bad Science". A well-worn phrase about motes and beams spring to mind at this point. Overall, this is non-evidence-based pseudoscience masquerading as trenchant observation; and worse, a thinly-disguised right-wing rant.

Don't get even, get mad

Public health scares probably cause more anxiety than terrorism. From GMOs to MMR, from BSE to RSI, we are now all conversant in a language of three letter acronyms, each spelling another reason not to eat or do anything, lest it kill or contaminate us.

Sitting above all this is a big, bloated meta-anxiety; the latent belief that we can no longer trust those charged with keeping us safe from poison food, hazardous medicine, toxic air and harmful work practices. The authorities either lack the wherewithal to get to the facts, or the will to confront the big businesses responsible for our plight. We are adrift in a sea of accusation and counter-accusation, with nobody to steer us safely to the hard shores.

Enter Stanley Feldman and Vincent Marks, two noted medical experts whose book Panic Nation aims to set the record straight and confront the dodgy science behind recent high profile scares. Between them and their contributors they take on many of the old chestnuts we all fret about - obesity, pesticides, food labelling, pollution, GMOs, stress, mad cows, the MMR vaccine, passive smoking and many more.

There is much here that is very good. The opening section of the book deals brutally with the shortcomings of epidemiology and the abuse of statistics by pressure groups. The process of Chinese whispers, by which sober scientific research study becomes lurid red top splash is dealt with unsparingly. It makes me realise that, far from my conceit as an informed member of the public, I am in fact receiving my truth fourth hand at best, once it's been sifted through any number of agenda.

After that we are delivered in short order a series of arguments as to why we can after all eat chips, drink booze, ignore organic food and vitamin supplements, put our feet up (in the sun, without any sun screen), get The Jab, enjoy beef and pretty much ignore everything we read in the papers.

Chapters on things like sugar and pesticides are excellent. While the authors show how the dangers of sugar have been exaggerated largely by ignorance down the years, the supposed perils of pesticides, it is argued, have their roots in something far more pernicious; a belief that science itself is bad for you, a view aided enthusiastically by a culture of new age mumbo jumbo and a host of latter day snake oil merchants.

It is this lot who really rile Panic Nation's contributors. One cannot help feeling however that in their zeal to deliver a good kicking to the hippy dippies, panic mongers and single-issue propagandists that the authors have scythed through rather too much orthodoxy. In so doing, they sometimes lapse into the kind of strident, opinion-heavy, fact-light propaganda they have set out to nail.

For example, under the Exercise and Sports chapter they have confronted the myth 'we should exercise as much as possible' with the fact 'excessive exercise can cause more harm than good'. No kidding. Of course excessive exercise is a bad thing - that is why it is excessive, it's beyond what is needed. As evidence they cite 'joggers dropping dead' when in reality the number of joggers who have indeed died unexpectedly is insignificant as a proportion of the population who jog, and is probably consistent with sudden, unexpected deaths among the wider population. The authors really should have been alive to this kind of sloppy writing, since they criticise it in the opening section.

I'm glad this book was written and published. It is timely and there is a need to counter the ill founded fears that often pervade our thinking about food, health, medicine and our environment. I just wish the authors had kept their tempers, stuck more rigorously to fact and confined their riposte to those areas where reason and science have long been abandoned in favour of ignorance and panic. As it is, they have been just too trenchant to make a difference and redress things. They could have got even with their targets. Instead, they just got mad.

Rant nation

I agree with the negative review below. From the cover, and the blurb on the back, this reads like a worthwhile read; a counterblast against the sort of pseudoscientific nonsense which is used to back up claims about food and health. As the book wore on, however, I quickly came to realise that it falls into the same trap as the complementary therapists and other quacks it criticises: the chapters rarely cite any evidence in support of the claims the authors make; they bizarrely seem to have a limited understanding of basic epidemiology (mis-describing the purpose and nature of meta-analysis and systematic reviews for example); they rely heavily on the authors' own claims without citing supporting evidence; and most seriously, they selectively use or ignore evidence as it suits their purposes.

And their own views are as bizarre as the crystal gazers and dowsers they criticise. Salt, radioactivity, fat, junk food - all good for you apparently. Forget about hearing a balanced argument, or an alternative point of view, or even a scientific, well-informed argument presenting and weighing the evidence. Instead, you get a series of oddly right-wing and generally patronising rants, with little understanding or discussion of why the public make the choices they do.
One of later sections in the book is labelled "Bad Science". A well-worn phrase about motes and beams spring to mind at this point. Overall, this is non-evidence-based pseudoscience masquerading as trenchant observation; and worse, a thinly-disguised right-wing rant.

fascinating!

I completely disagree with the other reviewer who only gave this one star. I thought was an immensely thought-provoking read and certainly worthwhile. It certainly does not endorse eating junk food, etc but unpicks brash generalisations that pervade our media. There is plenty of evidence base here and the selected research is there to highlight the ideas being explored. Highly recommended!

Contradictory and biased

Hmm, although generally I think this book is a good read, I really do feel that often the authors say "don't believe this slant on the evidence, believe our slant instead". Often this will be backed by describing the proponents of other views as "zealots" or "ludicrous". It also contadicts itself - we are told that there is no link between fat and cholesterol and eating fat seems to have no ill-effects then later that serum levels of cholesterol are lowered by a lower fat diet.
I think the authors are riding many backlashes which is always a populist approach as people like nothing better than to find that "experts" saying unpopular things about health are wrong, this was much of the appeal of the Atkins diet. The snag is that they invoke the same kind of conspiracy theories about say the majority view on Cholesterol as they later ridicule themselves as being impossible to refute.
They also miss a key point, for example meat may be only marginally "bad" for my health but if it costs me nothing to avoid it and choose foods I consider to be better for me then what exactly is the problem wih my choosing not to eat it?
In rubbishing the concept of "junk" food we go into the realms of semantic quibbling, I'm sorry but Eric Schlosser's description of one industrially-produced hamburger containing the meat from hundreds or thousands of animals meets my criteria for "junk", its no good saying that as there is some nutritional value in it then it cannot be "junk" - that is their definition, not mine and no amount of PhDs allows them to define meanings of words.
Occasionally they hit the target such as with the "Poo lady" but I feel there is much conservative bias in the writings rather similar to those who like to pretend that climate change does not exist.

Bad science

From the cover, and the blurb on the back, this reads like a worthwhile read; a counterblast against the sort of pseudoscientific nonsense which is used to back up claims about food and health. As the book wore on, however, I quickly came to realise that it falls into the same trap as the complementary therapists and other quacks it criticises: the chapters rarely cite any evidence in support of the claims the authors make; they bizarrely seem to have a limited understanding of basic epidemiology (mis-describing the purpose and nature of meta-analysis and systematic reviews for example); they rely heavily on the authors' own claims without citing supporting evidence; and most seriously, they selectively use or ignore evidence as it suits their purposes.

And their own views are as bizarre as the crystal gazers and dowsers they criticise. Salt, radioactivity, fat, junk food - all good for you apparently. Forget about hearing a balanced argument, or an alternative point of view, or even a scientific, well-informed argument presenting and weighing the evidence. Instead, you get a series of oddly right-wing and generally patronising rants, with little understanding or discussion of why the public make the choices they do. By the end my sympathies started to slide towards the pseudoscientists - and I'm an epidemiologist.
One of later sections in the book is labelled "Bad Science". A well-worn phrase about motes and beams spring to mind at this point. Overall, this is non-evidence-based pseudoscience masquerading as trenchant observation; and worse, a thinly-disguised right-wing rant.

Don't get even, get mad

Public health scares probably cause more anxiety than terrorism. From GMOs to MMR, from BSE to RSI, we are now all conversant in a language of three letter acronyms, each spelling another reason not to eat or do anything, lest it kill or contaminate us.

Sitting above all this is a big, bloated meta-anxiety; the latent belief that we can no longer trust those charged with keeping us safe from poison food, hazardous medicine, toxic air and harmful work practices. The authorities either lack the wherewithal to get to the facts, or the will to confront the big businesses responsible for our plight. We are adrift in a sea of accusation and counter-accusation, with nobody to steer us safely to the hard shores.

Enter Stanley Feldman and Vincent Marks, two noted medical experts whose book Panic Nation aims to set the record straight and confront the dodgy science behind recent high profile scares. Between them and their contributors they take on many of the old chestnuts we all fret about - obesity, pesticides, food labelling, pollution, GMOs, stress, mad cows, the MMR vaccine, passive smoking and many more.

There is much here that is very good. The opening section of the book deals brutally with the shortcomings of epidemiology and the abuse of statistics by pressure groups. The process of Chinese whispers, by which sober scientific research study becomes lurid red top splash is dealt with unsparingly. It makes me realise that, far from my conceit as an informed member of the public, I am in fact receiving my truth fourth hand at best, once it's been sifted through any number of agenda.

After that we are delivered in short order a series of arguments as to why we can after all eat chips, drink booze, ignore organic food and vitamin supplements, put our feet up (in the sun, without any sun screen), get The Jab, enjoy beef and pretty much ignore everything we read in the papers.

Chapters on things like sugar and pesticides are excellent. While the authors show how the dangers of sugar have been exaggerated largely by ignorance down the years, the supposed perils of pesticides, it is argued, have their roots in something far more pernicious; a belief that science itself is bad for you, a view aided enthusiastically by a culture of new age mumbo jumbo and a host of latter day snake oil merchants.

It is this lot who really rile Panic Nation's contributors. One cannot help feeling however that in their zeal to deliver a good kicking to the hippy dippies, panic mongers and single-issue propagandists that the authors have scythed through rather too much orthodoxy. In so doing, they sometimes lapse into the kind of strident, opinion-heavy, fact-light propaganda they have set out to nail.

For example, under the Exercise and Sports chapter they have confronted the myth 'we should exercise as much as possible' with the fact 'excessive exercise can cause more harm than good'. No kidding. Of course excessive exercise is a bad thing - that is why it is excessive, it's beyond what is needed. As evidence they cite 'joggers dropping dead' when in reality the number of joggers who have indeed died unexpectedly is insignificant as a proportion of the population who jog, and is probably consistent with sudden, unexpected deaths among the wider population. The authors really should have been alive to this kind of sloppy writing, since they criticise it in the opening section.

I'm glad this book was written and published. It is timely and there is a need to counter the ill founded fears that often pervade our thinking about food, health, medicine and our environment. I just wish the authors had kept their tempers, stuck more rigorously to fact and confined their riposte to those areas where reason and science have long been abandoned in favour of ignorance and panic. As it is, they have been just too trenchant to make a difference and redress things. They could have got even with their targets. Instead, they just got mad.

Rant nation

I agree with the negative review below. From the cover, and the blurb on the back, this reads like a worthwhile read; a counterblast against the sort of pseudoscientific nonsense which is used to back up claims about food and health. As the book wore on, however, I quickly came to realise that it falls into the same trap as the complementary therapists and other quacks it criticises: the chapters rarely cite any evidence in support of the claims the authors make; they bizarrely seem to have a limited understanding of basic epidemiology (mis-describing the purpose and nature of meta-analysis and systematic reviews for example); they rely heavily on the authors' own claims without citing supporting evidence; and most seriously, they selectively use or ignore evidence as it suits their purposes.

And their own views are as bizarre as the crystal gazers and dowsers they criticise. Salt, radioactivity, fat, junk food - all good for you apparently. Forget about hearing a balanced argument, or an alternative point of view, or even a scientific, well-informed argument presenting and weighing the evidence. Instead, you get a series of oddly right-wing and generally patronising rants, with little understanding or discussion of why the public make the choices they do.
One of later sections in the book is labelled "Bad Science". A well-worn phrase about motes and beams spring to mind at this point. Overall, this is non-evidence-based pseudoscience masquerading as trenchant observation; and worse, a thinly-disguised right-wing rant.

fascinating!

I completely disagree with the other reviewer who only gave this one star. I thought was an immensely thought-provoking read and certainly worthwhile. It certainly does not endorse eating junk food, etc but unpicks brash generalisations that pervade our media. There is plenty of evidence base here and the selected research is there to highlight the ideas being explored. Highly recommended!

Contradictory and biased

Hmm, although generally I think this book is a good read, I really do feel that often the authors say "don't believe this slant on the evidence, believe our slant instead". Often this will be backed by describing the proponents of other views as "zealots" or "ludicrous". It also contadicts itself - we are told that there is no link between fat and cholesterol and eating fat seems to have no ill-effects then later that serum levels of cholesterol are lowered by a lower fat diet.
I think the authors are riding many backlashes which is always a populist approach as people like nothing better than to find that "experts" saying unpopular things about health are wrong, this was much of the appeal of the Atkins diet. The snag is that they invoke the same kind of conspiracy theories about say the majority view on Cholesterol as they later ridicule themselves as being impossible to refute.
They also miss a key point, for example meat may be only marginally "bad" for my health but if it costs me nothing to avoid it and choose foods I consider to be better for me then what exactly is the problem wih my choosing not to eat it?
In rubbishing the concept of "junk" food we go into the realms of semantic quibbling, I'm sorry but Eric Schlosser's description of one industrially-produced hamburger containing the meat from hundreds or thousands of animals meets my criteria for "junk", its no good saying that as there is some nutritional value in it then it cannot be "junk" - that is their definition, not mine and no amount of PhDs allows them to define meanings of words.
Occasionally they hit the target such as with the "Poo lady" but I feel there is much conservative bias in the writings rather similar to those who like to pretend that climate change does not exist.

Bad science

From the cover, and the blurb on the back, this reads like a worthwhile read; a counterblast against the sort of pseudoscientific nonsense which is used to back up claims about food and health. As the book wore on, however, I quickly came to realise that it falls into the same trap as the complementary therapists and other quacks it criticises: the chapters rarely cite any evidence in support of the claims the authors make; they bizarrely seem to have a limited understanding of basic epidemiology (mis-describing the purpose and nature of meta-analysis and systematic reviews for example); they rely heavily on the authors' own claims without citing supporting evidence; and most seriously, they selectively use or ignore evidence as it suits their purposes.

And their own views are as bizarre as the crystal gazers and dowsers they criticise. Salt, radioactivity, fat, junk food - all good for you apparently. Forget about hearing a balanced argument, or an alternative point of view, or even a scientific, well-informed argument presenting and weighing the evidence. Instead, you get a series of oddly right-wing and generally patronising rants, with little understanding or discussion of why the public make the choices they do. By the end my sympathies started to slide towards the pseudoscientists - and I'm an epidemiologist.
One of later sections in the book is labelled "Bad Science". A well-worn phrase about motes and beams spring to mind at this point. Overall, this is non-evidence-based pseudoscience masquerading as trenchant observation; and worse, a thinly-disguised right-wing rant.

Don't get even, get mad

Public health scares probably cause more anxiety than terrorism. From GMOs to MMR, from BSE to RSI, we are now all conversant in a language of three letter acronyms, each spelling another reason not to eat or do anything, lest it kill or contaminate us.

Sitting above all this is a big, bloated meta-anxiety; the latent belief that we can no longer trust those charged with keeping us safe from poison food, hazardous medicine, toxic air and harmful work practices. The authorities either lack the wherewithal to get to the facts, or the will to confront the big businesses responsible for our plight. We are adrift in a sea of accusation and counter-accusation, with nobody to steer us safely to the hard shores.

Enter Stanley Feldman and Vincent Marks, two noted medical experts whose book Panic Nation aims to set the record straight and confront the dodgy science behind recent high profile scares. Between them and their contributors they take on many of the old chestnuts we all fret about - obesity, pesticides, food labelling, pollution, GMOs, stress, mad cows, the MMR vaccine, passive smoking and many more.

There is much here that is very good. The opening section of the book deals brutally with the shortcomings of epidemiology and the abuse of statistics by pressure groups. The process of Chinese whispers, by which sober scientific research study becomes lurid red top splash is dealt with unsparingly. It makes me realise that, far from my conceit as an informed member of the public, I am in fact receiving my truth fourth hand at best, once it's been sifted through any number of agenda.

After that we are delivered in short order a series of arguments as to why we can after all eat chips, drink booze, ignore organic food and vitamin supplements, put our feet up (in the sun, without any sun screen), get The Jab, enjoy beef and pretty much ignore everything we read in the papers.

Chapters on things like sugar and pesticides are excellent. While the authors show how the dangers of sugar have been exaggerated largely by ignorance down the years, the supposed perils of pesticides, it is argued, have their roots in something far more pernicious; a belief that science itself is bad for you, a view aided enthusiastically by a culture of new age mumbo jumbo and a host of latter day snake oil merchants.

It is this lot who really rile Panic Nation's contributors. One cannot help feeling however that in their zeal to deliver a good kicking to the hippy dippies, panic mongers and single-issue propagandists that the authors have scythed through rather too much orthodoxy. In so doing, they sometimes lapse into the kind of strident, opinion-heavy, fact-light propaganda they have set out to nail.

For example, under the Exercise and Sports chapter they have confronted the myth 'we should exercise as much as possible' with the fact 'excessive exercise can cause more harm than good'. No kidding. Of course excessive exercise is a bad thing - that is why it is excessive, it's beyond what is needed. As evidence they cite 'joggers dropping dead' when in reality the number of joggers who have indeed died unexpectedly is insignificant as a proportion of the population who jog, and is probably consistent with sudden, unexpected deaths among the wider population. The authors really should have been alive to this kind of sloppy writing, since they criticise it in the opening section.

I'm glad this book was written and published. It is timely and there is a need to counter the ill founded fears that often pervade our thinking about food, health, medicine and our environment. I just wish the authors had kept their tempers, stuck more rigorously to fact and confined their riposte to those areas where reason and science have long been abandoned in favour of ignorance and panic. As it is, they have been just too trenchant to make a difference and redress things. They could have got even with their targets. Instead, they just got mad.