This book offers two valuable lessons. First, with specific examples. It explains a lot about two commonly publicized topics: effects of eating “processed foods”, and using sunscreen (and a third topic in the Appendix). You’ll learn quite a bit about those things. Second lesson, and perhaps most valuable, uses the specific examples to show how to consider information in general—information that is spread by all sorts of media, but that needs careful scrutiny to be useful and in fact to not be misleading. It gives you a practical way of judging how well “studies” have demonstrated a claimed effect, basically: weak studies in popular topics (diet and health, sociology, psychology, etc.) should be viewed skeptically while you await further evidence, while very large effects (such as the damaging effects of smoking) can be revealed with less extensive studies.
You need not have access to all of the original reports of studies to be able to get a feel for how instructive, or not, that they might be. The author has you think about key questions that always need to be raised, and that can help you be more realistic in your evaluation and less subject to being misled, such as:
What exactly are we talking about here?
How was it studied, or even how could it have been studied, and measured?
How large an effect was observed?…”statistically significant” may not be very significant.
Are these things that appear to be “linked” the result of cause and effect, and how would we know?
A strength of the book is the careful explanations of how a given thing is measured, or a given effect is studied. For example, the SPF of a sunscreen might be tossed off with a comment such as “SPF is the factor by which the UV-blocking effect of the sunscreen compares to no sunscreen.” That is not a very helpful description. The author instead describes just how the measurement of SPF is done, giving the reader a much better understanding of what the SPF number means. He also provides a much more helpful explanation than is common in the media of how much less, or more, sunscreen of one SPF value vs. another SPF value reduces your exposure to UV radiation. He emphasizes not how much UV the sunscreen absorbs (the common but erroneous approach), but how much you end up absorbing.
The book is entertaining and easy to read, even though the information Is fundamental and not trivial. The author has a relaxed style, with plenty of colloquialisms. You may find that to be quite enjoyable, or you may think it was not all really necessary. But do not let that affect your reading of the important information contained there.
Ingredients: The Strange Chemistry of What We Put in Us and on Us
4.3 | 179 ratings
Price: 13.78
Last update: 11-18-2024
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Top reviews from the United States
BookMaven
Good discussion of evaluating information
Reviewed in the United States on July 9, 2020Heather Riddles
Fun to read and learn from
Reviewed in the United States on April 22, 2020Amazon Customer
Good book but ....
Reviewed in the United States on October 13, 2021John Gillis
Excellent and not so excellent
Reviewed in the United States on May 3, 2020