Wrong
why experts* keep failing us--and how to know when not to trust them
Stats for nerds
6recommend
13mentions
6people
2011–2021years
85% recommend15% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I recommend the book "Wrong", which talks about a number of failings in our current research system, why invalid results persist, and how people game the system to get the results they want.
https://www.amazon.com/Wrong-us-Scientists-relationship-cons...
- No way! Look at the book
"Wrong: Why experts* keep failing us--and how to know when not to trust them" by David H. Freedman
https://www.amazon.com/Wrong-us-Scientists-relationship-cons...
to see why. Experts and expert organizations, scientific or otherwise, often provide wisdom about all aspects of life - and all wrong!
The Covid pandemic proves this point: we can't get agreement on most anything. We'd do better to shitcan the CDC and most other academic and governmental institutions, forget about WHO and start all over again but with an eye to our failed past.
Sure would save a lot of money too, even though it would put a multitude of incompetents onto the streets looking for jobs.
- Wrong: Why Experts Keep Failing Us - and How to Know When Not to Trust Them by David H. Freedman
- Painfully relevant to the current pandemic. Explains why the experts aren't!
The End of Average by Todd Rose
- Pulls the curtain(s) aside from education, corporations and the non-science of "scientific management". Why Taylorism continues to dominate corporate and social life today. Explains many features of our lives (both civic and corporate) that were "baked into" society decades ago, are rarely examined (indeed rarely noticed) and are ripe for replacement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_management
The Miraculous Fever Tree by Fiammetta Rocco
This reads like (and should be made into) a BBC series: story after story of generations of human suffering from malaria, which remains far more deadly than Covid-19. Where else do you read that merely living in Rome before the existence of a cure for malaria was almost guaranteed to shorten your life significantly and end it badly? Imperial Rome, the center of Roman civilization! Rome, the center of the Catholic Church during and after Rome fell and into the Early Middle Ages! And this disease was endemic not only in Rome but to most of southern Europe extending up to Britain.
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/science-mal...
- OK, so "Science Fictions" was just released and is full of cartoons and we have an obvious promotional push going on. But I simply must recommend the (possibly) more mundane (no comics) but nonetheless excellent David H. Freedman book:
"Wrong: Why experts keep failing us--and how to know when not to trust them Scientists, finance wizards, doctors, relationship gurus, celebrity CEOs, ... consultants, health officials and more"
https://www.amazon.com/Wrong-us-Scientists-relationship-cons...
which begins with an interview with John Ioannidis and goes on to discuss in detail why so many academic (and expert) publications are wrong and how they got that way.
- The book "Wrong!" by David H. Freedman describes in detail how this occurs in hundreds of cases. We've been blinded by institutional science and experts for decades. I've had to put the book down repeatedly out of dismay after reading yet another description of how scientists, experts, consultants and entire organizations have misled the public, other scientists and themselves.
https://www.amazon.com/Wrong-us-Scientists-relationship-cons...
Science is in very, very bad shape in the USA right now. The Covid-19 crisis has pulled back the curtain revealing only a fraction of the errors, uncertainties, and misdeeds of modern "science" and "experts".
- It's a lot worse than the title claims: almost NO experts ANYWHERE in government are good at their jobs. And it isn't limited to governments of course.
The book "Wrong: Why Experts* Keep Failing Us" by David H. Freedman shows that government, academic and private industry are quite lacking in "expertise". The current pandemic cock-ups with the CDC, "epidemiology experts", reporters, commentators, analysts and political appointees all now make sense.
Freedman doesn't have a solution, instead leaving us with "11 Simple Never-Fail Rules For Not Being Misled by Experts". but the situation laid out does suggest that we (taxpayers) should slash funding for most governmental, academic and private agencies b/c they fail to come through and literally lack expertise.
"No lesson seems to be so deeply inoculated by the experience of life as that you never should trust experts."
- Lord Salisbury
