Bad Science

Ben Goldacre — physician, epidemiologist, and one of Britain's most effective public communicators of science — wrote this book as an extended act of frustration at the systematic misrepresentation of scientific evidence in media, advertising, and public policy. His targets range from homeopathy and nutritionism to the pharmaceutical industry and the failures of science journalism, but his method is consistent throughout: show precisely how evidence is misrepresented, explain the statistical and logical errors involved, and give readers the tools to identify similar misrepresentation themselves.

Bad Science is essential for counter-disinformation practitioners not because it addresses political disinformation directly but because it builds the epistemic toolkit that makes disinformation visible. Goldacre's chapters on how to read a study, how to recognise cherry-picked data, and how media incentives distort scientific reporting are directly transferable to the analysis of political misinformation. More importantly, the book is genuinely enjoyable — which makes it one of the most effective gateway texts for building organisational resilience through staff education. It has sold over half a million copies and remains the clearest available introduction to evidence-based thinking.