Getting Risk Right: Understanding the Science of Elusive Health Risks

ISBN-13: 9780231166461 / Angielski / Twarda / 2016 / 272 str.

Geoffrey C Kabat

Opis

Do cell phones cause brain cancer? Does BPA threaten our health? How safe are certain dietary supplements, especially those containing exotic herbs or small amounts of toxic substances? Is the HPV vaccine safe? We depend on science and medicine as never before, yet there is widespread misinformation and confusion, amplified by the media, regarding what influences our health. In Getting Risk Right, Geoffrey C. Kabat shows how science works--and sometimes doesn't--and what separates these two very different outcomes.

Kabat seeks to help us distinguish between claims that are supported by solid science and those that are the result of poorly designed or misinterpreted studies. By exploring different examples, he explains why certain risks are worth worrying about, while others are not. He emphasizes the variable quality of research in contested areas of health risks, as well as the professional, political, and methodological factors that can distort the research process. Drawing on recent systematic critiques of biomedical research and on insights from behavioral psychology, Getting Risk Right examines factors both internal and external to the science that can influence what results get attention and how questionable results can be used to support a particular narrative concerning an alleged public health threat. In this book, Kabat provides a much-needed antidote to what has been called "an epidemic of false claims."

Recenzje

"Geoffrey Kabat's writing, as usual, is phenomenally clear and expressive. His logical cadences are both air-tight and a pleasure to read. His insights into the workings and mis-workings of science, the sociology of science, and the interplay of personalities and organizations are penetrating and precise, and, above all original." - Steven D. Stellman, Columbia University

O autorze

Geoffrey C. Kabat is a cancer epidemiologist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University and Montefiore Medical Center. He is also the author of Hyping Health Risks: Environmental Hazards in Daily Life and the Science of Epidemiology (Columbia, 2009) and writes a regular column for Forbes.