Science is how we understand the world and is essential to making progress and building understanding. Yet science is also a social construct, and when human nature collides with science's quest for truth, it can lead to failures in peer review and mistakes in statistics that render a shocking number of scientific studies useless. As Science Fictions by Stuart Ritchie (out now!) shows, the current system of research funding and publication actively encourages bad science. Yet Science Fictions is far from a counsel of despair. It’s a defense of the scientific method, and Ritchie gives us the knowledge we need to spot dubious research and to move towards positive changes and greater collaboration. |