Book review: A coffee enema for a health writer

UMass Med School pediatrician, Darshak Sanghavi – who also writes a column for Slate –trashes a new book on junk science by a noted New Yorker health writer in tomorrow’s NY Times Book Review.    

(Note that the book was favorably reviewed by another Slate writer)

..(T)here are two ways to deal with scientific illiteracy: take a long, hard look at the forces that repel so many from science, or throw up your hands and write people off as fools.

Michael Specter, a science and public health writer for The New Yorker, shows little interest in the first approach in his pugnacious new book, “Denialism,” which carries the ominous subtitle “How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives.” He devotes chapters to anti-­vaccine zealots, purveyors of organic foods, promoters of alternative medicines and opponents of race-based medicine, accusing each group of turning “away from reality in favor of a more comfortable lie.”

Doesn’t Harvard have an entire department devoted to this? Make sure you read their listing on Source Watch for the full picture of where they might be coming from.