4 ms·
I mean Ben Goldacre's book itself is a pretty good example of people being irrational. He's mostly just covering the same ground as Marcia Angell's earlier book
by Alex3917 6y ago
I mean Ben Goldacre's book itself is a pretty good example of people being irrational. He's mostly just covering the same ground as Marcia Angell's earlier book The Truth About Drug Companies, which "skeptics" hated. But when Goldacre published his book the same folks decided they loved it, presumably because it was written by a man.
I mean don't get me wrong, there's enough difference between them that it's absolutely worth reading both of them, but the difference in reception between them was shocking.
- Siira 6y agoIt’s toxic to just assume/accuse sexism out of thin air.
- Jedd 6y agoI mean ... parent was talking about Bad Science, Ben's first book in 2008. You seem to be comparing his second book, Bad Pharma (2012) with Marcia Angell's 'Truth About the Drug Companies' (2005), and assuming some claimed disparity in popularity is down to author gender. It may be that new readers will pick a more recent publication, assuming it to be more contemporary. Or that they're (more) familiar with someone that had generated a large online following. (I think that's why I picked up his book, but had not heard of Marcia Angell.) OTOH I'm not sure what '"skeptics" hated' refers to. Looking now on Amazon (I am not happy about visiting this site) both are showing 4.6 / 5.0 ratings. On Goodreads Bad Pharma is showing 4.1 compared to Truth with 3.95 (but that's a pretty tight race).