2 ms·
The Amazon review is not by someone who is a verified purchaser of the item under review, nor does the reviewer appear to be, from the reviewer's other reviews
by tokenadult 14y ago
The Amazon review is not by someone who is a verified purchaser of the item under review, nor does the reviewer appear to be, from the reviewer's other reviews I've quickly glanced at, someone who is deeply familiar with the science on the subject. So, yes, the topic is inflammatory, but I wouldn't think less of the book based on a "review" like that. I agree with you that it would be good to read reviews of the new book by scientists who research those issues.
(Author Nassim Nicholas Taleb, after noticing that some "reviewers" of his first book seemed not to have actually read the book, added section headings in the table of contents of his second book designed to trip up lazy reviewers. He detected several of those, even among people who review books for professionally edited publications for mass audiences.)
- dalke 14y agoThat sounds like an story I would like to read. I couldn't find details about it. I did find that Taleb's second book for mass audiences was "The Black Swan", but that knowledge didn't help. I did find that Taleb is quick critical of poor-quality reviewers, but did not find something which matches your description. I presume it's described in his third book?
- tokenadult 14y agoThanks for asking. I'll try a more complicated Google search to track that down. I see you've already looked at Taleb's website, right? http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/ http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/ but he no longer has the same list of stories about reviews of his earlier books linked there from the home page.
- dalke 14y agoYes, I did. The closest I found was http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/fake.htm http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/fake.htm . Oh! Perhaps archive.org? Nope. It's the same.