Myth-busting book has the facts behind fads

A book packed with hard facts to strengthen or shatter numerous pieces of unquestioned wisdom.

PANICOLOGY
Simon Briscoe and Hugh Aldersey-Williams
Viking, pbk, $37

Review by Clive Trotman

Reading backwards can give the impatient reader a quick look at what a book is leading up to.

Asteroid devastation, flying saucers, power line fears, Frankenstein foods, aliens . . . oh no.

But persevering, this excellent book is solidly based on the science of statistics and, in a dispassionate and factual way, sets out to trace numerous public misconceptions back to their origins, which are often incredibly flimsy.

Sadly, hot publicity will usually triumph over cold fact.

The introduction of measles vaccination was followed by a drop in annual deaths (in England and Wales) from 100 to 20, and a further drop to two when the triple mumps, measles, rubella (MMR) vaccine was introduced in 1988.

Then the triple vaccine became unpopular, the single vaccine was not readily available, measles cases shot up.

But why did the MMR vaccine fall out of favour? Preconceptions in matters of health are peculiarly unshakable and personal but even if the authors fail to change any parents' minds, their careful analysis of the roots of the MMR scare is good reading and a real shaker.

Much of the book is about health and sociology, always with a fascinating inquiry into where the numbers actually originate.

The effect of numbers cited by an "expert" to a lay jury can be compelling.

People went to prison because a doctor (since struck off) told a jury that the odds of two sudden infant deaths in one affluent family were 73,000,000 to one.

In other words, there couldn't have been two accidents.

Little common sense is needed to realise there could be a common genetic or environmental factor operating, making a second such tragedy far more likely, not less.

Several convictions were reversed on more level-headed statistical evidence.

Depending on your point of view, the book is packed with hard facts to strengthen or shatter numerous pieces of unquestioned wisdom.

Is there a gender pay gap, and more pertinently, in the private or the public sector, and if so, why? What is RSI, really, and is there anything you can possibly do (like answering the phone) that doesn't sometimes cause it? Is there a crime wave, or perhaps not? Are you likely to be brought down by terrorism, an earthquake, radioactive poison, a truck, an asteroid? Look at the statistics.

A slightly sardonic sense of humour lurks just below the surface.

On bird flu and the like: "Of course, the media thrives on the unrealised threat of mortal disease that could wipe out entire, well, readerships."

Obviously bird flu is serious to the person who catches it, but the cool understanding that it is spread through bird droppings tells you to avoid taking up "voodoo and smearing yourself with the raw entrails of an infected chicken" or eating "raw duck's blood sausage."

Quite so.

- Clive Trotman is a Dunedin science writer and arbitrator.