Book Review: Wrong

I picked up Wrong: Why Experts Keep Failing Us and How to Know When not to Trust Them  by David Freedman on a whim.  If anything I was biased toward enjoying a book like this ever since I read Good Calories, Bad Calories, which made me incredibly angry even as I questioned everything, both the research which Taubes referred to in his book, and Taubes own conclusions.  

But Wrong is not nearly as good or compelling as Taubes' book.  Although the book was somewhat interesting, it really offered very little that was new or particularly enlightening; it was more useful as a reminder of how even well-meaning and well-constructed research can go wrong as well the realities of publishing and the ways in which the need for new and compelling materials magnifies the problem.  All of this is interesting but not interesting enough to fill an entire book, a book that basically tells the reader to trust his or her own common sense and approach expert information with a healthy dose of skepticism.

The simple truth is that we are all overwhelmed with too much information and too much media all competing to win our attention and loyalty.  We want simple answers and are too willing to accept them simply because it makes life easier and less frightening.   I think this book is appealing to that all too human desire to know how to know who you should believe and how to discern the difference, but of course any simple answer to that question would probably be wrong.