If an alien from Mars arrived on Earth, visited the United States, and wanted to understand the issues that exist at the intersection of politics and science in this country, he, she, or it would have a problem. You see, there are two popular books out that have garnered significant public attention and that purport to address this topic. Unfortunately, they come from diametrically opposed perspectives, and reach irreconcilably different conclusions.
One book, as you may have guessed, is my own, The Republican War on Science. The other is Tom Bethell's Politically Incorrect Guide to Science. In essence, I argue that there's a serious science abuse problem from the political right and especially the Bush administration. Bethell, meanwhile, says the problem is coming from the left. For him, global warming is little more than a hoax, evolution is nonsense (though he offers no replacement hypothesis), and even AIDS in Africa is questionable at best. (Bethell himself is listed as a member of the "board of directors" of an organization called the "Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV-AIDS Hypothesis." In his prior writings he has also questioned Einstein's theory of relativity (!).)
Confronted with these two books, where is our poor alien to go in order to determine what's going on when it comes to politics and science? Well, as I've just learned, the alien can go to Amazon.com and consult the reader reviews there. If they're examined carefully, I think they're quite revealing.
As of this posting, my book has received 47 reviews; Bethell's has received 51 reviews. The similar numbers--in addition to the subject matter--naturally lend themselves to a comparison. So let's say our alien undertakes such an analysis. Here's what he/she/it would find.
Bethell and I both have our fans who have given long, glowing 5 star reviews. But that's not what's really interesting. Instead, what's striking from the comparison is the relative number of single star reviews for each author, and what these extremely negative reviews actually contain.
By my count, I have received a total of 8 reviews (out of 47) that were one star reviews. Of those, I rate only 3 as "substantive" in the sense that they actually explain in a specific way something that is allegedly wrong with the book, or actually try to engage one of my arguments in an intellectually serious manner. And here I am being generous, because even the "substantive" reviews often contained ad hominems in addition to actual arguments.
But now let's look at Bethell's one star reviews. By my count, he's received 23 of them out of 50, or almost half!!! Some of these are what I would call drive-by reviews, lacking any real meat or substance. Nevertheless, I would classify 11 of them as being substantive. Within that group, many of the reviews are extremely thorough and lengthy, refuting Bethell's arguments on a variety of different points. One or two of them even seem inspired by my own substantive refutations of Bethell (yes, I have read his book, though I did not post my very negative review on Amazon).
In addition, Bethell also received 5 two-star reviews (I did not receive any of these). Every single one of these was detailed and substantive, and quite critical. One of these two-star reviewers (a generous rating, in my opinion) has even posted a thorough chapter-by-chapter review of Bethell that bends over backwards to be fair to him but nevertheless winds up being extremely negative (see here).
So in short, I think that our alien could go to Amazon.com, read the negative reviews of my book and of Bethell's book, and, on that basis, begin to make an informed judgment about the substance and merits of these works. Granted, I'm obviously highly biased on this question, and my classification of these reviews does have an admitted element of subjectivity to it. But if you check out the reviews yourself (click here for my book and here for Bethell's), I suspect you'll find yourself in agreement with my analysis.
In my own highly self-interested opinion, then, the Amazon.com reviews system seems to be working pretty well.
- Log in to post comments
You could perhaps do a more objective analysis by weighting reviews based on the Amazon.com "helpfulness" rating of each review (e.g., an overall rank for each book that's the sum of the helpful/nonhelpful ratios multiplied by the associated star ratings), or the Amazon.com reviewer rank of each reviewer... I suspect you'd see a similar outcome.
What strikes me as ironic is that the very existence of Bethell's book more or less proves the point you make* in TRWoS: That partisan barbarians are out there who are perfectly willing to trash the methods of the scientific community and contradict widely-held, evidentially-sound consensus opinions if it helps them advance their ideological goals. Deeply disturbing. (*That's what I've been given to understand from friends who have read it. You're still in my nightstand stack. Moving up, though.)
I understand your faith in the Amazon system. For example,39 reviewers of "A Million Random Digits With 100,000 Normal Deviates" cannot be wrong! Check it out:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0029257905/qid=1137093798/sr=8-1/ref=s…
I happened to be perusing the Amazon.com reviews on Bethell's work the other day, and I noticed that the five star reviews got as good of a helpful/unhelpful ratio as did the one or two star reviews. The only ones that didn't were the flamebait reviews, or those that start out, "I haven't read this book, but..."
By the way, I was the one who did the chapter-by-chapter review on Bethell's book in my blog that you mention above. At the same time as I bought the "PIG to Science" I bought your "Republican War on Science" and plan on reviewing it soon. My intention is to just what you describe above, and I suspect I will come to a very similar conclusion as you have by looking at the Amazon reviews.
I don't trust the helpful/unhelpful ratios either as these buttons can be pushed by partisans of (or against) a book with no requirement for even having read it.
To Anthony: I'll be delighted to see your review.
Chris,
That Salon article is intriguingâwhere in Bethell's writing does he equate relativity with cultural absolutes, as implied? If true, this would be a direct connection between pomo and conservative abusers of science, to say nothing of the fact that Einstein wanted to name his theory after its most important property: invariance.
Steve,
I didn't bother to get Bethell's original article, but I assume it was in the American Spectator and would be on Lexis-Nexis. It was from the 1990s.
The drive bys are inevitable, but it is possible to get well-reasoned ones. GW naysayers are insidious. I've written extensively about it at my site and on www.realclimate.org. This is the goto site for this issue. I couldn't recommend it more.
Off the point, but kinda fun - any alien race that could get here is virtually certain to understand evolution and relativity. So they'd immediately know Bethel's book is crap.
I like to check the helpfulness ratings as well, as for science-oriented books they cheer me up. Reviews such as "This book is bad because it denies God's revealed truths" get many, many "unhelpful" ratings. Reviews such as, "This book is good because it explains in logical steps what the author thinks and the evidence for it, even though it's kinda technical for me" get many "helpful" ratings.
I would expect the helpful/unhelpful ratings to be posted only by people who had not read the book, since I have interpreted it to mean "helpful in deciding whether or not to buy this book."
Also, it would be helpful if Amazon were to insert a little bar chart showing the distribution of stars (much like Microsoft does for their developer library articles). One could immediately see that both books had bimodal distributions of stars rather than ratings clumped in the middle. That is, most people either loved or hated the books rather than being just lukewarm.
Thanks Chris. This is hilarious stuff. Google returned the following accounts:
Conservative Fear of Albert Einstein
On Cranks and Playbooks
Looks like there's more too. Personally, I like Bethell's recent cranky dismissal of relativity, with reference to "Einsteinians" no less!
"Einsteinians are proving adept at arguing that if you look at things from a different "reference frame," everything still works out fine. But they have to do the equivalent of standing on their heads, and it�s not convincing. A simpler theory that accounts for all the facts will sooner or later supplant one that looks increasingly Rube Goldberg-like. I believe that is now beginning to happen."
This begs the question: why is the person that wrote this being taken seriously by any mainstream publication?
At least he doesn't refer to physicists as Einsteinists nor to relativity as Einsteinism. Since Einstein got his Nobel prize for his work on Brownism (well, Brownian motion), we could refer to it as a variety of Einsteinism.
Steve,
The question is definitely begged, but judging by Amazon Bethell's book is selling quite well....
It's a shame Amazon discontinued the feature allowing us to recommend books "in addition to" or "instead of" the book being reviewed. I would invariably recommend "instead of" some woo woo book one of the skeptic's classics by Sagan, Shermer, et.al. No question about which recently published book I'd have recommended as an antidote to Bethell.
I would so enjoy writing 'The Scientifically Correct Guide to the Politically Incorrect Guide to Science.' I'm only through his prologue, but I already am dismayed by so many things. For example, his discussion of science funding. He obviously has no idea how government funding for science is determined. "All the eggs in one basket"? While government funding may sometimes be allotted by project area, most funding goes to very diverse projects, and project funding gets heavily determined by grant reviewers, i.e. other scientists. I'm a physical chemist, doing ultrafast laser spectroscopy and we have funding from NIH. Is the government telling us what to study? No. Are other scientists telling us what to study? No. And clearly no large federal funding of science ever got us anywhere, like, say, the moon.
Also, after talking about the 'lab coated priesthood' that avoids dissent, I have to wonder if Bethell even knows any scientists. Many of us positively THRIVE on dissent.
Perhaps I'll have to add my review to amazon when I'm finished. And anywhere else I can publish it.