A Survival Guide to the Misinformation Age

Posted on 11 July 2018 by David J. Helfand

We live in the Information Age, with billions of bytes of data just two swipes away Yet how much of this is mis or even disinformation A lot of it is, and your search engine can t tell the difference As a result, an avalanche of misinformation threatens to overwhelm the discourse we so desperately need to address complex social problems such as climate change, the food and water crises, biodiversity collapse, and emerging threats to public health This book provides an inoculation against the misinformation epidemic by cultivating scientific habits of mind Anyone can do it indeed, everyone must do it if our species is to survive on this crowded and finite planet.This survival guide supplies an essential set of apps for the prefrontal cortex while making science both accessible and entertaining It will dissolve your fear of numbers, demystify graphs, and elucidate the key concepts of probability, all while celebrating the precise use of language and logic David Helfand, one of our nation s leading astronomers and science educators, has taught scientific habits of mind to generations in the classroom, where he continues to wage a provocative battle against sloppy thinking and the encroachment of misinformation. Read A Survival Guide to the Misinformation Age – kino-fada.fr It took me a very long while to finish this book, and I have to admit, it was difficult for me to get through Although I don t think that was completely the fault of the writing, indeed, the subject matter and the treatment of it were both professional and thorough Unfortunately, the version I had didn t include any of the graphs and the text which should have accompanied the graphs was interspersed between the actual text of the book, sometimes splitting sentences in two and making it very di It took me a very long while to finish this book, and I have to admit, it was difficult for me to get through Although I don t think that was completely the fault of the writing, indeed, the subject matter and the treatment of it were both professional and thorough Unfortunately, the version I had didn t include any of the graphs and the text which should have accompanied the graphs was interspersed between the actual text of the book, sometimes splitting sentences in two and making it very difficult to follow the flow Of course, this is a problem that wouldn t have occurred in the actual published version of the book so I did my very best not to judge the book on the poor layout of the Netgalley copy I received.In terms of the subject matter, I completely applaud the attempt that academics and scientists make to try to get people to think critically about so many of the bogus and idiotic claims that are made about scientific issues The internet is diabolical f...Fairly good book for someone less familiar with science and scientific thinking It was fairly well presented but geared toward the general reader I have seen many of the authors ideas in other places but to someone who rarely picks up science nonfiction the material may be new Not...To begin with, let me clarify that I regard the ideas promoted in this book utterly exciting, and the tools so essential and useful that they should be embraced by every qualified citizen in an ideal world However, this book may not be an effective guide to develop scientific habits of mind First, I personally suspect that some critical materials in certain chapters could hardly be absorbed by many targeted readers In my opinion, the most meaty part is the chapter on back on an envelope e To ...Politicians The media Your crazy aunt s Facebook feed Everyone today tries to inform, but most do so poorly The book begins with explaining just how much misinformation we are exposed to throughout our lives, makes a strong pitch for empiricism, then walks the reader through the causes and types of misinformation and ways to deal with it The book is not simply a list of various kinds of misinformation Instead, it tells Dr David Hefland s story of how he has helped his own students at Colu Politicians The media Your crazy aunt s Facebook feed Everyone today tries to inform, but most do so poorly The book begins with explaining just how much misinformation we are exposed to throughout our lives, makes a strong pitch for empiricism, then walks the reader through the causes and types of misinformation and ways to deal with it The book is not simply a list of various kinds of misinformation Instead, it tells Dr David Hefland s story of how he has helped his own students at Columbia to see through misinformation He seems to be a dream professor, and throughout this book he conveys complex information to a simpleton like myself with ease The text has a perfect balance of explanations and examples Not only does Dr Hefland rip apart misinformation, but he also provides the reader with the tools to correct it As an illustration, I used one of his methods and a bit of searching to demonstrate to students in one of my classes that the number of stu...What makes good science What makes bad science What makes something that sort of looks like science not really science at all These are the kinds of questions David Helfand attempts to answer in this book He talks about probability, statistics, correlation, estimation, data collection and representation All good stuff, but if the goal of this book is to explain to the general public why science is the best tool we have for acquiring knowledge, it has some flaws.I have no issues over the What makes good science What makes bad science What makes something that sort of looks like science not really science at all These are the kinds of questions David Helfand attempts to answer in this book He talks about probability, statistics, correlation, estimation, data collection and representation All good stuff, but if the goal of this book is to explain to the general public why science is the best tool we have for acquiring knowledge, it has some flaws.I have no issues over the th...This is a book to be taken slowly I have a relatively strong interest in math and science, but less than average ability, so reading large segments at a time proved quite difficult My brain wandered significantly while reading.I appreciate what the author is trying to do He is using the first several chapters to try to train your brain for the final few where he presents science vs pseudoscience It s similar in structure to Portal where the first 13 levels are actually tutorial levels for t This is a book to be taken slowly I have a relatively strong interest in math and science, but less than average ability, so reading large segments at a time proved quite difficult My brain wandered significantly while reading.I appreciate what the author is try...I was so disappointed in this book As a librarian who teaches a for credit information literacy course, I had high hopes that this would be something I could point students to Alas, Helfand comes off as a condescending, curmudgeonly old man His prose is sure to alienate the v...We live in a strange age We haveinformation than ever at our fingertips, yet most of it is utterly wrong or misleading Worse, a lot of us seem to take everything at face value or only believe what suits our own agenda and fits in with our own beliefs So, I welcome any attempts to help people think critically and tell the truth from a lie.This book didn t do this for me While it s obvious he knows what s talking about and he is passionate about helping the average reader develop scienti We live in a strange age We haveinformation than ever at our fingertips, yet most of it is utterly wrong or misleading Worse, a lot of us seem to take everything at face value ...A Survival Guide to the Misinformation Age is a guide to inculcating scientific habits of mind It s rather like The Demon Haunted World, in presenting the virtues of the scientific method and skepticism, but is muchdetailed The author hails from a technical profession, astronomy, and in addition to teaching the reader to think critically about numbers and fault check claims, he attempts to guide readers through interpreting statistics and reading graphs It thus combinesgeneral pr A Survival Guide to the Misinformation Age is a guide to inculcating scientific habits of mind It s rather like The Demon Haunted World, in presenting the virtues of the scientific method and skepticism, but is muchdetailed The author hails from a technical profession, astronomy, and in addition to teaching the reader to think critically about numbers and fault check claims, he attempts to guide readers through interpreting statistics and reading graphs It thus combinesgeneral practice...I am really confused who the audience for this is Focusing on simple scientific methods and statistics this book covers well trodden ground of how humans are not good at measures of scale or estimating probability The title suggests a that there will be concrete action items for how to deal with the rise or misinformation not just how to calculate a probability.Anyone with any training in math or science or who has read any Malcolm Gladwell book or any statistics think piece will know all of t I am really confused who the audience for this is Focusing on simple scientific methods and statistics this book covers well trodden ground of how humans are not good at measures of scale or estimating probability The title suggests a tha...

A Survival Guide to the Misinformation Age

11 July 2018

David J. Helfand