A Survival Guide to the Misinformation Age: Scientific Habits of Mind

by David J. Helfand

Overview

Learning how to tell news from fake news from fake fake news: An “important and timely” book on protecting ourselves, and society, from the infodemic (Library Journal).
 
We have billions of bytes of data at our fingertips. But how much of it is misinformation—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.
 
“Provides a vital antidote to the ills of misinformation by teaching systematic and rigorous scientific reasoning.” —The Times Literary Supplement

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231541022
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	07/15/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	346
File size:	20 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

David J. Helfand is the chair of the Department of Astronomy at Columbia University where he has served on the faculty for four decades. He has also been a visiting scientist at the Danish Space Research Institute, the Sackler Distinguished Visiting Astronomer at Cambridge University, and president of the American Astronomical Society. He was a founding tutor and served as president and vice chancellor at Quest University Canada. He has published commentary in Nature, Physics Today, the Globe and Mail, the Washington Post, and the New York Times, among other publications.

Table of Contents

Foreword
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Information, Misinformation, and Our Planet's Future
1. A Walk in the Park
2. What Is Science?
3. A Sense of Scale
Interlude 1: Numbers
4. Discoveries on the Back of an Envelope
5. Insights in Lines and Dots
Interlude 2: Language and Logic
6. Expecting the Improbable
7. Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics
8. Correlation, Causation . . . Confusion and Clarity
9. Definitional Features of Science
10. Applying Scientific Habits of Mind to Earth's Future
11. What Isn't Science
12. The Triumph of Misinformation; The Peril of Ignorance
13. The Unfinished Cathedral
Appendix: Practicing Scientific Habits of Mind
Notes
Index

Editorial Reviews

01/04/2016
Advertisers, public figures, and the media in general regularly misinform the public, but the Internet has taken this to a new level, reports Helfand, former chair of Columbia University’s department of astronomy. This cheerful corrective defines and demolishes many categories of nonsense. Warning that the brain is programmed to find patterns where none exist and to prefer simple, vivid explanations for reality, Helfand proceeds to show how competent scientists work and how to tell good evidence from bad. This turns out to be no simple task. Even scientists fail regularly, and readers must be prepared for meticulous explanations of scatter plots, Gaussian and Poisson distributions, proxies, and probability. Popular science writers traditionally boast that they will go light on mathematics, but Helfand will have none of that. As Jonathan Swift wrote, “Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion which by reasoning he never acquired,” so this book will not attract climate-change deniers, anti-vaccine activists, creationists, astrology lovers, and the like. Darrell Huff’s delightful 1954 classic How to Lie with Statistics may be more accessible, but Helfand’s work is an admirable response to a long-standing problem of sloppy thinking. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

How I wish everyone would read, appreciate, and follow [David J. Helfand's] guidance.

Physics Today

Highly recommended.

CHOICE

For those with an arts and humanities background, this book offers many valuable lessons.... For everyone else it provides a vital antidote to the ills of misinformation by teaching systematic and rigorous scientific reasoning.

Times Literary Supplement - Marina Gerner

A must–read for anyone presuming to call themselves a scientist and a should–read for anyone just trying to make sense of the overwhelming volume of data and real and concocted 'proofs' of nearly everything that spews forth from the Internet on demand. This book provides a road map for teaching students how to both celebrate science and how to view their primary source of information with skepticism and caution. Every science teacher should read this book.

NSTA Recommends - John Ziegler

Helfand is a man brimming with incredible insights on the universe.

Dave's Universe

A Survival Guide to the Misinformation Age is a no-holds-barred paean to the scientific mode of thinking. Helfand's wide-ranging, interdisciplinary, humorously cynical intellect comes through at every turn.

J. Craig Wheeler

David Helfand's Survival Guide to the Misinformation Age gives readers a chance to spend time with one this country's clearest and best critical thinkers. Helfand channels Steven Pinker's ability to dissect language with John Alan Paulos's ability to explain numbers with Richard Dawkins' ability to explain our existence (to obtain food, to avoid being food, and to reproduce) with George Carlin's ability to make us laugh. Using personal anecdotes (he's a Red Sox fan), Helfand teaches us how to think through questions as diverse as why the moon doesn't make us lunatics to why it only takes twenty-three people to have a 50:50 chance that two will have the same birthday. A real pleasure.

Paul Offit

A Survival Guide for the Misinformation Age is an impassioned plea for science literacy. Given the state of the world today, in which scientifically underinformed voters elect scientifically illiterate politicians, David Helfand has written the right book at the right time with the right message. Read it now. The future of our civilization may depend on it.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

01/01/2016
How do you know what you know? Today we have available an abundance of resources, but how do we make use of them skillfully? Helfand (astronomy, Columbia Univ.) sees a "misinformation glut," made possible and often profitable by the Internet's largely unfiltered nature combined with human nature. He offers a practical guide to building one's own set of filters through an understanding of how science works and how it can be used. He systematically describes the habits of mind that allow a rational approach to the world, offering tools to help focus on, recognize, and accept reality even when it isn't what feels good. Topics covered include a definition of science emphasizing falsifiability; the use of quick estimates to assess claims; probability; correlation related to causation; and the uses and misuses of statistics. A summary chapter uses climate change as a model to put all of the recommended tools to use. VERDICT This important and timely outline of a logical approach to looking at information is widely accessible, with some knowledge of math helpful to readers. To assist in that area, Helfand offers appendixes with a variety of refreshers and accompanying problems.—Richard Maxwell, Porter Adventist Hosp. Lib., Denver

Library Journal