Publishers Weekly
03/10/2025
“Even mathematical notions of proof not always as robust... as they might seem,” according to this thought-provoking analysis. Kucharski (The Rules of Contagion), an epidemiology professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, uses historical examples to explore the challenges of establishing objective truths through math and science. For instance, he discusses how Abraham Lincoln’s efforts to use Euclidian logic to prove that slavery was at odds with America’s founding principles failed because such reasoning requires both parties to agree on certain foundational axioms, which Lincoln’s pro-slavery opponents didn’t subscribe to. Modern science determines what counts as a statistically significant result based on an “arbitrary” cutoff, Kucharski contends, describing how in the 1920s statistician Ronald Fisher first proposed disregarding findings if “the probability of obtaining a result that extreme by chance” is more than 5% because that figure was just large enough to validate his recent research. Lamenting how scientists have exploited this threshold, Kucharski notes that for every 10 experiments, “there’s a 40 percent chance that one will cross the traditional... cutoff purely by chance,” leading some researchers to repeat experiments until they get the desired result and omit mention of the unsuccessful iterations in publication. The straightforward prose renders the quirks of research methodology approachable for lay readers. This edifies. (May)
From the Publisher
Adam Kucharski's new book Proof is a life raft in a sea of fake news and misinformation.”—Jacob Aron, New Scientist
“A wide-ranging study on separating facts from fiction, truth from lies, and evidence from presumptions.” —Kirkus
"Kucharski explains why getting at the truth of just about anything is incredibly hard. There's fascinating technical detail here, and a moral: the more we appreciate how hard proof is to come by, the better we can bridge the widening gulf between experts and skeptics."—Simon Ings, New Scientist
"Adam Kucharski has a knack of making complex problems sound simple - and exciting. A book that made me smile and feel clever."—Peter Frankopan, author of The Silk Roads
"A vivid, intelligent and wide-ranging book about how we know what we know. Adam Kucharski is a brilliant and entertaining guide."—Tim Harford, author of How To Make The World Add Up
“Adam Kucharski is that rarest of beasts: a true mathematical expert who can also write beautiful accessible, human prose. Proof is a profound and utterly absorbing exploration of the limits and power of proof and truth, both in mathematics, logic, and the quest for certainty that we find ourselves on, whether we’re running the country of trying to decide on what to do with a medical test result. Kucharski elegantly explores how proof is not just a mathematical concept but a vital tool in decision-making, justice, and survival—it’s brilliant.”—Chris van Tulleken, author of Ultra-Processed People
"In an increasingly complex world, where we're beset by information, misinformation, and endlessly required to make decisions about it all, Kucharski shines a brilliant and clarifying light through the muddle. Proof is a puzzle-solver's delight; the essential guide we need to make sense of what and who to trust, and the risks therein."—Gaia Vince, author of Nomad Century
Kirkus Reviews
2025-02-01
A data specialist investigates the long search for truth and certainty.
We live in an era of fake news, bickering experts, and information overload. This raises a key question: How do we know what to believe? Kucharski is a mathematician who specializes in epidemiology, and his 2020 bookThe Rules of Contagion: Why Things Spread—And Why They Stop brought together his expertise in trend analysis, social behavior, and disease treatment. In his new book, he casts a broader net, aiming to establish how truth is uncovered in science, law, politics, philosophy, and many other areas of human endeavor. He starts with Euclid and other classical thinkers who tried to find universal truths through the principles of mathematics and geometry, and he explains how their concepts provided the foundations of Western logic and rationalism. The development of calculus added another dimension. But all these ideas broke down in the face of increasing social complexity and new discoveries. Computer models and algorithms seemed to offer solutions but were eventually revealed as prone to bias, errors, and data limitations. Kucharski does a good job of exposing the flaws in these approaches and sees the “unknown unknowns” as the main obstacle on the path to truth. The book does not offer much advice about how to extract nuggets of truth from mountains of verbiage, but the best option, the author says, is to keep an open mind. He concludes: “We must seek out every useful fragment of data, gather every relevant tool, searching wider and climbing further. Finding the good foundations among the bad. Dodging dogma and falsehoods. Then perhaps, just perhaps, we’ll reach the truth in time.”
A wide-ranging study on separating facts from fiction, truth from lies, and evidence from presumptions.
