David H. Freedman (www.freedman.com) is a contributing editor at Inc. Magazine. His articles on science, business and technology have appeared in theAtlantic, Newsweek, the New York Times, the Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, Science, Wired, and many other publications. His previous book (coauthored) is A Perfect Mess, about the useful role of disorder in daily life, business and science. He is also the author of books about the U.S. Marines, computer crime, and artificial intelligence. Freedman casts a critical eye on headline health news at his blog, Making Sense of Medicine.
"A revealing look at the fallibility of "experts," and tips on how
to glean facts from the mass of published
misinformation...Informative and engaging, if not groundbreaking
news to more cynical readers."--Kirkus Reviews
"An exposé of the multiple ways that society's so-called experts
let us down, if not outright betray us. It's a chunk of spicy
populist outrage, and it can be a hoot....It's news you can
use."--Dwight Garner, New York Times
"Forcefully argued, focusing on the point where error shades into
deceit...Wrong makes a powerful case for the prevalence of
scientific ineptitude." --Michael Washburn, Washington Post
"Mind-bending...[A] compelling case that the majority of people
frequently recognized as experts...base their findings on flawed
information more often than not....readers of Freedman's evidence
might mitigate their unwarranted trust in the "experts" who so
often offer sound bites on the morning television
news-entertainment programs as well as the "experts" promoted by
Oprah, Dr. Phil and others of that ilk."--Steve Weinberg, St. Louis
Post-Dispatch
"This is by far one of the most interesting non-fiction books to
have come out in recent times. David H. Freedman reveals why and
how a lot-if not all-expert advice is either misleading,
manipulated as to mislead, or just plain wrong. Freedman, a
journalist by profession, pierces through the shell of intellectual
confidence in studies-scientific or otherwise-and exposes 'expert
advice', 'studies reveal' and 'survey says' as false catch-phrases
designed to fool people into believing that we humans know more
about the world around us than we actually do."--Amir Hafizi, The
Malay Mail
PRAISE FOR A PERFECT MESS:
"An engaging polemic against the neat-police who hold so much sway
over our lives."--The Wall Street Journal
We are, as Mr. Freedman puts it, living in an age of "punctuated
wrongness," usually misled, occasionally enlightened. His goal is a
broad account of this phenomenon, how it takes shape through
specific problems in measurement, how it spreads through the
general idiocy of crowds, and how we might identify and avoid it.
Bravo!...[Mr. Freedman] turns to the right kind of experts to
articulate general principles-biostatisticians, for example, who
can see deeper than the average scientist into the way the data are
gathered, analyzed and screwed up...What makes Wrong so right-it
being as good as any general account of the fragility of what we
take as expert knowledge-is that it raises the right
questions."--Trevor Butterworth, Wall Street Journal
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