Just looked into a claim from a big hit pop sci book. Referenced to a book chapter
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Go to the book chapter, and it cites a report that is unavailable on PubMed A bit of digging on Google and I find the report Claim is exactly where the reference says it is, except made without any basis
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So I read the whole report, turns out that the claim appears to be based on a single survey of a relatively small number of people in Lima that doesn't really support the statement in the book itself
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And then I look at the literature, and it turns out that the claim is disputed, might not be accurate, and is almost certainly more complex than the presentation of it as a fact in the book
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Bottom line: pop science books are great fun, interesting, can be very important, but relying on them for facts can be very dicey
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I feel like most pop science just becomes annoying/disheartening when you have a working background in epi
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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The worst is coming across an incorrect claim in the first chapter, which puts the rest of the book under a cloud
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I tend to find that if there's one incorrect claim, there are many others so the cloud is justified!
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