Book Review-Science Fictions: Exposing Fraud, Bias, Negligence and Hype in Science

A shocking and captivating book about a topic every researcher, educator and decision maker should know, it first shakes you to the core, then explains all that is objectively known to be wrong with how we currently conduct scientific research, finally suggesting some possible solutions.Many of the problems identified will be known to a seasoned researcher: publication bias, p-hacking, and hyping correlation from observational studies that does not equal causation, while many researchers are also working collectively to solve these issues (e.g., Open Science Framework, n.d.).Nevertheless, having virtually all that is wrong with science summarized in one book is sure to move, inspire, and compel every scientist to take action.However, this book should not get into the hands of the public, for it will inject fear and despair, washing away the boundary between science and pseudoscience.The book has had an incredible reception.In 2021, it was short-listed for the Royal Society Prize for Science Books (Bookseller, 2021), although it lost to another excellent book.The author, Stuart James Ritchie, is a lecturer at King's College London, currently with 8022 citations and an h-index of 43 (Ritchie, n.d.).As a researcher in psychology, he experienced early in his career that many journals (used to) refuse replication studies, the core of what makes science, science, embarking on a quest to change it (Ritchie, 2021).The book supports its arguments exceptionally well.Every chapter consists of several flawed research papers, followed by other researcher papers rebutting those papers, and sometimes followed by papers refuting the rebuttal!Incredible.A quarter of the whole book consists of explanatory notes and references to literature, which is placed at the end, so as not to disturb the flow of reading.At one point, Ritchie criticizes a Nobel prize winner, Daniel Kahneman, for relying too much in his best-selling book (2012), on some work that was later discredited.Yet, the same could go for this book, too.In the author's own words: "... even if you read a seemingly devastating critique of a piece of research, the critique itself might be mistaken, and so might be the critiques of the critique.That also goes for everything I've written in this book."He offers a 5-pound reward for every minor mistake found in the book, and a 50-pound reward for a major mistake; this book shows that science is full of mistakes.

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