<i>A Survival Guide to the Misinformation Age: Scientific Habits of Mind</i>

A Survival Guide to the Misinformation Age: Scientific Habits of Mind, David J. Helfand, Columbia U. Press, 2016. $29.95 (344pp.). ISBN 978-0-231-16872-4 Buy at AmazonScience is one of several human inventions—like farming, writing, and mathematics—that has substantially enhanced our quality of life, improved our health and longevity, and led to an understanding of the universe. David Helfand’s new book A Survival Guide to the Misinformation Age: Scientific Habits of Mind is a primer on the methods of science that make it so powerful. It is also a paean to the expansion of experience that scientific thinking provides those willing to learn a few tools of the trade.How I wish everyone would read, appreciate, and follow its guidance. Our world would surely be a much better place if more people implemented the “habits of mind” that Helfand details. Our politicians would behave differently, since their statements would be judged and assessed rationally instead of through emotional resonance. Outrageous websites claiming alien visitations, miracle cures, or unbeatable investment opportunities would see no traffic, as their claims would be seen as impossible or flawed after even a cursory analysis. Policy discussions would begin with a shared sense of the fundamental problems to be overcome instead of arguments about whose “facts” are correct.How very different from where we find ourselves today, when textbooks explaining evolution face seemingly never-ending challenges in school districts across the US; when large swaths of the populace question the reality of carbon dioxide–induced climate change and even whether the amount of CO2 is increasing; when abandoning vaccination, which has saved millions of lives, is discussed openly as a viable option among the educated public. I could go on, but the point is clear: More people need to know and use the basic tools of science in their daily life.Helfand’s book carries on the tradition of works like The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan (Random House, 1995), The Magic of Reality: How We Know What’s Really True by Richard Dawkins (Free Press, 2011) and even A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson (Broadway Books, 2004) that explain the value and impact of scientific habits of mind and the knowledge and understanding those habits deliver.I was in graduate school when Sagan’s book came out, and it reinforced much of what I had already learned through my many years of science-focused education. That having a sense of scale is important. That knowing what is probable and what is unlikely is important. That causality and correlation aren’t the same thing. That back-of-the-envelope calculations provide rough answers to tough questions. Helfand’s chapters walk us through similar lessons and even provide chapter-by-chapter exercises to test and improve our skills. I enjoyed those problems, which played out more like enjoyable puzzles than algebra homework sets from long ago.Helfand strays from his central theme by including a mild rant on the importance of linguistic rules, but he admits partway through it that the detour is at least partly due to his pedantic tendencies. One can forgive him and move on to the important conclusion of the section: that words matter because they contain information and therefore deserve our attention just as much as numbers. Having worked in close collaboration with Helfand during his recent tenure as president of the American Astronomical Society, I can assure you that he is a wee bit pedantic, but that tendency enhanced his excellent and effective leadership. He has also used the principles expressed in A Survival Guide to inform the educational philosophy of Quest University Canada, which he describes in two enjoyable TEDx talks about the need to change the way we educate university students.As practitioners of science, we rarely step back and think about how we go about our work. We’re too busy getting the work done. But reading through this survival guide, I was struck by the extraordinary power provided by a few simple tools fundamental to science. Sitting here on our small planet we have determined both the scale and the history of our universe, revealed the physical changes Earth has experienced over a time span far in excess of our own lifetimes or that of our species, outlined the basic function of our brains and bodies, revealed the fundamental ways matter interacts and the forces that guide those interactions, and pierced the inner working of things so small we cannot even see them through microscopes. The tools of our trade are powerful, and scientifically inclined readers will enjoy the way Helfand reminds them of that fact. But if this book motivates appreciation of those tools and their application beyond our own community, then we’ll really be on our way to a better world.© 2016 American Institute of Physics.

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