'Required reading for everyone' Adam Rutherford

Shortlisted for the Royal Society Science Book Prize 2021

Medicine, education, psychology, economics - wherever it really matters, we look to science for guidance. But what if science itself can't always be relied on?

In this vital investigation, Stuart Ritchie reveals the disturbing flaws in today's science that undermine our understanding of the world and threaten human lives. With bias, careless mistakes and even outright forgery influencing everything from austerity economics to the anti-vaccination movement, he proposes vital remedies to save and protect science - this most valuable of human endeavours - from itself.

* With a new afterword by the author *

'Thrilling... Reminds us that another world is possible' The Times, Books of the Year

'Excellent... We need better science. That's why books like this are so important' Evening Standard

"Thrilling ... Ritchie reminds us that another world is possible" - The Times

"Fascinating and often shocking" - Sunday Times, Best Paperbacks of 2021

"The most important science story of our times ... evocative and engaging ... sometimes funny, sometimes shocking" - Unherd

"Excellent ... we need better science. That's why books like this are so important" - Evening Standard

"Entertaining ... revelatory ... brilliantly highlights the problems in current practices and sets out a path towards new ones" - Daily Mail

"Ritchie's engaging tour of the dark side of research [...] has rumbled science's guilty secret ... the tragedy is that the current system does not just overlook our foibles, it amplifies them ... he's entertaining company ... an illuminating and thoughtful guide. Ultimately, he comes to praise science, not to bury it" - Literary Review

"All the replication-failure and scientific-misconduct stories you've ever heard are here - along with more that you haven't ... This comprehensive collection of mishaps, misdeeds and tales of caution is the great strength of Ritchie's offering ... Ritchie's four themes carve complex, interconnected issues at natural joints, and allow his case studies to shine" - Nature

"He has come to praise science, not to bury it; nevertheless, his analyses of science's current ethical ills - fraud, hype, negligence and so on - are devastating" - Telegraph

"Science Fictions... is a useful account of ten years or more of debate, mostly in specialist circles, about reproducibility" - London Review of Books