A Survival Guide to the Misinformation Age : Scientific Habits of Mind / David Helfand.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Helfand, David, Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Errors, Scientific.

Science--Methodology.

Statistics--Methodology.

Missing observations (Statistics).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (340 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Columbia University Press, [2016]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

We live in the Information Age, with billions of bytes of data just two swipes away. Yet how much of this is mis- or even disinformation? A lot of it is, and your search engine can't tell the difference. As a result, an avalanche of misinformation threatens to overwhelm the discourse we so desperately need to address complex social problems such as climate change, the food and water crises, biodiversity collapse, and emerging threats to public health. This book provides an inoculation against the misinformation epidemic by cultivating scientific habits of mind. Anyone can do it—indeed, everyone must do it if our species is to survive on this crowded and finite planet.This survival guide supplies an essential set of apps for the prefrontal cortex while making science both accessible and entertaining. It will dissolve your fear of numbers, demystify graphs, and elucidate the key concepts of probability, all while celebrating the precise use of language and logic. David Helfand, one of our nation's leading astronomers and science educators, has taught scientific habits of mind to generations in the classroom, where he continues to wage a provocative battle against sloppy thinking and the encroachment of misinformation.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. A Walk in the Park

2. What Is Science?

3. A Sense of Scale

Interlude 1

4. Discoveries on the Back of an Envelope

5. Insights in Lines and Dots

Interlude 2

6. Expecting the Improbable

7. Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics

8. Correlation, Causation . . . Confusion and Clarity

9. Definitional Features of Science

10. Applying Scientific Habits of Mind to Earth’s Future

11. What Isn’t Science

12. The Triumph of Misinformation; The Perils of Ignorance

13. The Unfinished Cathedral

Appendix

Notes

Index

Notes:

Includes index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 23. Jul 2020)

ISBN:

9780231541022

0231541023

OCLC:

935931812