Science Fictions by Stuart Ritchie

Without doubt, science can easily claim the mantle for being the most consequential and useful mental model for humans to understand and navigate the world. It is therefore a real worry that the issues of replicability and “p-value hacking” are eating away at science’s potential and capability of being a source of real change in the world. In this brilliantly researched book, Stuart Ritchie explains what is wrong with contemporary science, and how the reward structure in research and academia is driving the entire field to turn a blind eye towards biased, flawed and in some cases outright fraud from seeping into some of the world’s most respectable scientific journals. Ultimately, however, the book is a rallying cry for the general scientific community to do some much delayed introspection and to create both bottom up and top driven change to fix some of the malaise that has creeped into the field. Despite its limitations and faults, the scientific method is still mankind’s best bet in solving the existential dangers that face our species. Science Fictions lays the case for how we can equip the field to help us deal with these issues.