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Science Fictions
Science Fictions
Oct 9, 2024 10:23 AM

Author:Stuart Ritchie

Science Fictions

'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

Reviews

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

A desperately important book, Science Fictions brilliantly exposes the fragility of the science on which lives, livelihoods and our whole society depend ... Required reading for everyone

—— ADAM RUTHERFORD, author of How to Argue With a Racist

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

—— ROGER HIGHFIELD , Literary Review

An engagingly accessible set of cautionary tales to show how science and scientists can be led astray, in some instances with fatal consequences ... clear-eyed and chillingly accurate ... should be compulsory reading for anyone involved in the communication of science to policy makers and to the public

—— GINA RIPPON, author of The Gendered Brain

Gripping tales of increasing recent villainy and bias in the laboratory, which should worry those of us who love science

—— MATT RIDLEY, author of How Innovation Works

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

—— Fiona Fidler , 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

—— Simon Ings , Telegraph

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

—— John Whitfield , London Review of Books

A riveting journey through the story of anatomical alchemy, Spare Parts is a fascinating read filled with adventure, delight and surprise

—— Rahul Jandial, surgeon and author of 'Life on a Knife’s Edge'

Spare Parts is such a pleasure to read, filled with so many fascinating characters and stories that seem almost too crazy to be real; I found myself chuckling, shaking my head and yet proud to be a part of this field. This is a must read for anyone that has ever been touched by transplantation or the gift of donation, a book that makes us proud of our macabre past and excited about what can only be a limitless future

—— Josh D Mezrich, author of 'How Death Becomes Life'

Stuffed with eccentric characters and questionable experiments, this is a joyful romp through a fascinating slice of medical history

—— Wendy Moore, author of 'The Knife Man'

A perfect blend of history, science and humanity on a thrilling journey around old and new parts of the human body

—— Matt Morgan, author of 'Critical'

Spare Parts uncovers the gripping birth of sharing body parts, and significantly, tells us all of our current 'good ideas and innovations' have been thought of and tested already - we are simply adding to the mix. This visceral book offers us an unparalleled historical treatise, as the world of complex transplantation continues to unravel and change

—— Daniel Saleh, award-winning consultant plastic and reconstructive surgeon


With curious and clinical precision ... Craddock raises questions about how we relate to one another, what stories we choose to privilege and who gets to tell them

—— Irish Times

By turns delightful and disturbing, even the most seasoned of medical history buffs will be astonished by Spare Parts. A thoroughly engrossing read that I couldn't put down. Hit that order button -- you won't regret it

—— Lindsey Fitzharris, author of The Butchering Art

An accessible and wide-ranging account . . . Amid the toe-curling descriptions of vivisected dogs and doomed trial runs at human-to-human tooth transplants are hopeful and inspiring accounts of how farmers and embroiderers shared their knowledge with medical practitioners . . . Thoroughly researched and appealingly digressive, this fascinating medical and cultural history sheds light on what it means to be human

—— Publishers Weekly

Amazing facts . . . I highly recommend it.

—— Sebastian Mallaby

Maggie Nelson writes with a luminosity that is, upon opening any one of her books, immediately enlivening.

—— Ellen Peirson-Hagger , New Statesman

A patient and astringent analysis of what we owe each other and what we owe ourselves, and how to balance the two demands.

—— Adam Thirlwell , Times Literary Supplement, *Books of the Year*

Beautiful and shocking, but ultimately so gloriously hopeful. The book we should all read as we emerge from this latest strangeness.

—— Paula Hawkins

I can't remember a book I've wanted to press into people's hands more this year than this resonant, immensely thoughtful look back at three generations of a farming family ... Managing to cram the whole modern history of British farming and nature into 270 beautifully written pages, this is a gem that's moving and immensely informative.

—— Andrew Holgate , The Sunday Times Nature Book of the Year

A rare and urgent book ... Its beauty is not only in the writing but in what is behind it: a gentle and wise sensibility that is alive to the human love affair with the land and yet also intimately cognisant of our collective and systematic cruelty towards it.

—— Hisham Matar

I think, genuinely, this is the best book I've read this year, and one of the most important books of recent years. It is about food and farming, and how we eat what we eat. It's about progress and nostalgia, without being prideful or mawkish, it's about families and tradition, and the passing of time. It made me simultaneously proud to be British, and sad for what we have become, but hopeful that we can change.

—— Adam Rutherford

James Rebanks combines the descriptive powers of a great novelist with the pragmatic wisdom of a farmer who has watched his world transformed. This is a profound and beautiful book about the land, and how we should live off it.

—— Ed Caesar

Through the eyes of James Rebanks as a grandson, son, and then father, we witness the tragic decline of traditional agriculture, and glimpse what we must now do to make it right again. As an evocation of British landscape past and present, it's up there with Cider With Rosie.

—— Joanna Blythman

A beautiful and important book.

—— Sadie Jones

English Pastoral is a work of art. It is nourishing and grounding to read ... this brave and beautiful book will shape hearts and minds.

—— Jane Clarke, author of When the Tree Falls

A wonderful, humane book told through the eyes of a man who has watched much vanish from his land, and now wants to put it back ... Moving and illuminating.

—— Benedict Macdonald, author of Rebirding

James Rebanks describes the life of a Lakeland working farmer from the inside with a unrivalled truth and eloquence

—— Tom Fort, author of Casting Shadows

Vivid, accessible, inspiring - a story about one man's emerging land ethic, and an appreciation of the old ways in modern times. A vital book for anybody who eats

—— Kathryn Aalto, author of Writing Wild

James Rebanks is a beautiful writer, in a unique position to describe the challenges currently being faced by farmers throughout the world. English Pastoral is a joy to read and extremely moving - a book which should be read by every citizen.

—— Patrick Holden, Sustainable Food Trust

Farming, unlike almost any other job, is bound up in a series of complex ropes that Rebanks captures in his own story so beautifully: family pressure and loyalty, ego, loneliness, and a special kind of peer pressure...English Pastoral is going to be the most important book published about our countryside in decades, if not a generation

—— Sarah Langford

A deeply personal account by a farmer of what has happened to farming in Britain. Everyone interested in food should read this compelling, informative, moving book

—— Jenny Linford

Rebanks is a rare find indeed: a Lake District farmer whose family have worked the land for 600 years, with a passion to save the countryside and an elegant prose style to engage even the most urban reader. He's refreshingly realistic about how farmed and wild landscapes can coexist and technology can be tamed. A story for us all.

—— Evening Standard, Best Books of Autumn 2020

Moving, thought-provoking and beautifully written.

—— James Holland

English Pastoral is one of the most captivating memoirs of recent years ...The traditional pastoral is about retreat into an imagined rural idyll, but this confronts very real environmental dilemmas. Like the best books, it gives you hope and new energy.

—— Amanda Craig , Guardian

James Rebanks has a sharp eye and a lyrical heart. His book is devastating, charting the murderous and unsustainable revolution in modern farming ... But it is also uplifting: Rebanks is determined to hang on to his Herdwicks, to keep producing food, and to bring back the curlews and butterflies and the soil fertility to his beloved fields. Truly a significant book for our time.

—— Daily Mail – Books of the Year

Lyrical and illuminating ... will fascinate city-dwellers and country-lovers alike.

—— Independent – 10 Best Non-Fiction Books of 2020

A lyrical account of Rebanks' childhood on the Lake District farm that he's made famous; an account of how he learned about stockmanship and community and the rhythms of the land from his father and grandfather. [...] His writing is properly Romantic, which is a high compliment [...] Rebanks is obviously a wonderful human as well as a splendid writer.

—— Charles Foster

A lament for lost traditions, a celebration of a way of living and a reminder that nature is 'finite and breakable.' Mr. Rebanks hits all the right notes and deserves to be heard

—— Wall Street Journal

The most important story, perfectly told

—— Amy Liptrot

Memorable, urgent, eloquent ... Rebanks speaks with blunt, unmatched authority. He is also a fine writer with descriptive power and a gift for characterisation ... English Pastoral may be the most passionate ecological corrective since Rachel Carson's Silent Spring

—— Caroline Fraser , New York Review of Books
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