Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #589 in Books
• Published on: 2007-11-10
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 512 pages

James Delingpole
This brilliant expose of some of the most destructive delusions of our time should be compulsory reading for everyone (particularly journalists and politicians) and if people took heed the world would suddenly become a better place.

Synopsis
From salmonella in eggs to BSE, from the Millennium Bug to bird 'flu, from DDT to passive smoking, from asbestos to global warming, 'scares' have become one of the most conspicuous and damaging features of our modern world. This book for the first time tells the inside story of each of the major scares of the past two decades, showing how they have followed a remarkably consistent pattern.It analyses the crucial role played in each case by scientists who have misread or manipulated the evidence; by the media and lobbyists who eagerly promote the scare without regard to the facts; and finally by the politicians and officials who come up with an absurdly disproportionate response, leaving us all to pay a colossal price, which may run into billions or even hundreds of billions of pounds. This book culminates in a chillingly detailed account of the story behind what it shows has become the greatest scare of them all: the belief that the world faces disaster through man-made global warming. In an epilogue the authors compare our credulity in falling for scares to mass-hysterias of previous ages such as the post-mediaeval 'witch craze', describing our time as a 'new age of superstition'.

Customer Reviews

Must read for all free-thinkers
This book is both fascinating, authoritative and excellently referenced.

The chapter on 'satanic abuse' nearly had me in tears of rage, such was the sinister and quite outrageous behaviour of those involved.

Compulsive and scary in its own right
The content has been reviewed excellently here already - I can't add anything to those reviews.

However, the thing that struck me about the book, which was as compulsive as any I can remember, was the level-headedness with which the facts were revealed. Only knowing a couple of these case studies in any depth (including the 'climate crisis' nonsense), I was shocked at how often basic corroboration of science or proclamations has been missing, and have been particularly concerned at the absence of investigative journalism. (I was delighted that they included the BBC's coverage of Live Earth - I was horrified that the BBC chose its role as that of 'advocate' instead of balanced and challenging news carrier.)

The book carefully avoids seeming like a conspiracy-theorists' manifesto, carefully unpicking the anatomy of scares.

If only this book, instead of An Inconvenient Truth, were to be circulated to all schools in the UK.

Now I know . . .
Like many people, I have been very suspicious of the recent outburst of scares of one sort or another. For instance, was a wooden chopping board really dangerous? I have also been suspicious of the "authorities" and the "science" which lies behind the scares. Well, if you have been concerned about such matters, you must read this book. It takes a cold, hard, look at what happened, what the facts really were and why (as so often happens) emotion replaces logic, those who dissent are silenced one way or another, and a falsehood becomes truth.

Government, politicians and the media do not show up well when the facts are finally brought to light (though there are always some honourable souls who retain their sense of proportion and concern for truth). Most horrific, however, are the casualties of the panics and witch hunts which have taken place - farmers whose lives were blighted by food scares, children and parent who suffered when satanic abuse was invented in the 1990s and many more.

For the authors the scare of all scares is the global warming theory. They believe that it has the characteristics of early scares - little scientific basis, disconfirming evidence is ignored and a bandwagon effect leads to vastly inflated claims. If you agree with them, then you are looking at a disaster as vast amounts of resources are diverted into fruitless efforts to slow climate change when, of course, these reources could have been used productively. Awful. My guess is the authors are right - why would governments suppress scientists who disagree with them if they were confident they were right?

A must read.