Although I'm enjoying the book, it seems as though some of
the "facts" brought to light do not follow the subtitle's promise
of "Scientific." For instance, in the chapter "Isolation - The Ultimate
Poison," the example of babies in the poor house without mothers
dying. Are the death rates higher than other poor babies who are
given up, but are held more often? The poor don't usually have the best
health care to begin with, and if the babies are given up, they are
often coming from circumstances such as incest, prostitution,
extremely young mothers, etc.. Reminds me of the EMF "power-line"
studies recently conducted here in the states.
I guess my point is that a good addition to people's reading lists would
be something along the lines of "The Visual Display of Quantitative
Information" by Edward Tufte. It's deals largely with graphs (as the
title implies), but it makes some great points about the gathering and
presentation of scientific data. Perhaps there are some better texts
out
there? This one does have the bonus of having good pictures!
- Erik