The word that is often used in political speech is the word "consensus' when referring to anything relating to science. Despite the consensus of most economists on the benefits of free trade, lower minimum wage laws, free markets, vouchers, etc these politicians will often ignore consensus to pursue their politics. In the same vein this book offers a criticism of accepted consensus to offer an alternative view. I am not a scientist, but it is interesting nonetheless. Smashing consensus viewpoints is the purpose and it is somewhat successful in making one skeptical. ( )

Bethell's tone here is a bit too obviously polemical for my taste (nothing wrong with polemics, per se, it just depends on the context!) and one gets the feeling that Bethell is not always exposing the reader to the best arguments from the other side. But I do not wish to pile on the anti-Bethell bandwagon here. Overall, I found The Politically Incorrect Guide To Science to be a useful and informative tour through a number of scientific controversies where liberals have up to now dominated the terms of debate. One of the things that Bethell's work shows, and the reaction to his book bears this out even more, is that it can be difficult or dangerous to publicly question some of the politically influenced reigning scientific orthodoxies. One is often simply dismissed as a racist, a religious nut, extreme right-winger, etc. To say nothing of more dire repercussions. A reviewer wonders why Bethell doesn’t cite more statements by doctors in his chapter on African AIDS. Well, Bethell himself answers this sort of question in the Introduction to the book. The “business of science" involving public and private grant money, the importance of professional reputation, etc. provides strong incentives against rocking the boat, so to speak. And I would add that most of these sorts of people are not primarily interested in rocking the boat anyway--rather they are interested in just being good doctors or scientists or whatever, which is not necessarily a bad thing. So in discussing revisionist claims, it isn’t really fair to demand more backing from “establishment" experts. Rather, we should look at the evidence and the arguments in an unbiased way.

Let me cite one set of examples--all concerning the chapter on African AIDS--where I do not think this was done fairly in the other Bethell review. Though I should say that in the following, I mean no disrespect to Anthonares, whose blog I have found to be attractive, interesting and informative. This is not a full review of his review, only a discussion of a few of his points. 1) Anthonares attacks Bethell for making the “fallacious argument" that since South Africa has a population 1/6 that of the United States, it cannot have an AIDS death rate 20 times higher. But Bethell doesn’t make that strictly absurd argument. The way I read him he simply cites the claim--a claim which amounts to South Africa having an AIDS death rate 120 times greater than the U.S.--as one that should make us skeptical of the numbers. And surely it should. We need to ask : a) What explains this? and b) Such a huge death rate should have a major effect on the overall death rate in South Africa--on the order of increasing it, by my rough estimates, 50%-100%--does the evidence show that this is in fact occurring? Bethell’s explanation and answer is that many non-AIDS deaths are being shifted into the AIDS category, and that thus the AIDS epidemic in Africa has been greatly exaggerated. The rest of the chapter largely amounts to a defense of this thesis, and in my view it is a relatively adequate defense given the space constraints of the chapter. 2) Bethell is accused of making a similar “fallacious argument" that recent African population growth--the sub-Saharan population has increased by 69% in the last twenty years--disproves the AIDS epidemic. Again, Bethell does nothing of the sort, rather he uses the numbers to imply that something fishy might be going on. And to anyone without a previous bias, these numbers, in the context of the alleged AIDS figures, cannot but seem curious. 3) Anthonares accuses Bethell of advancing the “borderline racist" argument that due to the deterioration of African physical infrastructure over the last 40 years, Africans may have been in some ways better off under colonial rule. (To nit-pick, Bethell doesn’t precisely make this claim himself, still less does he “haughtily decree it".) But if one cannot criticize postcolonial African politics and economics without ascriptions of racism and righteous condemnations of King Leopold, etc. then things are in a sorry state indeed--especially for the Africans. In this context it is ironic that Bethell gets no credit for attacking "establishment" explanations for the alleged huge AIDS death rate, explanations that many have labeled “racist"--that Africans are more promiscuous, or that they are culturally backward, etc. But I would prefer a moratorium on the “that’s racist" game--the sort of thing the Politically Incorrect Guides were written in part to combat. Bethell argues that the African AIDS crisis is largely a myth but that there is a very real overall African health crisis, in some ways worse and more pronounced than many believe. If he is right, we are currently witnessing a huge and tragic misallocation of medical and economic resources. The proposition that the medical and scientific community should be open to critical and alternative points of view, whether they are “politically correct" or not, is therefore one which takes on, literally, life and death importance. ( )

I have a detailed series of chapter-by-chapter reviews at my blog, summarized here: http://www.anthonares.net/2005/12/sci...

Here is my summary paragraph:
This book is not a work of science, it is a work of political propaganda most likely intended to arm its readers with a series of smart sound-bite arguments. It is poorly researched, badly written, deliberately incomplete, and displays extremely negligent journalism. Those that read it to learn about science will be grossly misinformed and made ignorant by the dishonest journalism of Tom Bethell. I cannot state strongly enough how disgusting the AIDS chapter is, and how badly that reflects on the entire work, as well as the author. The best fate that this book could receive is to be condemned to the trash-heap of science journalistic history, because its few successes do not merit the 270+ pages it is printed on. ( )