Daniel J. Levitin

We are bombarded with more information each day than our brains can process especially in election season. It's raining bad data, half-truths, and even outright lies. Daniel J. Levitin shows how to recognize misleading announcements, statistics, graphs, and written reports revealing the ways lying weasels can use them.

Critical Thinking in the Information Age

A Field Guide to Lies

Maggie Gordon

I am an academic by trade. Methods and I are good friends at this point as I have spent ten years learning how to construct and evaluate arguments and data. I recognise this is not an accurate reflection of most people's lives. However, critical thinking and the ability to understand and parse statistics is a required skill for being a good citizen in today's world, and for living an optimum life. Unfortunately, these skills are undervalued, leading to a lot of misinformation being propagated and bad choices being made. 

Take, for example, the recent study about birth control and depression. The Guardian article on this and its related spinoffs were read and discussed by hundreds of thousands of people, yet the journalist who was reporting on the study fundamentally misunderstood the methods used in the research, and therefore presented an incredibly inaccurate reflection of the results. There was no discussion of the sampling, intervening variables, or even generalisability. Additionally, the numbers discussed in the article were stripped of the numerical context that gave them meaning. In the end, there was panic and outrage over results that were overstated at best and completely misstated at worst. But if The Guardian, a well respected news source, doesn't always get its facts right, who can you trust?

This is where Danual Levitin comes in. A Field Guide to Lies is a book that teaches people how to think critically and determine what out of the wash of information of modern life is worth believing. He carefully walks through common logical pitfalls, and gives people a road map for how to accurately judge various claims without needing to enroll in ten years of post secondary education. Of particular importance is his conversation about statistics and numerical literary. He breaks down complicated concepts in a way that is understandable and easy to use. From abduction to scatter plots, A Field Guide to Lies demystifies information and encourages people to take an active roll in being critical about what we are told. 

From the end of the book: "Time spent evaluating claims is not just time well spent, it should be considered part of an implicit bargain we've all made. Information gathering and research that used to take anywhere from hours to weeks not takes just seconds. We've saved incalculable numbers of hours of trips to libraries and far-flung archives, of hunting through thick books for the one passage that will answer our question. The implicit bargain that we all need to make explicit is that we will use just some of that time we saved in information acquisition to perform proper information verification... Counterknowledge and misinformation can be costly, in terms of lives and happiness, and in terms of the time spent trying to undo things that didn't go the way we thought they would. True knowledge simplifies our lives, helping us to make choices that increase our happiness and save time." 

If you have ever felt like you needed more instruction on judging the quality of information, or you need ideas for how to talk about complex concepts without using too many academic words, this book is an invaluable resource.

Sierra Nguyen

Ahmed Salem

A guide to critical thinking in the 'post-truth' era, from the author of Sunday Times best-seller The Organized Mind We live in a world of information overload. Facts and figures on absolutely everything are at our fingertips, but are too often biased, distorted, or outright lies. From unemployment figures to voting polls, IQ tests to divorce rates, we're bombarded by seemingly plausible statistics on how people live and what they think. Daniel Levitin teaches us how to effectively ask ourselves: can we really know that? And how do they know that? In this eye-opening, accessible guide filled with fascinating examples and practical takeaways, acclaimed neuroscientist Daniel Levitin shows us how learning to understand statistics will enable you to make better, smarter judgements on the world around you.

A Field Guide to Lies Critical Thinking in the Information Age

Reviews