Science for Life

Subtitled 'a manual for better living', this handbook consists of a large number of short entries, many cross-referenced, under the overall headings of diet, exercise, brain, psychology, health, environment and fun. It is based on extensive research, using the definition of science as providing the best current agreed position, given the data we have at the moment. The book can therefore be consulted on a huge variety of topics, and contains a lot of good practical advice. The organically-inclined reader, however, will find much to argue with under topics such as GM foods, vaccinations, homeopathy and chiropractic – where the main reference is work by quackbusters Simon Singh and Edzard Ernst. In the last section on 'fun' we are told that crop circles were entirely explained by Doug and Dave in 1991 and that the scientific consensus is that ghosts do not exist – 'there is very little good evidence for them' and they are best explained by a combination of imagination, hallucination and fakery. This not only shows the author's ignorance but also prejudice, which is apparent in a number of such entries. So readers will need to exercise some discrimination in consulting the book, although many entries are quite straightforward and uncontroversial.