Panicology

I'm a bit of a worrier, so when I found the book Panicology, by Hugh Aldersey-Williams and Simon Briscoe, I thought that might be a great way to perhaps ease some worries. Briscoe and Aldersey-Williams are statisticians and look at various  media and societal scares from the past 10 years or so and analyze them to see what is and what isn't worth your angst.

They picked some very good and obvious things to look into: terrorist threats, several aspects of global warming, the autism-vaccine link, and overpopulation, just to name a few things. They also picked some very strange issues: the death of cinema, alien abduction, dangerous art (in a literal sense - odd-shaped large sculptures, buildings created as "art"), and the decreasing frequency at which people are having sex.

The authors explore each issue with adequate depth. Both sides of the issue are presented followed by the authors' analysis of the stats and of the validity of different arguments. Each issue concludes with a rating scale that shows three things (which are never really explained - it seems like they are were a last-minute addition): Panic (the level society/media panics over the issue), Risk (the actual risk the issue poses), and Personal Empowerment (the amount that we can do to decrease panic or deal with the issue).

In the end I found myself disappointed. I'm a media skeptic, so when big scares come around, I do my reading. The statisticians do that work for you. For the most part, I was aware of the information they were sharing. There were a few issues where it was nice to see my conclusions verified. It made me smile to see them absolutely blast proponents of the autism-vaccine link, which was perhaps their harshest condemnation of panic-pushers, and it was affirming (though discomforting) for them to take on global warming issues one by one and show that for nearly every issue, we aren't panicking enough.

Overall, though, this book falls into an odd niche. The type of people that would read this book are likely to be either already informed on these issues or bored by the depth of the analysis. It also starts off slow by tackling social issues that people may be concerned about but not panicky about. Most people would look for something with more depth on a smaller amount of issues, or something with less depth but more breadth. I actually was hoping for the latter, perhaps short one or two-page fact sheets or mini-analysis concerning the odds of things happening like getting hit by lightning (not covered), getting cancer from cell phones (sort of covered), getting autism from vaccine (covered), or losing control of your vehicle in ice/snow (not covered).

Anyhow, it's not a bad book, but I'm not quite sure who I would actually recommend this book to.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

65/100, about 8 books ahead of schedule