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This same vacuous argument could be applied to the book itself: Pop-sci books like this make a million claims and take an inordinate amount of time to verify. And by that time it doesn’t matter, the claims will already have been accepted as true.

See how pointless this is?

It is quite different.

To argue against a book, you really only need to argue against its central theme. To combat a dozen accusations, you need to reply to each and every one to avoid being wounded by them.

> To argue against a book, you really only need to argue against its central theme. To combat a dozen accusations, you need to reply to each and every one to avoid being wounded by them.

No, you don't get a pass just because your "central theme" is acceptable.

If someone writes a book about a scientific topic, with a "central theme" that is uncontroversial but uninteresting (e.g. "sleep is good"), but otherwise riddles the book with factual and scientific inaccuracies, then they need to fix the problems. If they don't, they're writing science-themed fiction, at best.

At worst, someone can do real harm by dressing up nonsense as science.

It's like that quote from Einstein, when asked about what he thought about his many critics and detractors, he said something along the lines of "if I was wrong a single critic would be sufficient."

I find this comment strange and wrongheaded. The world is better off for having this criticism out there, and we should thank Guzey for making the effort. Unlike Walker, he doesn’t get paid to do it.

> Regardless of the accuracy of such a barrage of accusations, it takes an inordinate amount of time to respond to the criticism, as it will typically contain of several dozen points each of which require a lengthy response. And by that time it doesn't matter, the accusation will have already been accepted as true.

See also: the gish gallop: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gish_Gallop

> The Gish Gallop is the fallacious debate tactic of drowning your opponent in a flood of individually-weak arguments in order to prevent rebuttal of the whole argument collection without great effort.

The book is accepted as true by more people than the criticism. The author got away with it.

Interesting all of the criticisms are individually weak arguments. Like you’re saying no argument is strong?

I'm saying nothing of the sort. I was just pointing out that there's a term for a certain practice. Not even saying that's what is happening in the OP article.

My bad for assuming some bad faith. I start arguing with people on HN or Reddit…I’m being stupid.

> in this essay, I’m going to highlight the five most egregious scientific and factual errors Walker makes in Chapter 1 of the book. This chapter contains 10 pages and constitutes less than 4% of the book by the total word count.

This doesn't really change anything. The problem is the large number of accusations, not the size of the work being accused of inaccuracies.

You still haven't explained how pointing out 5 factual errors in the first 4% of the book is actually in bad form.

This in particular: "it takes an inordinate amount of time to respond to the criticism"

Ain't it. If you are going to present yourself as an authority on a segment of human knowledge, then you should necessarily EXPECT to receive challenge when you haven't actually done your own homework. Nobody who writes a book while acting as an authority should be incapable of showing their work.

I think the point others are making is that you can make this accusation about most topics. Take the average, well-sourced Wikipedia article on a similar topic as an example. Choose it by random. You’ll find the same issue. Every subject has some amount of internal disagreements, controversies, and inaccuracies. There will always be more questions than answers.

Five is not a large number.

And since they're all aimed at the first chapter, it's not cherrypicking.

point 3 is some nitpicky claim about Fatal familial insomnia.

I don't find it to be egregious

mischaracterizing the entire disease is not "nitpicky" imo

There's nothing problematic with the criticism. The book is riddled with false claims and what's actually problematic is that someone sold countless of copies of fraudulent self-help on a contentious topic like sleep because they knew exactly it would sell like hotcakes regardless of its scientific accuracy.

You're right that it's excatly like nutrition advice or politics in that there's a 80%+ chance whenever someone sells a hugely popular book in this field that most of it is just made the f*** up.

Other sleep experts have asserted that the book is so awful as to constitute research misconduct and what we should do is give posts correcting bad science the attention they deserve and hold shoddy scientists and public intellectuals accountable.

I haven't read the book, so I can't comment on that... but this comment resonates with me.

I think its similar to how people will completely write off a book/movie/person for _one_ thing. I get some things have more weight than others and its hard to trust a book if you find one error... but I've seen people say entire books (technical ones) are "trash" because they disagreed with one or two issues.

Seems like a modern phenomenon. Or maybe just rose tinted glasses... but it seemed people could disagree or even point out flaws while still being on the same "team."

> In general, criticism of this format is quite problematic and should be considered bad form. You see the format quite often in politically sensitive research and other infected areas (like nutrition), as a means of character assassination.

Interesting. It looks like it’s making an argument but if you read closely it’s nothing but insinuation and an opinion about the correct way to have disagreements so as to avoid scandal in front of the plebeians.

It definitely feels like one of those strategies deployed when people can't actually attack the substance of an argument anymore. Basically "i ain't reading all that" but in a dress shirt

What would be a better form of criticism of accuracy of a book?

The intellectually honest thing is to assume not that the author is maliciously incompetent, but that you, the reader are missing something and inquire with the author about sources or reasoning for claims that contradict the apparent scientific consensus.

If the author doesn't respond to such an inquiry within ample but reasonable time, then you can go loading up the shotgun with accusatory birdshot and take it to the court of public opinion.

That's the last resort.

Some people (lots of people) really are just bullshit artists, and it's a waste of time to consult with them personally when their thoughts are already out there, in the form of a published book.

BS. Too many people write too many books. See the Brandolini's law.

Except pop-sci books are cancers in and of themselves. The book has some interesting notes but in general prescribes really questionable conclusions to the data. For example, one poster here suggests sleeping less leads to cancer.

I don't personally think the article was in any worse taste than the book. Just because someone cites studies doesn't mean they know how to relate data. There's two entire websites dedicated to this sort of fallacy, here (HN) and Reddit. Pop-sci is the most annoying part of the 21st century to me.

I'm not convinced anyone actually understands sleep. We know too little and we can die. Too much, and we can die too. "Just enough" is the answer but as far as I can tell no one can quantify what this even means. I sleep enough to be rested. This seems to be >= 6 hours a night. The book would insinuate that I'm going to die of all sorts of terrible diseases as a result. The book itself isn't good science and I don't think a criticism of such a broad-strokes painting of a complicated subject needs to be any more kind.

To address your greater point if there's any place where you can throw a rock and find bullshit it's nutrition and health "science". In fact, the industry is so rife with bullshit it's often difficult to tease out actual actionable data. More people need to directly criticize these people in such a fashion until they simply go away.