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Comment and Society

Readers deserve better from popular science books

There is a dirty secret in publishing: most popular science books aren't fact-checked. This needs to change, says Michael Marshall

By Michael Marshall

16 October 2024

New Scientist. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

Adrià Voltà

Non-fiction publishing is failing its readers. It is pumping out books with supposedly game-changing ideas, without bothering to ensure basic accuracy. These tomes have the appearance of academic work, but none of the rigour.

My frustration about this has been building for years and finally exploded when I reviewed Yuval Noah Harari’s new book Nexus, which is full of ill-supported nonsense, including a hopelessly incoherent definition of the concept of information.

Consider Johann Hari: formerly a journalist at The Independent, he was caught plagiarising and resigned. He has since produced a string of unreliable books about medical controversies. Lost Connections…

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