Hyping Health Risks: Environmental Hazards in Daily Life and the Science of Epidemiology

“For students in the health sciences, health journalists, and policymakers, the case studies provide information on their respective topics and also serve as lucid demonstrations of epidemiologic reasoning. For sociologists, historians of science, and media scholars, the case studies can be starting points for further exploration. And for educated general readers, the book can engage and enlighten regarding the complex context in which known and suspected health risks are identified, explored, and acted on.”

“Kabat, who wrote Hyping Health Risks—a fascinating and detailed examination of how we fell for certain, illusory environmental hazards—is possibly the only epidemiologist in the world to have also published a book on Dostoyevsky (he got a Ph.D in Russian and comparative literature from Columbia before switching tracks). And the background in literary analysis and theory adds a crucial ability to explain why we, as a society, are prone to turning hypothetical risks into ‘social facts.’ The upshot is that most public alarms about health risks dispense with the tools required to make sense of the alarm—and we end up with ‘disembodied findings’ and ideology.

“Health scares come and go, but they often have a tenuous scientific basis. Kabat, a cancer epidemiologist, systematically rips through cancer alerts that overrode scientific rigor in recent decades. In so doing, he dispels the dubious science underlying the scares and explains how public confusion can come about. . . . He extends his critique to debates linking radon gas exposure and secondhand cigarette smoke exposure to lung cancer. Those chapters will ruffle some feathers, but Kabat is unafraid of controversy.”

“Reading this book will give you a better understanding of what epidemiology can and can’t do, and insight into how the rational scientific process can be perverted by the press, politicians, and grass-roots activists.”

“This book does an exceptionally good job, first by putting epidemiology within the context of pubic health and then by explaining key terms, concepts, and methods. It provides a penetrating treatment of a difficult and complex subject in a readily understandable way.”