Author & Journalist David Freedman (David H. Freedman)

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related to WRONG, my recently released book, please click here.

Experts and Studies: Not Always Trustworthy

How even top-shelf science ends up leading us astray

From Kayla Webley's Q&A with me on Time.com:

To read the factoids David Freedman rattles off in his book Wrong is terrifying. He begins by writing that about two-thirds of the findings published in the top medical journals are refuted within a few years. It gets worse. As much as 90% of physicians' medical knowledge has been found to be substantially or completely wrong. In fact, there is a 1 in 12 chance that a doctor's diagnosis will be so wrong that it causes the patient significant harm. And it's not just medicine. Economists have found that all studies published in economics journals are likely to be wrong. Professionally prepared tax returns are more likely to contain significant errors than self-prepared returns. Half of all newspaper articles contain at least one factual error. So why, then, do we blindly follow experts? Freedman has an idea, which he elaborates on in his book Wrong: Why Experts Keep Failing Us — and How to Know When Not to Trust Them. Freedman talked to TIME about why we believe experts, how to find good advice and why we should trust him — even though he's kind of an expert.

You say that many experts are wrong, yet you quote many experts in your book. Are these experts wrong too?

They very well may be, but these are people who study expertise. They know how other experts go wrong because this is what they study, so maybe they're better at avoiding some of these problems. Maybe they're a little more careful with their data and they work a little harder to not mislead people.....read more

The Case Against Experts

Why advice from the pros can leave us hanging

From my article on Newsweek.com:

Poor Imhotep. Thanks to the movies, you know him as the Mummy, the ancient Egyptian sorcerer whose corpse lurches to life to wreak havoc on tomb raiders. In real life, Imhotep was a revered healer and a progenitor of modern medicine. You wouldn’t have wanted to follow all of his advice, given that salves of animal blood and dung were among his remedies. But he got a surprisingly large number of things right, including treating infections with mold and the surgical removal of tumors; there’s a 3,500-year-old book of medical treatments widely attributed to him that endures today at the New York Academy of Medicine. Not that the masses of Imhotep’s day got much benefit from his wisdom—it was dispensed only to royalty and others among the highly privileged.

Today, of course, supposed expert advice is fairly sprayed at all of us from every TV, newspaper, and Web page. But in terms of getting it right, it’s been largely downhill from Imhotep. Let’s not get started on shoot-from-the-hip pop gurus like stock picker Jim Cramer, new-age healer Deepak Chopra, or reality-TV tycoon Donald Trump, who usually don’t even attempt to offer solid evidence for their claims. More disconcerting is that even our most credentialed, data-driven experts—scientists, economists, academics, military advisers, high-powered consultants—often end up dropping the ball or providing conflicting advice....read more

The Streetlight Effect

Why researchers look for answers where the looking
is good, rather than where the answers are hiding

From my article in the July 2010 issue of Discover:

A bolt of excitement ran through the field of cardiology in the early 1980s when anti-arrhythmic drugs burst onto the scene. Cardiologists knew that heart-attack victims with steadier heartbeats were far more likely to survive, so a drug that could tamp out heartbeat irregularities seemed like a no-brainer. The drugs quickly became the standard of care for heart-attack patients, and were soon smoothing out heartbeats in intensive-care wards around the US, as described in numerous published studies. But in the early 1990s cardiologists realized the drugs were also doing something else: killing about 40,000 heart-attack patients a year. Yes, the hearts were beating more regularly on the drug, but the patients were on average one-third as likely to pull through. Cardiologists had been so focused on immediately measurable heartbeat irregularities that they hadn't been paying enough attention to the longer-term, but far more important, variable of death.

There's an old joke scientists love to tell: A police officer finds a drunk man late at night crawling on his hands and knees on a sidewalk under a streetlight. Questioned, the drunk man tells her he's looking for his wallet. When the officer asks if he's sure that he dropped the wallet here, the man replies that he thinks he more likely dropped it across the street. Then why are you looking over here? asks the befuddled officer. Because the light's better here, explains the drunk man.

That drunk fellow is in good company. Many and possibly most scientists spend their careers looking for answers where the light's better rather than where the truth is more likely to lie....read more

Wrong

Why Experts Keep Failing Us--And How to Know When Not to Trust Them

From the Introduction to Wrong, my latest book, published June 10, 2010:

I'm sitting in a coffee shop in a pediatric hospital in Boston, hard by a nine-foot-tall bronze teddy bear, with a man who is going to perform a surprising trick. I'm thinking of an article recently Wrong, Cover

published in a prestigious medical journal, an article that reports the results of a research study, and he will tell me whether or not the study is likely to turn out to be right or wrong.. It's the sort of study that your doctor might read about, and that you might learn about from a newspaper, website or morning TV news shows. It may well be that the results of this study will change your life--they might convince you to start eating or avoiding certain foods to lower your risk of heart disease, or to take a certain drug to help you beat cancer, or to learn whether or not you are carrying a gene linked to vulnerability to a mental illness. But this man won't need to hear any of the particulars of the study to perform his feat. All he needs to know is that it was a study published in a top journal.
His prediction: It's wrong. It's a prediction that strikes at the foundation of expertise, and our trust in it....read more

Micro Nukes

Downsized, simplified reactors are poised to revive nuclear energy
and bring carbon-free power to where it is needed most

From my article in the June 2010 issue of Discover:

I’m standing twenty feet from the brightly glowing core of a working, van-sized nuclear reactor, and the Geiger-counter next to me is going nuts. But no worries, I’m told--the glow, visible on a nearby monitor hooked up to a camera inside the reactor, isn’t from nuclear fission or even heat, it’s harmless light thrown off by electrons zipping out of the core and shedding their energy into the water that surrounds it. And the stream of particles eliciting the shriek from the counter isn’t from the reactor at all--just for a giggle, the reactor manager has placed the detector next to a Fiestaware cup, which along with Brazil nuts and table-salt substitutes happens to be one of many everyday items that are mildly radioactive, and is kept on hand to tease visitors..... read more

On the Road With a Supersalesman

Is John "Grizz" Deal the greatest salesperson around?

From my article in the April 2010 issue of Inc. Magazine:

You can tell a lot about what you’re up against in a sales pitch by the way they serve you On the Road With a Supersalesman

coffee,” John Deal mumbles to me, as the others in the room noisily take their seats around the conference table at a well-known British engineering and defense contracting company on a dreary day in central England. I take this to mean that Deal has his work cut out for him, given that his prospects have unceremoniously plunked down in front of him a jug of scalding coffee and a stack of plastic cups, with no cream or sugar in sight..... read more

The Gene Bubble

When the human genome was sequenced a decade ago, the world lit up
with talk of new treatments that would help us cheat death. So why do
exercise and healthy eating still do more for us than doctors can?

From my article in the November 2009 issue of Fast Company:

Ernest Hemingway's writing may have tended to the short and sharp, but the man himself was apparently fond of the cuddly and extraneous, at least when it came to kittens with too many toes. A sea-captain friend of Hemingway's, it seems, persuaded him to take in a polydactylic cat, and that cat became the progenitor of a colony of overly toed felines thriving today in and around the museum in Key West that was Hemingway's home. The patterns of inheritance among those cats have even helped shed a bit of light on certain defects in human DNA. And so it is that Papa retroactively became an early contributor to the science of the human genome.
I learn this from Nadav Ahituv, a rising-star geneticist at the University of California, San Francisco, Medical Center, who studies the genetic roots of limb-related defects, obesity, and drug absorption..... read more

Brain Boosters

Medicine may allow us to challenge our genetic inheritance and repair insults to the brain, whether as Alzheimer's sufferers or moody, forgetful people and hazy thinkers

From my article in the July 13, 2009, issue of Newsweek (International Edition):

Daryl Kipke is showing off his company's latest prototype, a state-of-the-art electronic chip. It's not the sort likely to end up powering your iPod, but it does produce a beat you won't be able to get out of your head—because this device is designed to be surgically implanted deep in your brain, where the chip will deliver electric signals to specific clusters of cells.
...The progress in developing treatments for illnesses that ravage memory and thought raises an important question: might the same tools be used to improve the functioning of minds that by most standards are already running fairly smoothly? We may well be approaching an era of designer brains, in which those of us feeling a little foggy or dull can have our IQ, fast recall, and self-confidence ratcheted up via the prescription pad or scalpel..... read more

Billion Dollar Idea

The scientists at Emotiv have made a brain-wave-reading headset that lets you
conjure entire worlds using nothing but your mind. Now comes the hard part.

From my cover story in the December 2008 issue of Inc. Magazine:

I’m sitting in a darkened room, attempting to move a large block with nothing but my thoughts. Move, damn you; I am your master. After a long moment, the block trembles a bit, Inc. Magazine Cover Story on Emotiv

then slowly skids toward me a few feet before stopping.
Brain waves usually are monitored in hospitals or research labs, but I’m in a conference room at a company called Emotiv, where a few dozen scientists have developed a headset and software that quite literally reads my mind, allowing me play a sort of video game with nothing but sheer thought. For $299, you and yours will very soon be able to vaporize onscreen enemies with an angry thought, have your online characters smile when you smile, and see video games react to your level of excitement. And that’s just for starters. Backed by some impressive partners, Emotiv has a long-range strategy that sounds like a business-school case study from the 22nd century.... read more

Testing Baby's Brain

Infants with early signs of autism respond well to
therapy. Are health systems up to the task?

From my article in the March 31, 2008, issue of Newsweek (International Edition):

...Despite a big jump in autism awareness in the past decade, parents, schools and doctors still frequently ignore warning signs in very young children. These can be subtle: a child never points at things, shows more interest in objects than people, has delayed speech and develops a fascination with spinning in place or with spinning toys. Many pediatricians dismiss these symptoms as harmless quirks that kids will outgrow. New research and experience in some autism clinics, however, suggests that starting treatment by age 2 is critical to mitigating and in some cases entirely avoiding the disorder.
That's because unlike the brain of an adult or even an older child, a 12- or 18-month-old's brain is, in a sense, highly reprogrammable—that is, it responds well to treatments designed to permanently change basic patterns of thought and behavior. "All the evidence we have suggests that outcomes for these children will be better with an earlier diagnosis, before they reach 18 months, if possible," says Christopher Gillberg, a child psychiatrist at Gothenburg University in Sweden.
Although there are currently no effective treatments for autism symptoms in older children or adults, the prospects are turning out to be entirely different for very young children who get prompt treatment.... read more

A Digital Makeover for the Modeling Business

How Ford Models became the hottest thing on YouTube

From my cover story in the February 2008 issue of Inc. Magazine:

Clothes made from recycled materials can, as it turns out, be a little itchy. Still, Jackie Stewart is determined to dwell on the positive, and so she is chatting engagingly about Inc. Magazine Cover Story on Ford Models

Inc. Magazine Cover Story on Ford Models

what she is wearing, a dress by designer Kate Goldwater constructed from scraps of fabric. She points out that in addition to striking a blow for mother earth, it fits well and is brightly colored. The dress does, in fact, look great on her, though Stewart, absurdly long-legged, breezily poised, and pretty in a way that somehow seems both Midwestern and exotic, would probably make a dress put together from inner tubes look smart.
Stewart is so comfortable talking up green style that it's easy to forget she is on a set being filmed, until director Damian Weyand interrupts to suggest she not flourish her arms to call attention to the dress. "It's a little too Price Is Right," he says. "We just want you to be Jackie, not spokesy."
Just being Jackie isn't the sort of thing normally asked of Stewart. She's a professional model in the stable of Ford Models, the storied agency that for six decades has been a headquarters for many of the fashion world's most memorable faces.... read more

The Secret Life of a Serial CEO

Bob Cramer has piloted six companies to big paydays. Now he's found a start-up that offers something else--if only he can get the investors and founders to see things the same way.

From my cover story in the January 2008 issue of Inc. Magazine:

Coming in out of the light drizzle to this pop-tony restaurant in this swell Boston suburb, Bob Cramer looks like a man whose burdens do not include doubt, regret, or second-guessing. He is both energetic and at ease, confident and engaging. He occasionally checks the incoming

messages on his Treo in an offhand way, as if he's doing so not out of need or concern, but rather out of mild curiosity and vestigial habit. He is trim and looks younger than his 48 years. He's dressed in a blazer over designer T-shirt and jeans--like a man who could afford to be in a $2,000 suit but wouldn't be caught dead in one. He's here to explain to me what he plans to do following the success of LiveVault. Cramer brought that online data-storage company to $20 million in sales; in December 2005, the company was acquired by Iron Mountain for more than $50 million. Cramer made a bundle on the deal. "I don't have to work," he says. "I can live off the interest." Now he's thinking that when he pounces on a new opportunity, it just might be on a start-up with a little more poetry to it than offline storage or database software. "I'd love to find something that I can personally relate to," he says. Meanwhile, he adds, glancing absently at his Treo, there is no need to rush to try to find the perfect company. He seems to have no idea that it has already found him.... read more

Searching For The Best Engine

A global effort is underway to invent a better way of finding
things on the Web. Could Google be vulnerable?

From my cover story in the March 7, 2007, issue of Newsweek (International Edition):

....Despite spending billions trying to diversify beyond the straightforward search offered on its stripped-down, almost childlike home page, Google reaps about 60 percent of its outsized

revenues and more than 80 percent of its profits from ads on that page, according to analysts' estimates. That means the company's success continues to hinge on the dominance of its simple search. There are no guarantees that its dominance will last. It is threatened by a massive worldwide effort to build a better search, involving giant high-tech rivals, governments in Europe and Asia, and hundreds of tiny start-ups founded by academic wunderkinders much like Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the Stanford graduate students who founded Google in 1998. And it's also dependent on an online public that may make up the most fickle market in history, an audience whose interests are already showing signs of wandering outside the search box..... read more

The Perils of Order

Being messy, both at home and in foreign policy, may have its own advantages

From my article in the March 5, 2007, issue of Newsweek (International edition):

....If a nation has an especially strong, irrational bias toward order, it can follow that—just like office neat freaks frowning at messy cubicle owners—it will see less-ordered societies as defective and crying out for intervention. Two of the most order-loving societies in the world are Germany, where jaywalkers are berated by passersby and messiness is so unthinkable that there isn't even a unique word for it, and Japan, where people can be evicted from their homes for failing to sort their trash into 44 categories.
Although the United States is a moderately messy nation, prizing diversity and tolerating political conflict within its borders, its leaders have always been made uneasy by turmoil or disorder elsewhere, causing them to pursue "stability" in other nations, often at high cost. That's typical of the way people look at messiness—it's someone else's mess that always seems most problematic.... read more

Saying Yes to Mess

A movement is afoot to embrace disorder as the detritus of a creative mind

By Penelope Green, The New York Times, December 21, 2006:

It is a truism of American life that we’re too darn messy, or we think we are, and we feel really bad about it. Our desks and dining room tables are awash with paper; our closets are bursting with clothes and sports equipment and old files; our laundry areas boil; our basements and garages seethe. And so do our partners — or our parents, if we happen to be teenagers.
But contrarian voices can be heard in the wilderness. An anti-anticlutter movement is afoot, one that says yes to mess and urges you to embrace your disorder. Studies are piling up that show that messy desks are the vivid signatures of people with creative, limber minds (who reap higher salaries than those with neat “office landscapes”) and that messy closet owners are probably better parents and nicer and cooler than their tidier counterparts. It’s a movement that confirms what you have known, deep down, all along: really neat people are not avatars of the good life; they are humorless and inflexible prigs, and have way too much time on their hands.
Last week David H. Freedman, an amiable mess analyst (and science journalist), stood bemused in front of the heathery tweed collapsible storage boxes with clear panels ($29.99) at the Container Store in Natick, Mass., and suggested that the main thing most people’s closets are brimming with is unused organizing equipment. “This is another wonderful trend,” Mr. Freedman said dryly, referring to the clear panels. “We’re going to lose the ability to put clutter away. Inside your storage box, you’d better be organized.” Mr. Freedman is co-author, with Eric Abrahamson, of “A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder”.... read more