Rationally speaking is a presentation of New York City skeptics dedicated to promoting critical thinking, skeptical inquiry, and science education.

For more information, please visit us at NYC Skeptics.org.

Welcome to Rationally Speaking, the podcast where we explore the borderlands between reason and nonsense.

I am your host, Massimo Pilucci, and as always with me is my co-host, Julia Galef.

Julia, what are we going to talk about tonight?

Massimov tonight is a very special taping of the Rationally Speaking podcast.

We are here in front of a live audience in New York

City at the University Settlement with a fantastic guest. I am so excited to introduce Ben Goldacre.

Ben is a physician and academic and award-winning science writer. He writes the famous

bad science column for The Guardian, as well as the author

of two books, Bad Science in 2008, and more recently, Bad Pharma, which just came out,

a critique of the relationship between the pharmaceutical industry and the field of medicine,

which we're going to have the pleasure of discussing with him tonight. Everyone, welcome Ben Goldacre.

So, Ben, I have to tell you that reading bad pharma made me realize a danger of e-books that I had

not previously been aware of.

So throughout my life, I have occasionally ended up reading books, which for one reason or another

made me outraged, starting, I believe, with Matilda by Roald Dahl when I was little.

And my reaction upon reading these books was always to be overcome with a strong urge to punch

the book.

So several, no, scratch that many times throughout the course of reading the e-book version

of Bad Pharma, I nearly punched a hole in my own computer.

And so for our audience here and our listeners at home, maybe you could kick things off by explaining why I was so outraged while reading bad pharma.

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