Panicology is a book that purports to give levelheaded accounts of extraordinary popular delusions. It avoids sensationalist newspaper-style headlines and calmly explains why the editors got the wrong end of the stick. By rights, the book should make you feel smugly skeptical about the hysterical Daily Mail newspaper scare stories (as Francis Wheen’s How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World did), yet I find myself assailed by a creeping anxiety when I read it.
Partly this is because some of their sanguine words about the state of the economy look rather ironic now in the midst of the credit crunch, which doesn’t exactly fill you with confidence. Mainly, though, it’s because most of the stories are bloody scary.
To allay their reader’s concerns, the authors have added a (quite patronising) mark out of five for each story — with figures for the amount of panic, the amount of danger, and how much power you have to avoid the worst. For example, apparently salt is bad for you but a) *** there isn’t that much panic about it b) **** heart disease is the biggest killer in Britain and c) ***** you have the power to avoid having dangerous levels of the stuff in your diet. At lunchtime, for instance, I had a tin of lentil soup that contained 4 grams of salt — that’s two thirds of my recommended daily allowance. An allowance that is itself 1 gram above the UN recommendations. I will never have that soup again!
The ‘nutritionist’ statistical pseudo-science nightmare stories are always the worst. I have a brother who drinks bizarre Chinese herbal teas “because they’re probably good for you in ways they haven’t found out about yet”, so by way of distinction I’ve developped an utter cynicism for popular diet anxiety.
In the same vein (’Here’s what the Daily Mail’s been making a killing off, but I’m a serious author’-type stuff), were you a fan of Freakonomics?
I really liked the story in Freakonomics about what people call their kids. I can’t remember much of the rest of the book.