Kabat seeks to help us distinguish between claims that are supported by solid science and those that are the result of poorly designed or misinterpreted studies. By exploring different examples, he explains why certain risks are worth worrying about, while others are not. He emphasizes the variable quality of research in contested areas of health risks, as well as the professional, political, and methodological factors that can distort the research process. Drawing on recent systematic critiques of biomedical research and on insights from behavioral psychology, Getting Risk Right examines factors both internal and external to the science that can influence what results get attention and how questionable results can be used to support a particular narrative concerning an alleged public health threat. In this book, Kabat provides a much-needed antidote to what has been called "an epidemic of false claims."

About the Author

Geoffrey C. Kabat, a cancer epidemiologist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, has studied a wide range of lifestyle and environmental factors associated with cancer and other diseases. He is the author of Hyping Health Risks: Environmental Hazards in Daily Life and the Science of Epidemiology (2008) and writes a regular column for Forbes on the perception vs. the reality of health risks.

An incisive look at some of today’s most contested health risks—both real and illusory.

"Geoffrey Kabat's vital, wide-ranging book cannot have arrived at a more fortuitous time. As individuals and societies, we are constantly asked to gauge risks—and we often do so hastily or irrationally, with grave consequences. In Getting Risk Right, Kabat provides a crucial framework to think about risks, biases, and judgment. Everyone should read his analysis—at once clear-eyed, thoughtful, and beautifully written—to understand the nature of risk. I cannot overstate the importance of this book." —Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of The Emperor of All Maladies