A Field Guide to Lies: Critical Thinking with Statistics and the Scientific Method

Recipient of the esteemed National Business Book Award

From the renowned author of The Organized Mind and This Is Your Brain on Music, a timely guide to enhance critical thinking in our information-saturated world

In the midst of a deluge of information, especially during election seasons, our brains face overwhelming challenges. Misleading announcements, skewed statistics, deceptive graphs, and falsified reports bombard us incessantly. In his bestselling book, Daniel J. Levitin equips readers with the tools to identify these manipulative tactics employed by misleading sources.

It is increasingly difficult to sift through the mass of digital content and differentiate between reliable information and misinformation, pseudo-facts, and distortions. Levitin breaks down his field guide into two key categories: statistical information and flawed arguments. By emphasizing the significance of scientific thinking, he underscores its vital role in developing critical thinking skills. Infoliteracy, as Levitin defines it, is recognizing the hierarchies of source quality and bias that impact the information we receive through various media channels, including social media. While we may assume that newspapers, bloggers, the government, and even Wikipedia are always accurate and logically sound, the reality proves otherwise. To succeed in our professional and personal lives, we must critically analyze the words and numbers we encounter, rather than passively accepting, repeating, and basing decisions on them. This means evaluating plausibility and reasoning, avoiding both unquestioning gullibility and outright skepticism. Levitin's charismatic, entertaining, and accessible guide offers readers the practical tools they need to see beyond deceptive tactics. By applying these lessons, readers can become more discerning consumers of information and effectively identify and counter deceptive practices.