Copycats and Contrarians - Michelle Baddeley **

I think what Michelle Baddeley is trying to do with this book (or more likely the publisher with its positioning) is to recreate the success of Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow, and it may have been possible with this topic - but this is certainly not the book to do it. Various recommendations describe this as a 'tremendous read' and tell us that Baddeley has 'terrific writing skills' - but I have to be a contrarian: I found Copycats and Contrarians almost unreadable.

The concept is simple - that there are two significant behaviours: going along with the herd and standing out and being different. Each has advantages in different circumstances, though it can be difficult to know if following the herd, for example, is a good or bad thing in a particular circumstance. And, Baddeley suggests (contrary to David Sumpter in Outnumbered), our social media bubbles turn us too much to herd behaviour and keep out the contrarians who could change things for the better.

All this sounds very interesting, and I think it could have been. However, there are three significant problems with the book. The first is that it sometimes feels more like a business book, with their typical approach of having a few points made over and over again, than it does a science book. Secondly it's very weak on narrative. When Baddeley does built in some kind of story - for example, describing a specific experiment - things pick up. But all too often what we get is just a collection of facts, theories and opinions. And, finally, what science there is tends not to be given enough of a detailed treatment. There is relatively little content with a proper scientific basis (even Freud gets a look in without real criticism) and where studies are mentioned there is nothing about, for example, whether the sample size is big enough to draw any significant conclusions.

I came away from the book with very little insight beyond the second paragraph above. It just didn't work for me.

Hardback:

Kindle:

Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

Review by Brian Clegg

Comments

The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Henry Gee ****

In his last book, Henry Gee impressed with his A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth - this time he zooms in on one very specific aspect of life on Earth - humans - and gives us not just a history, but a prediction of the future - our extinction. The book starts with an entertaining prologue, to an extent bemoaning our obsession with dinosaurs, a story that leads, inexorably towards extinction. This is a fate, Gee points out, that will occur for every species, including our own. We then cover three potential stages of the rise and fall of humanity (the book's title is purposely modelled on Gibbon) - Rise, Fall and Escape. Gee's speciality is palaeontology and in the first section he takes us back to explore as much as we can know from the extremely patchy fossil record of the origins of the human family, the genus Homo and the eventual dominance of Homo sapiens , pushing out any remaining members of other closely related species. As we move onto the Fall section, Gee gives ...

Pagans (SF) - James Alistair Henry *****

There's a fascinating sub-genre of science fiction known as alternate history. The idea is that at some point in the past, history diverged from reality, resulting in a different present. Perhaps the most acclaimed of these books is Kingsley Amis's The Alteration , set in a modern England where there had not been a reformation - but James Alistair Henry arguably does even better by giving us a present where Britain is a third world country, still divided between Celts in the west and Saxons in the East. Neither the Normans nor Christianity have any significant impact. In itself this is a clever idea, but what makes it absolutely excellent is mixing in a police procedural murder mystery, where the investigation is being undertaken by a Celtic DI, Drustan, who has to work in London alongside Aedith, a Saxon reeve of equivalent rank, who also happens to be daughter of the Earl of Mercia. While you could argue about a few historical aspects, it's effectively done and has a plot...

Amazing Worlds of Science Fiction and Science Fact: Keith Cooper ****

There's something appealing (for a reader like me) about a book that brings together science fiction and science fact. I had assumed that the 'Amazing Worlds' part of the title suggested a general overview of the interaction between the two, but Keith Cooper is being literal. This is an examination of exoplanets (planets that orbit a different star to the Sun) as pictured in science fiction and in our best current science, bearing in mind this is a field that is still in the early phases of development. It becomes obvious early on that Cooper, who is a science journalist in his day job, knows his stuff on the fiction side as well as the current science. Of course he brings in the well-known TV and movie tropes (we get a huge amount on Star Trek ), not to mention the likes of Dune, but his coverage of written science fiction goes into much wider picture. He also has consulted some well-known contemporary SF writers such as Alastair Reynolds and Paul McAuley, not just scient...

Search This Blog