Proof: Adam Kucharski ***

This seemed to be a book that had a lot going for it. The topic of 'the science of certainty' appealed to a reader like me who is fascinated by probability and statistics, and I enjoyed the way the introduction made use of the uncertainty of the impact of the Eyjafjallakökull volcano on flight safety, then the delight that is the Monty Hall problem. But although the rest of the book had some highlights, I couldn't get on with much of it.

In a way, the title is highly misleading, because the book isn't really about 'proof' - after all, very little science involves proof. Certainly most of the studies we see misreported in the press don't. We can only prove something with perfect knowledge. This is fine when applying basic logic. We can make deductions, for example, if we are able to make a statement like 'no square is circular'. But such statements are rarely applicable in the real world. Instead we have to rely on induction or abduction, which is usually the case in science - meaning the best we can do is to have currently supported theory given the evidence available that may change in the future. Proofs work for abstract mathematics (also authors to read and for puddings), but not often in the real world.

This was fine (although I would have enjoyed a book on logic too), and it was interesting to cover ground on p values and frequentist statistics (though I would have liked more than the relatively quick dip into Bayes we get). But the problem was that the vast majority of the book didn't really cover this at all, focussing at length on dealing with the COVID pandemic, and to a lesser extent on taking a logical approach to proof in legal argument.

Both these specifics - Adam Kurcharski's personal experience during COVID and Abraham Lincoln's legal work - would have made excellent cases studies for a couple of pages, but they went on and on interminably. There are plenty of books about dealing with the pandemic - if I wanted to read one of these, I would have done so - but this isn't labelled as a such. I would have liked a whole range of scientific proof issues, taking in physics and cosmology and the other sciences as well. I admit I generally avoid reading about medical science, so this was a bit of a personal issue as well - but this wasn't supposed to be a book about medical science.

It didn't help that the book lacks structure, jumping around from topic to topic in a random-feeling fashion. Bottom line: if you want to find out more about the probability-based decisions made by COVID scientists (from an inside source, as Adam Kucharski was one of them), this is one for you. But if you want an engaging, wide ranging book on the nature of proof (or, rather, the lack of it) in science, this doesn't do what it says on the tin.

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Review by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here