May Contain Lies

Alex Edmans's book on how stories, statistics, and studies can be misused to exploit cognitive biases, and what readers and decision-makers can do to guard against it. Source for Episode 219's history of the randomized controlled trial, from James Lind's 1747 scurvy experiment through modern instrumental-variable studies on discrimination, education, and corporate succession.

Source for Episode 224's full guest interview on confirmation bias and the narrative fallacy — the 10,000-hour rule, Belle Gibson's cancer-cure hoax, wrongful convictions, and the Deepwater Horizon disaster (see Confirmation Bias, Narrative Fallacy).

Source for Episode 225's companion episode on the book's second core bias, Black-and-White Thinking (Binary Bias), applied to bestselling business and diet books (the Atkins Diet, Simon Sinek's Start With Why, Angela Duckworth's Grit).

Discussed in

• Episode 219 — 219-the-experiment-every-marketer-should-know
• Episode 224 — 224-can-10-000-hours-of-practice-make-you-great
• Episode 225 — 225-why-most-bestselling-business-books-are-bs

Related

• Alex Edmans
• Randomized Controlled Trials and Causal Inference
• Confirmation Bias
• Narrative Fallacy
• Black-and-White Thinking (Binary Bias)