[publicola1990]

Much of such dubious "science" is packaged by self help authours as miracle principles which are going to set ones life right. Popular books like "Power Of Habit" and Cal Newport's books also seem to fall into this category, and seem to enjoy huge patronage, even in HN.

[Sr_developer]

There is a cottage industry of what you may call,if you feel uncharitable, bullshit peddlers:

Simon Sinek

Cal Newport

Charles Duhigg

Mark Manson

Ryan Hollyday

Malcolm Gladwell

The list is endless to be honest, they are each different on their own way but they have the following common points:

- They are on this for the money, so expect them to be always pushing their books, products, next book, next tour, next program.Hustling, hustling,hustling.

- Their grandiose pronouncements with little or not serious backing.

- Their unwarranted sense of speaking from a position of authority

- The over-simplication and stupid generalization of what it is messy, complex and very much unique.

[coder-3]

I don't understand why the desire to make money from one's work is correlated with how bullshit the work is. It's not. Desire to make money is only sometimes associated with with bullshit (but we tend to remember it more because it leaves a bad taste). If that was not the case any capitalistic society would have never worked at all to begin with.

[lotsofpulp]

A good rule of thumb is to assume increasing probabilities of bullshit for subjects further to the left on this scale:

https://xkcd.com/435/

Even biology outside of a cellular level is already above 50% BS for me. It is just insanely difficult to have the necessary controls.

[bgandrew]

On cellular level too! I remember looking at some summarising paper on Duchenne muscular dystrophy for educational purposes. There was a question regarding concentration of certain molecule inside affected muscle cells. 5 papers were quoted - 3 were showing that the concentration is way above normal if DMD is present while other 2 were showing complete opposite. You can not imagine anything like that in math or physics.

[colechristensen]

Most popular "nonfiction" fits into this category, really.

There is a pattern to these books

* Pick a topic

* Decide on a narrative

* Pick a collection of studies to demonstrate that narrative

* Take study conclusions (which are often dubious extrapolations of data) and summarize vaguely adding additional unsupported projections, a handful per chapter

* Publish and promote

It isn't just "self-help" but nearly everything in the nonfiction section that you hear people talking about.

[programmarchy]

I'd bet that even more dubious science is packaged by large corporate interests. Take Big Tobacco, who had doctors saying smoking is healthy, or the sugar industry, corrupting guidelines and policy on coronary heart disease [1]. And medicine is not immune either, with financial conflicts of interest and pharmaceutical sponsorships correlating with outcomes. [2]

[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/13/493739074...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metascience#Medicine

[derbOac]

I don't disagree with you, but might provocatively suggest that federal funding in the US vis-a-vis a large university could also be considered a large corporate interest at this point.

[reedjosh]

Careful now... You might make someone skeptical of vaccines. /s

[tern]

Who do you look to for wisdom about how to live your life?

[colechristensen]

In general, nobody who is trying to sell it to me.

[earthscienceman]

I absolutely love this answer, it's the only correct answer. I look to the people around me who have modeled leadership, good loving relationships, and productive respectful communication... then I try to mimic their behaviors. Those people are far wiser in their actions than any of those authors are in their words.

[bob_theslob646]

May you please explain what Cal Newport has stated , that is considered "dubious science."

[zemvpferreira]

I'm interested as well. I agree with the overall point and do think Cal focuses too much on expert performance (ericsson et al) while completely ignoring tacit knowledge for some reason. But I've been reading his stuff for years and never thought he was one to peddle his own products beyond "this worked for me, might work for you".

In that sense I find him way better than other authors listed: he actually makes good use of the tools he recommends as a professional (as opposed to making a living spouting bullshit about other people's work).