Getting Risk Right: Understanding the Science of Elusive Health Risks. By Geoffrey C. Kabat. Columbia University Press, New York, 2016. ISBN 9 780231 166461. 272 pp. Hardcover, $35.00.
Geoffrey Kabat devoted his previous book, Hyping Health Risks: Environmental Hazards in Daily Life and the Science of Epidemiology (Columbia University Press 2008, reviewed in the July/August 2009 SI) to debunking overblown claims of risks of various environmental agents such as environmental causes of breast cancer on Long Island and radon and electromagnetic fields as causative agents in cancer. In his new book, Kabat goes beyond simple debunking and sets himself a much more ambitious task: “Two questions at the heart of this book are, first, how is it that extraordinary progress is made in solving certain problems, whereas in other areas little progress is made, and, second, why do instances of progress get so little attention, while those issues that gain attention often tend to be scientifically questionable?” (p. 27).