Wish you had a better “bullshit detector”? Then read this book.

From the placebo effect to homeopathy and nutritionism, Goldacre (who writes a column and blog for the U.K.’s Guardian newspaper) guides you through the crap we are fed by dodgy marketing and the mass media.

He explains how the biases of the human psyche mean we are easily fooled by the misapplication of statistics.

Highlights include his debunking of the claim that chlorophyll from spinach can oxygenate the blood (something a fourteen-year-old student “could easily have identified as pure nonsense”) and his success in certifying his dead cat Hettie as a professional member of the American Association of Nutritional Consultants.