31.1HitchcockBattersby PUB version


 
© David Hitchcock. Informal Logic, Vol. 31, No. 1 (2011), pp. 66-68. 
 

Book Reviews 
 
 
Mark Battersby. 2010. Is That a Fact? Peterborough, 
ON: Broadview Press. Pp. viii, 1-232. Paperback. 
ISBN: 978-1-55111-587-0. US$ 24.95. 
 
 
In September 1995 Mark Battersby’s sister-in-law received a 
diagnosis of multiple-site lung cancer. The specialist said that the 
cancer had obviously metastasized, that an operation was useless, 
and that chemotherapy would be painful and futile. “Go home and 
die.” Not content to accept the bleak diagnosis and prognosis on the 
specialist’s say-so, Mark along with his wife and sister-in-law did 
some investigation, discovering among other things that with 
multiple-site brain and colon cancers DNA testing was being done 
to determine if the cancers were the same. No such DNA testing 
had been done on Mark’s sister-in-law. When it was, it turned out 
that the cancers at different sites were different. None of them had 
spread, and an operation to remove them was justified. The 
operation was performed, and Mark’s sister-in-law remains cancer 
free. 
 So begins Is That a Fact? The story illustrates vividly the 
potential benefits of investigating for oneself the credentials of 
scientific and statistical information coming directly or indirectly 
from supposedly reputable sources. Is That a Fact? tells the reader 
how to do so. It is conceived as an updating for the Internet age of 
Darrell Huff’s immensely popular 1954 classic, How to Lie with 
Statistics, with a somewhat broader focus. 
 Battersby uses a set of four “critical questions” as a framework 
for critical thinking about scientific and statistical information: (1) 
What is being claimed? (2) How good is the evidence? (3) What 
other information is relevant? (4) Are relevant fallacies avoided? 
The second question about the quality of the evidence in turn 
breaks down into three sub-questions: (2a) What is the evidence? 
(2b) Assuming the evidence is true, how strong is its support for the 
conclusion? (2c) Is the evidence credible? The third question about 
other relevant information also breaks down into three sub-
questions: (3a) What is the history of the issue? (3b) Does the 
argument meet the burden of proof? (3c) Is there relevant 
information that is missing? The book then applies this framework 
to specific topics, generally summarizing specific versions of the 
critical questions in a useful table (polling 52-53, graphs 97, 
correlations 118, causal research 138, causal claims 155-156, 



Review of Is that a Fact? 

 
 

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Websites 174-175, judgements of probability 194, using statistical 
information to make reasonable decisions 222). There are however 
no tables for the chapters on data and on data characterization. 
 The book is studded with extensive discussions of real-life 
examples that touch on matters of concern to everyone, such as the 
health risks of second-hand smoke and cell-phone use. It is amply 
illustrated with figures, charts and cartoons that bring home key 
points vividly. Technical terms like ‘case-controlled study’ and 
‘relative risk’ are bold-faced and explained in a glossary as well as 
on their first introduction. There is no index, and there are no 
suggestions for further reading. There are also no exercises. 
 Any reasonably intelligent person should be able to read this 
book, understand it, and use its apparatus to understand and 
evaluate the sorts of information that it addresses. The book is 
clearly written, without presuming any technical knowledge and 
with a fine appreciation of the likely reaction of the untutored 
reader. The examples and cartoons make it very engaging. The 
theoretical approach is elementary, without mathematical details, 
but generally sound. Battersby makes particularly good use of 
theoretical work in epidemiology in his treatment of causal research 
and causal claims. He discusses his many examples intelligently, 
and provides valuable advice on how to search the Web for the 
peer-reviewed summary articles and research reports that lie behind 
the catchy headlines. There are occasional flaws. In his treatment of 
confidence intervals and margins of error, Battersby is too ready to 
transform an inference from population frequency to sample 
frequency into a corresponding inference from sample frequency to 
population frequency. The chapter on data characterization 
curiously omits any mention of standard deviation. And there are 
weaknesses in his explanation of how the Consumer Price Index is 
used to calculate the annual rate of inflation (which reports the U.S. 
method as if it were universal without noting the different method 
used in Canada) and in his argument that insurance is never 
worthwhile (which does not take into account the disproportionate 
negative value of a catastrophic loss). 
 Although the four critical questions could be used as a general 
framework for all critical thinking, Is That a Fact? is not a 
comprehensive critical thinking textbook. There is for example no 
discussion of deductive validity, of formal logic, of inductive 
generalization, of scientific theories, of reasoning by analogy, of 
pros and cons reasoning, of moral reasoning, of evaluating 
observation reports, of definition, or of classification. The book 
could be used as a text in a course specifically devoted to critical 
thinking about scientific and statistical information. It could also be 
used as a supplementary text or recommended reading in a general 
course in critical thinking, since its treatment of its chosen topics is 



David Hitchcock 68 

far more sophisticated and thorough than that of comprehensive 
critical thinking textbooks. 
 Huff’s book has sold more than a million copies. Is That a 
Fact? deserves a similarly large readership. The publisher already 
makes some of its titles available at a lower price as e-books, and 
should do so with this one. 
 
 
David Hitchcock               McMaster University