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Denialism is all around us in many forms, from the anti-vaxxers to the Holocaust deniers and "Moon landing hoax" proponents. Scientists get it from both sides, from the populist know-nothings on the right to the conspiracy paranoiacs on the left. It's been addressed in various books over the years, from Shermer's Why People Believe Weird Things to Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World. But the new varieties of denial keep coming, as do the examples of corporate and scientific malfeasance that fuel them, and the fear-mongering media and crackpot celebrities keep cranking up the general level of anxiety. So we should welcome authors who can help to calm the panic and redress the balance. Sadly, Specter fails in this. His concerns are real, the targets well-chosen, and the depth of his research is impressive. Unfortunately the presentation fails in several respects. The introduction is disorganized, as he keeps oscillating between the irrationality of the denialists and the range of provocations that have led to a quite understandable level of popular anxiety. And once he plunges into his first example - the drug Vioxx - it's unclear why he feels that it advances his argument. Merck put profit ahead of rigor, and patients paid with their lives. True. Where's the denialism? It looks like good old-fashioned greed. And so forth. That pretty much sets the tone for the book. It's scattershot. There are probably half a dozen plausible essays for the New Republic or Mother Jones lurking in here, but as a sustained argument it's a flop. And that's a shame.