# Joel Best

Joel Gordon Best (born August 21, 1946) is Professor Emeritus and a Francis Alison Award Winner in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at the University of Delaware. He specialized in topics such as social problems and deviance. His most recent research focused on awards, prizes, and honors in American culture.
Joel Best earned his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in sociology from the University of California, Berkeley in 1971. He also earned a second M.A. degree in history from the University of Minnesota. He taught at Concordia College (Moorhead, MN—1969-70), California State University, Fresno (1970–91), and Southern Illinois University at Carbondale (1991–99).
He served as a President of the Midwest Sociological Society and the Society for the Study of Social Problems, and was an editor of the journal Social Problems. When asked about his prolific output, Best responded, “If you write a page per day, or every few days, you will have a book by the end of the year.”
He was a source cast member on the critically acclaimed show Adam Ruins Everything. Best provided evidence supporting the fact that strangers, contrary to popular belief, do not (with a single rare exception of an estranged father-son situation) and have never tampered with or poisoned the candy given to a trick-or-treater as far as records can provide.

## Selected publications

Best is the author of over 20 books and dozens of articles challenging and debunking conventional wisdom to show that often things are not as they seem to be. The following is a partial list of Best's publications.

### Books

* Joel Best and David F. Luckenbill, Organizing Deviance, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall 1982 (2/e 1994)
* Joel Best and Eric Best, The Student Loan Mess: How Good Intentions Created a Trillion-Dollar Problem, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014
* Joel Best and Kathleen Bogle, Kids Gone Wild: From Rainbow Parties to Sexting, Understanding the Hype Over Teen Sex, New York: New York University Press, 2014. Winner Brian McConnell Book Award, International Society for Contemporary Legend Research
* Joel Best, Controlling Vice: Regulating Brothel Prostitution in St. Paul, 1865-1883, Columbus, Ohio State University Press, 1998
* Joel Best, Damned Lies and Statistics: Untangling Numbers from the Media, Politicians, and Activists, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001 (2/e 2004 3/e 2012)
* Joel Best, Deviance: Career of a Concept, Belmont, California: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 2004
* Joel Best, Everyone's a Winner: Life in Our Congratulatory Culture, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011
* Joel Best, Flavor of the Month: Why Smart People Fall for Fads, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006
* Joel Best, Is that True? Critical Thinking for Sociologists, Oakland: University of California Press, 2021
* Joel Best, Just the Facts: Why We Don’t Always Agree, Oakland: University of California Press, forthcoming in 2015
* Joel Best, Random Violence: How We Talk about New Crimes and New Victims', Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999
* Joel Best, Social Problems, W. W. Norton & Company 2008 (2/e 2013, 3/e 2017 4/e 2021 5/e 2025)
* Joel Best, Stat-Spotting: A Field Guide to Identifying Dubious Data Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008
* Joel Best, The Stupidity Epidemic: Worrying about Students, Schools, and America's Future, Routledge, 2011
* Joel Best, Threatened Children, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. Winner, Charles Horton Cooley Award, Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction, 1991

### Edited Volumes

* James T. Richardson, Joel Best, David G. Bromley, editors, The Satanism Scare, New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1991
* Joel Best, editor, How Claims Spread: Cross-National Diffusion of Social Problems, New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 2001
* Joel Best, editor, Images of Issues: Typifying Contemporary Social Problems, New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1989 (2/e--1995)