I strongly recommend Ben Carlson's Don't Fall For It for any reader who is trying to become more streetwise. More importantly, as someone who aspires to disrupt the training industry, it is important for me to be armed with a better way to distinguish between a crook and the real deal in my own industry and, as it turns out, one of the chapters from the book makes the price of of the book worth paying for.

Basically, there are two kinds of Charlatans, each corresponding to one form of statistical error.

a) Type 1 Charlatan

A type I error in statistics is a false positive. If you are shopping and get a fire alarm but there is no fire, you get a false positive. Correspondingly a type I charlatan is someone who is sincere about what he is doing, but following this charlatan ultimately destroys you. The example in the book is...