Science: Good Bad and Bogus
by Martin Gardner
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Book Summary Information
Author: Martin GardnerEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1990-02
ISBN: 0879755733
Number of pages: 1
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Book Reviews of Science: Good Bad and Bogus
Book Review: The human potential for self-delusion
Summary: 5 Stars
Remember how in the 1960s and 1970s "human potential" was such a big deal, and people were digging around in psychic phenomena and roll-your-own religion, and then Uri Geller got busted on the Tonight Show and it all went away overnight?
Oh, wait, that didn't happen, did it? Hm. Well, you ought to read this then.
Published in 1981 as "human potential" gave way to "New Age", this is one of Martin Gardner's classic essay collections, a four-fifths-century update on the high weirdness that infected pop culture over the previous twenty years. It's a sequel of sorts to Fads and Fallacies, Gardner's seminal 1952 work that laid the grounds for future skeptical writing, and includes the original 1951 essay "Hermit Scientists" that led to the creation of the latter book. From there, SGBB covers widely varied grounds, not only the aforementioned psychic phenomena (in which a great many of the leading lights of paranormal research such as Rhine, Puthoff, Targ, Sarfatti, and others, are revealed as disturbingly credulous for experienced scientists), but magic, Sherlock Holmes, televangelists of the 1970s, Steven Spielberg (Gardner's review of Close Encounters of the Third Kind was incredibly negative and foresaw many future reviewers' complaints about Spielberg's perceived superficiality), and abuses of astrophysics and quantum mechanics that were directly ancestral to the handwaves of Deepak Chopra and others who invoke "quantum" as a thought-stopping cliche. Gardner, who has long held that knowledge of magic is critical to evaluating claims of the paranormal, provides some interesting hints of the world of magic (a longtime hobby of Gardner's) as background to many of the paranormal items, and extensive discussions of how honest researchers can produce bad science permeate the book.
Gardner has always taken the position that mockery is better than detailed refutation when the patently ridiculous is discussed, and does not at any point spare the snark. He gives many references for the reader experienced in periodical searches, and provides (as he did in "Fads and Fallacies") postscripts to update the subject matter to the time of publication, as well as rebuttals by many of the subjects of his essays (often followed up with counter-rebuttals from himself or others). Almost half the book is book reviews, many of which include extensive background stories relevant to the books.
This book remains in print almost three decades later, and with good reason -- much of the material it criticizes remains as strong as ever, within a culture that increasingly demands of its members more and more credulity for fear of being labeled as intolerant. Gardner's message, over his nearly 60 years of writing, has consistently been to remind people that evidence overrides everything -- be open-minded, but not so much that your brain falls out. If you must navigate today's woo, you must also know about yesterday's, and there is no better book than this for the woo of the '60s and '70s.
Summary of Science: Good Bad and Bogus
In this lively collection, Gardner examines the rich and hilarious variety of pseudoscientific conjectures that dominate the media today. With a special emphasis on parapsychology and occultism, these witty pieces address the evidence put forth to support claims of ESP, psychokinesis, faith healing, and other pseudoscience.Europe Books
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