Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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30 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Skeptic's view of past & present quackery, & pseudoscience, 27 Aug 1998
By A Customer
Mr. Garder's book is one which makes us laugh at our gullibility. Since this book was up-dated on 1956, much of the information is about old crackpot theories, like Flat-earth cults, or medical cults. It is, however, a true account of contemporary quackery and fringe science, since many of the theories and motivations of the truly eccentric, and sometimes downright fraudulent types, can still be found among many of today's highly popular personalities who, using mass media and their own appeal, continue this trend to advertize oddball ideas and pseudoscience as truths, without allowing any type of validation or independent scrutiny.We tend to believe we are somewhat safe from eccentrics trying to force their weird theories upon us or our children. We are not. Take the case of Dianetics, which is discussed in Mr. Gardner's book at the time it was just appearing and being promoted by Science Fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard. It did to the stablished psychiatric community what Afrocentrism is doing to qualified and professional history research. It also presents a strong argument in favor of strict, closedly suppervised experimentation for validating new scientific theories, especially when those theories deal with human emotional problems or capabilities (like Repressed Memory and ESP). Probably most tragic for a scientist is discovering he has been deluding himself pursuing validation for his pet theory. He willingly falsifies data or ignores results in orther for his research to come out just right, conforming to his hypothesis. Also, this book emphazises the use of double-blind tests in highly difficult human research, as in the case of Dr. Rhine's ESP studies. It comes with a word of warning to us all: scientific illiteracy IS dangerous. And even if certain crackpot scientific theories do us no harm, the same cannot be said about medical cults, which CAN cause early death for treatable diseases. Psychology is also a target for these fringe cults, and the trend is getting worse today as we see a lot of new "therapies" being advertised on TV. These so-called therapies can do harm to an individual's emotional well-being (it is my opinion, though, that even psychology rests on very dubious foundations, and is still more a "witch doctor" profession than real science, simply because the empirical data needed is found on "case studies", which yield very subjective results.) I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the contemporary history of scientific frauds, quackery and eccentricities. It is very well written, and very amusing. Martin Gardner still writes and colaborates closely with "Skeptic Magazzine". Sincerely: Francisco Torres Laredo, Tx. USA
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Timless essays a must-read for all, 27 Oct 1997
By A Customer
Although written in the 1950s, Martin Gardner's Fads and Fallacies is one of the masterpieces of science. Gardner tackles both seriously and humorously the pseudoscience of his day, including flying saucers, flat-earthers, dianetics, medical cults, dowsers, orogonomy, Atlantis historians, and many more. From Trofim Lysenko's efforts to overthrow Darwin's theory of evolution for Lamarck's theory of acquired characteristics in Russia, to the hilarious chapter on Charles Fort's philosophy of "accept everything but believe nothing" in our own country, Gardner paints a marvelous portrait that will make the reader roll their eyes and smile at some people's credulity as well as be shocked at how far some will go to search for and believe in what isn't there. What strikes me as the most prominent thing about this book is that he almost seems to be addresing the pseudoscience/antiscience of our day instead of decades past. In summary, his essays will bring the reader's mind to a more a skeptical level of thinking when faced with current claims that resemble those of yester-year. Gardner's book is a fitting prequel to Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World as it not only debunks the false claims of pseudoscience, but also educates the reader's mind about what real science is while maintaining an apt for wonder.
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3 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Classic of Skeptical Writing, 3 Jan 2008
Martin Gardner originally wrote this classic text on various forms of pseudoscience, covering the merely amusing to the ouright dangerous, in 1952 (this edition is the revised version from 1957).
While some of what Gardner wrote about has rightly faded away with time, e.g. the original UFO craze, orgone energy, hollow earth theories etc other topics such as creationism, dianetics (scientology) holocaust denial etc are still around in fundamentally unchanged form now in 2008. While it is sad that these various nonsense ideas have enjoyed overlong lives, at least this means many chapers of Gardner's classic skeptical book are not simply interesting as historical essays but are still bang up to date and are as important as ever.
Highly recommended.
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