The Borderlands of Science: Where Sense Meets Nonsense [Hardcover]

This is a semi-scholarly work written by a science historian. Most of the essays revolve around Darwin, Wallace, and evolution. With these essays, and a handful of others, Shermer takes a historical approach to the "borderlands of science" to look at the process of how scientific theories develop to acceptance. He looks at very few cases of the current borderlands, and of those he does he makes generally weak arguments (and not scientific ones) with correspondingly weak conclusions. An early chapter on remote viewing is the exception.

The wordcount here is limited, but I wanted to point out some specific problem points. In the chapter asking if Sagan was "a great scientist," one questioning his rejection from the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), Shermer compares his publications to "the creme de le creme" of scientists: Gould, E. O. Wilson, Jared Diamond, and Mayr. The comparisons involve number of honorary degrees, popular articles, advisory groups, books, etc. There is NEVER a comparison of his scientific publication rate or citation rate versus NAS ASTRONOMERS, a primary criterion for the NAS membership who understands that publication practices vary from field to field. Shermer sets up a straw man and knocks it down, the same thing he accuses pseudoscientists of doing. He never comes close to making an argument about whether or not Sagan was a good scientist, merely that he was a well-known one who was highly regarded for his popularization.

I liked the idea of the chapter on the "Amadeus Myth," which is a topic worthy of comment, but not the execution. We like to make myths of our heroes. But here is another straw man, where Shermer's "genius" is equated to practicing math tricks and never very well characterized. Prodigies are not discussed.

Cosmology is noted as suffering from a bias against "historical science." This is far from true, I assure you. Origins programs in astronomy get funding far ABOVE their non-historical competitors.

A whole chapter is spent discussing whether or not punctuated equilibrium represents a "paradigm shift" of evolution. This is the semantic playing field of a science historian, and of little interest to actual scientists.

Shermer indeed would seem to have such a bias against what he calls "nonscience" topics that he gives them almost no mention. While he lumps, for instance, "Big Foot" in with some poor company, he later quotes anthropologist Krantz in another chapter on another subject; Krantz is one of a number of credible scientists who take the topic seriously. The same cannot be said for his other "nonscience" topics, yet all get rated equally at 0.1 with no discussion.

Indeed, despite Shermer's interesting discussion about a spectrum of "science," his spectrum seems to correspond to his idea of the ideas' correctness, NOT their scientific validity. What is validity (to play Shermer's word games)? All topics can be validly studied using the tools of science. Some are routinely, and some are not. He should have used a different term. I found myself losing trust in Shermer.

When Shermer finds that SETI pioneers are primarily first-born rather than later siblings as in most other scientific revolutions, he finds a way to argue it away in terms of their religion. I did not see this sort of multiple parameter analysis in the comparison sample, so should I believe it? Or did he just invoke the same kind of wishful thinking he criticizes in others?

I had many more problem points that kept my "doubt-o-meter" ringing at regular intervals.

What my criticisms mostly boil down to is that Shermer writes and acts as a science historian much better than he does as a scientist. He gives hints all too often that he doesn't think like a scientist, and this made me distrustful while reading.

This is a shame. I used to subscribe to the Skeptical Inquirer, but let that lapse since that magazine too often took lazy pot shots at the same easy targets again and again. Shermer, and Shermer's magazine the Skeptic, for the most part shoot at more interesting targets, but I'm afraid not as well as they should.

Michael Shermer's background is psychology and ultra-long-distance cycling; he's written a number of books on cycling and analysis of (and refutation of) Holocaust deniers. He's also president (apparently for life) of the American Skeptics society and a reasonably good writer. In this book, Shermer spends a lot of time talking about the scientific method, its strengths and potential flaws -- and, more importantly, its system for dealing with its flaws (which he claims "sets science apart from all other knowledge systems and intellectual disciplines" -- a heady claim I wish he discussed more.)

Since this is supposed to be a review of Borderlands and not Weird Things, I'll just say that if you like this, you'll like the other as well. In The Borderlands Of Science, he analyzes beliefs that are at defensible, beliefs that could (or were once thought to) be scientifically accurate. Among these are, for instance, ramifications of cloning, confirmation bias in explaining racial differences in sports (about which Malcolm Gladwell has also written), and a whole, whole lot of discussion of Alfred Wallace. Wallace and Charles Darwin were both responsible for the theory of evolution. Wallace is not remembered as widely for a number of reasons, which are explored in frightening detail in roughly 3.5 of the 16 chapters of this book. Shermer did his doctoral thesis on Wallace, not coincidentally. The ratio of stuff-about-Wallace-or-Evolution to everything-else, by chapter, is 3:7; Shermer is pretty focussed on this specific discussion.
The book has four sections: a short introduction (which is quite heavy in skeptical theory, exactly what I wanted) and the main body, discussing borderlands theories, people, and history. In theories, he tends to stray a little from 'why people believe weird things' into 'why stupid people believe weird things' (as he did in the book of the same title) and that's fun. He covers a lot of quite current topics (like cloning, Wacky Unified Field Theories, the importance of Punctured Equilibrium in the evolution of evolutionary theory.)

In section two: people, he discusses the Copernican revolution and its effects, then goes off about Alfred Wallace. Here, he does something weird that needs more discussion. In analyzing Wallace, he constructs a psychological profile, which he derived by having a large number of Wallace experts fill out a survey of the "strongly agree, 9, 8,.. 3, 2, strongly disagree" sort, and then uses the results of these surveys to fill in his discussion of why Wallace became a scientific spiritualist, for instance. It's an interesting technique that he also uses with Steven Jay Gould and Carl Sagan. It is tempting to ask how much confirmation bias exists in a survey of this sort, though. Since I've already let the spoiler out of the bag, Shermer discusses Gould and Sagan, spends some time doing a statistical analysis of Sagan's greatness as a scientist (by comparing published papers by topic with a number of other contemporary, canonically great scientists) and pauses briefly to smack Freud upside the head in a somewhat snarky comparison of Freud and Darwin.

Finally, in section three: histories, he does a lovely discussion of the myth of pastoral tranquillity, including a quick summary of four ancient civilizations that probably managed to destroy themselves through environmental stupidity without (as he puts it) any need of Dead White European Males coming in and inflicting devastation from outside. Shermer then analyzes (and debunks) the theory of transcendent genius, the Mozart Myth, as he calls it, and goes back to two more chapters on Wallace and evolution, in a discussion of the Piltdown Man hoax and why that should (but doesn't seem to have) support the idea that science can be self-correcting and learn from its mistakes.

I like what Shermer is doing, and he writes well and readably. If I sound a bit impatient, it's because I want him to be writing about the application of critical thinking rather than case studies, and when he starts out writing just what I want to read, then goes off in a different direction, he leaves me standing at the intersection saying "hey, wait, this isn't the bus I wanted." The book could stand to be either edited down into two books: a Wallace analysis and a case studies in how science inspects itself discussion, or edited up with a clearer discussion of the math involved in his statistical analysis of Sagan or his psychological profiling of people. In the end, I liked it, I learned a fair bit from it, and I would recommend it to people who want to learn more about both critical thinking and science history.

The book is divided into three parts: Borderlands Theories; Borderlands People; and Borderlands History. A borderland of science is the mental space where there is some factual evidence that is evolving to pin down how or why the phenomena occur. But the pinning down isn't very far along. The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is a good example. It is based on nothing more than a belief that there is intelligent life in the universe which wants to communicate with us. The approach to listening has been evolving with scientific discipline that will improve. Until we "hear" something though, it is hard for this activity to become mainstream science. Hypnosis is another good example of where science can explain some of the behavior (the "hidden observer" phenomenon in the mind), but not all. This places hypnosis in the borderlands area. I thought that the borderlands concept was a valuable one, and was glad that I learned it.

The book goes on to give you ten tests you can use to help establish whether a theory has anything to it. This list will probably save you from rushing off to follow some ideas that you happen to watch on a television show. In fact, the book is very good at explaining why much of what you see on television about phenomena makes no attempt to establish the scientific fact of or disprove the claims about what is going on.

Our thinking can become sloppy. There is an excellent section on the connection between race and success in sports that will make you rethink everything that you ever thought you knew in this subject. Why is it that no one claims that the Chinese have a genetic advantage in playing ping-pong? Did you know that it was once reported that Jewish people had a genetic advantage in playing basketball? Nature, nurture, opportunities and incentives are well explained in this section.

In the people section, you see how the psychological profiles of the scientists play a big role in how they pursue their work. Those who are very open to new ideas can get drawn off into nonsense if they are not careful. You will also learn a little about how birth order affects our willingness to accept or challenge existing scientific ideas. With too little openness, the plain truth can be missed.

There is a detailed example of how Darwin's approach to natural selection was more successful than the work of his closest counterpart, Alfred Russel Wallace. I found the example to be a trifle extended for my taste.

You will also get a look at why Copernicus was so revolutionary, and engendered such a strong reaction. Carl Sagan is explored and explained in a nicely balanced way that added to my understanding of the man.

In the history section, the eco-terrorism of destroying the trees on Easter Island to move the statues is told as a cautionary tale of how we can create problems for ourselves if we are not far-sighted enough. Mr. Shermer also makes a good argument for making scientific debate into an opportunity for a plus-sum game (where everyone benefits) rather than a zero-sum game where only one scientist can win.

The book ends on a humorous note as the Piltdown man hoax originally fools people, but is eventually exposed. We need discipline in our science or it can be as foolish as not using the scientific method.

Although Mr. Shermer doesn't say so in the book, you will definitely get the impression that he assumes that any scientifically untested idea is probably junk. On the other hand, many areas of human experience will probably not get scientific testing anytime soon. There simply isn't the interest or the money available to do so. It seems to me that we need some method to move ideas that look promising along towards science at a faster rate. I was struck recently that although it has been known for many years that people in Okinawa live a long time, it inexplicably took scientists more decades than necessary to get organized to study what this might mean. The result can be read about in The Okinawa Program. In the meantime, many less worthy projects were pursued on how to "cure" sick people who are just being hurt by their lifestyle. Mr. Shermer needed to address this problem of scientific slowness to work on the obviously important in order to make this a five-star book.

After you finish enjoying this book, I suggest that you try out the ten tests on an area where you think you are dealing with a borderland issue. This might be how the stock market works, whether chiropractic care is helpful in some situations, or the effectiveness of acupuncture. See if the tests help you to take more useful actions as a result.

Advance rapidly toward knowledge through carefully-tested observation!