Why Do Humans Believe Nonsesnse? (Gardner's Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science)

 

 Martin Gardner. Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science (1957) The book that made Gardner’s reputation as a skeptic. In most of his writing, he focussed on mathematics, and for many years wrote a mathematical recreations column for Scientific American.
     This book is a revised and expanded version of his 1952 book In the Name of Science. It deals with then current pseudosciences, cults, medical fads  and quacks, and con-artists of the technical kind. As evidence of the effects of semi-literacy, wishful thinking, and envy of expertise it is as relevant as ever. Mystery-mongers are more plentiful these days, and have a wider reach, with slickly made videos purporting to tell the “suppressed” history of Atlantis, ancient civilizations, alien surveillance of (and interference with) humans, and so on. Political conspiracies are seen everywhere, and all the old pseudo-scientific notions are revised to fit the latest physics and the current political animosities. Time travel is enjoying a vogue on YouTube, with an astonishing number of videos claiming to show photographic proof.
     The last 60-odd years have yielded insights that a allow some new responses to 1950s foolishness. L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics has morphed in the Church of Scientology, which sues anyone who questions its bona fides as a religion or theory of the higher realities. Nutritional science has advanced, and lately the researchers have been edging towards the conclusion that diet is idiosyncratic, and that the only generally valid advice is to eat a large variety of different foods, and to limit caloric intake. Rhine’s investigations into psi have been consigned to a footnote of the history of science even as the belief in ESP etc continues to muddle thinking about statistics.
     On the other hand, the dissemination of relativity and quantum physics has given the quacks an updated vocabulary of nonsense, and medical pseudoscience in particular has become a plague. New Age piffle is still with us, and has begun to claim that all the traditional emanations, levels of consciousness, and mental powers impinge on our universe from the multiverse that surrounds us.
     And so on. The book is well done. This is a reread, and my general impression is that a modern version of it would differ only in the names of some cranks and the dates of their works. ***