Customer Reviews

Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science (Popular Science)

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Gardner's work debunking pseudo-science of all kinds is even more relevant today than it was when it was written nearly 50 years ago. Although it has been 30 years since I read it, I can still remember many of the funnier highlights of the book.

For example, some of his revelations on crackpot scientists are truly hilarious. In his chapter on health and health food faddists he discusses Gaylord Hauser, who was a famous name in the area long before people like Adele Davis, Ewel Gibbons, and so on.

Gardner mentions Hauser's famous theory that acidosis of the blood is responsible for just about all health ills, and recommended fasting to counteract it. Unfortunately, anyone even slightly familiar with human physiology will tell you that fasting actually causes acidosis, a little fact apparently Hauser overlooked. Another great theory killed by a nasty little fact, I guess.

Then there is the chapter, "Down with Einstein," where crackpots par excellence try to prove they are smarter than Einstein. One guy by the name of Gillette (no relation to the razor concern) says of Einstein, "As a physicist, Einstein is not a bad violinist," and insists his "Back-screwing Theory of Gravitation" is far superior to Einstein's. According to Gillette, "...gravity is naught but the kicked-back nut of the back-screwing bolt of gravitation." As you can see, Einstein is not the only genius physicist out there with a good theory or two.

The one person Gardner actually seems to like in this book is Charles Fort, the journalist who himself reported on much of the pseudo-science of his day. Fort was a diligent and witty writer in the area who seems to have been fascinated by things like UFOs, the paranormal, strange phenomena, and bizarre scientific theories, and who appeared content to write about and document it all without really believing any of it himself. The Fortean Society he founded to carry on his work is still around today.

I could go on and on about all the funny things in this book, but I will stop here and let you discover them for yourself if I've managed to peak your interest. This is one of the most entertaining books of science writing ever published, and really qualifies as a classic in its own right that is still as relevant as the day it was published 50 years ago.

This book is, even in its second edition, half a century old, and sometimes that shows. Lysenko is long dead, and in fact the Soviet Union in which he did his crackpot biology doesn't exist anymore. Several other kooks that Gardner writes about have long been forgotten. On the other hand, Dianetics is still around, and crackpot science in general is alive and well -- do I have to remind the reader of the Alien Autopsy on tv?

In a general sense, then, this book is still very much relevant in that it shows how pseudo science and pseudo scientists work by blithely ignoring facts, expounding theories with more support in rethoric than in actual facts.

My favourite chapter is the one about Alfred Lawson. Who? It doesn't matter. The man is so hilarious that he would have to be invented, if he hadn't invented himself first. "When I look into the vastness of space and see the marvelous workings of its contents, I sometimes think that I was born ten or twenty thousand years ahead of time" according the great man's autobiography. And Gardner quotes this with a straight face, even where possible defending his silly theories.

That is in fact what I like most about this book. Gardner does a good job of debunking, but he is never malicious towards his subjects, regarding them almost lovingly as wayward children. Thus this book stands as a classic of science writing, and is worth reading regardless the importance of its immediate subjects.

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.

This book (written in 1952!) remains a classic of skepticism. It is very much the mid-20th century's answer to Charles MacKay's "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds". Gardner amusingly debunks many forgotten pseudo-philosophies, like the flat- and hollow-earth theories. He highlights the sadly lost Iowan science of "Lawsonomy," whose founder produced a host of ludicrously egotistical books, along with perhaps the most wretched quatrain in all of English verse:

"So come on folks, the past is dead,
The future is alrighty,
And by the will, we'll win the till,
With strength from the ALMIGHTY."

But what gives the book surprising and continuing relevance is its treatment of many still-popular belief systems. These include Scientology, Creationism, Velikovsky, UFO's, chiropractic, Nostradamus, and the ancestors of today's holistic medicine faddists. If you are a believer in any (or God forbid, all) of these, you will be challenged, and probably offended. Good, I say.

It's true that a few of the ideas Gardner poked at have, over the last 50 years, moved from the fringes to a reasonable respectability. The Big Bang and continental drift are by now mainstream. I am sure that Gardner would treat these subjects differently if he were writing the book today.

But in a way, that only adds to the value of this book. It prompts us to ask ourselves: Why do we believe what we believe? What role does evidence play? How much of our beliefs are due to family upbringing, and how much to what William James called (not disparagingly) the Will to Believe?

In the early fifties, an author named Martin Gardner put pen to paper to make a survey of the little lunacies of science that dotted his world. Many are no longer around today, but many -- L. Ron Hubbard's Dianetics, Wilhelm Reich's orgone theories, homeopathy -- are still around, going strong long after Gardner had predicted their demise.

This book is one of the first of a long list of skeptical books that review the crackpots, frauds, and self-deluded "hermit scientists" of the world, and was a seminal work in the creation of the modern Skeptic movement, of which Gardner (now well into his 80s) is a still-vital part. Even despite its age, this book is essential reading for its first chapter and its discussion of the hermit scientist, the individual who does all his work in a vacuum with little contact with or understanding of the mainstream scientific world.

The individual chapters are quite fascinating as well -- the singlemindedness of many of these believers is put in context, along with the greed of those who don't believe what they're selling. Common mention is made of Charles Fort, who entertained skepticism towards all things scientific; Gardner's stated ambivalence about this man notwithstanding (Fort's rejection of scientific thinking doesn't wear well under scrutiny), Fort's constant presence in the book provides an interesting reminder of what legitimate science must strive to avoid.

So... dated, yes, but still essential reading. The only truly sad part is that Gardner's predictions of a more scientific future essentialy came unraveled in the last thirty or so years of the 20th century, with the rise of the Human Potential movement in the 1970s and the resurgence of Christian fundamentalism in the late 80s and 90s.

I first read "Fads & Fallacies", oh, about 40 years ago, not long after it was first published. The healthy scepticism which imbues the book has been with me ever since. This has got me into numerous scrapes, but I would not have it any other way!

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

This book covers a sampling of pseudoscientific claims from UFOs, Dianetics, bogus food and medical claims, and other areas. The chilling part for me is that every major cranky notion and con on the internet and pop tv are in this book, and the book is over 50 years old. There just might be something to reincarnation, because I left this book with the feeling that a sucker is re-born every minute.

In many ways this is a fascinating book, and one that may say as much about the time in which it was written as it does about the subject, pseudoscience, that it investigates. First published in 1952 by G.P. Putnam's Sons, it was revised and expanded in 1957 and it is this second edition that I discuss here. It presents a concerted attack on various ideas, many of them aimed at self-improvement, that have a veneer of the scientific mindset about them but that have little relationship to science. All are critiqued mercilessly and dismissed as utter nonsense. Martin Gardner skewers such cults as Charles Fort and the Fortean Society, William Reich and orgone sex energy, L. Ron Hubbard and Dianetics, and A. Korzybski and General Symantics. He also critiques ideas about the hollow Earth, Velikovsky's wandering planets, phrenology, flying saucer groups, Lysenkoism, Atlantis and Lemuria, and creationism. Had it been written more recently it would no doubt have also included Erich von Daniken's ancient astronauts espoused in the 1960s in "Chariots of the Gods" and the cold fusion furor from the 1980s.

Gardner recounts the stories of what he fully believes are cases of fraud with gusto and not a little humor. For him, it seems to be something of a guilty pleasure to chuckle about these various beliefs, ill-informed and sometimes duplicitous though they may be. At some level, this is an outgrowth of the era in which he wrote this book. In the heady environment after World War II, in which modern science and technology may well have saved Western Civilization, it is easy to see how Americans could express a broad faith in scientific knowledge to solve almost any problem. The immediate postwar era in which Martin Gardner wrote "Fads & Fallacies in the Name of Science" found the application of wartime mobilization models for science also being applied to peacetime problems. In 1952, the same year that Gardner published his first edition of this book, Edward Everett Hazlett wrote to presidential candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower about declaring "War on Untimely Death." He suggested that a widespread government effort to "smash the atoms" of disease "seems no more likely to fail than did that on the atom. It has, in addition, the spiritual advantage of being a campaign to save life and not to take it" (quoted on p. 164 in Brian Balogh, "Reorganizing the Organizational Synthesis: Federal-Professional Relations in Modern America," Studies in American Political Development 5 (Spring 1991): 119-72). Such faith in science and technology motivated all manner of activities in the twenty years after World War II and Americans yielded to the authority of experts with something akin to a religious conversion experience through at least the middle part of the 1960s.

In such an environment, Martin Gardner's critique of these "fads and fallacies" seems almost sui generis. It is a classic in skepticism and well worthy of in-depth consideration. At the same time, I would recommend that readers explore this book more as a statement of the time in which it was written, enjoyable and amusing at times, as well as informative, but also dismissive and demeaning toward those individuals and groups who accepted these various ideas.

Although this was written some time ago - in the 50's I think - it is more apropos even today. When one considers all the pseudo-science, fads, and utter ridiculous irrationality that has crept into "mainstream" thought, a book like this ia like a good stiff drink to refresh the senses.

I have long been looking for a common denominator of wacky thinking and maybe Gardner has given the most plausible one - it goes against demonstrable science and is totally irrational. The Einstein was Wrong chapter was a hoot. I still smile thinking of guys trying to disprove Einstein with phrases like "he done gone and tried to make us believe all that stuff".

The wacky belief systems are also dissected but one has to keep in mind that this is BEFORE the age of the Hollywood medium, the channeling of the ignorant or the use of ouija boards (Reagan) or crystal balls (Hillary) at the White House. A great book to read and reread.