35 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A great read that deserved better from Publishers Weekly, August 14, 2009
This review is from: Superstition: Belief in the Age of Science (Hardcover)
As a fan of Robert Park's book "Voodoo Science", I was pleased when this book came out. Park provides a enjoyable reading experience for the layman, touching upon various flashpoints of the conflict between science and pseudoscience, adroitly incorporating lucid, well-reasoned arguments, and his own personal experiences, told in a reader-friendly prose that avoids excesses of technicality, without succumbing to attempts to dumbing down the reader. While he is hardly the first to espouse the importance of naturalism and scientific skepticism in the topics covered, his willingness to express views that are not often heard even in the annals of skepticism, such as his views on manned spaceflight, is refreshing.
I was surprised, however, to read the Publishers Weekly review for the book here at Amazon. Offhand, I can't recall ever previously seeing negative reviews in the Editorial Reviews section, and was under the impression that that section was intended to serve the interest of the author or publisher in promoting it. Nothing wrong with learning otherwise, I suppose, since Amazon is free to do as it wishes on its site, but what surprised me (though in retrospect I suppose it shouldn't have) was the threadbare reasoning, Astroturf Logic and outright deception that PW employed in its review.
PW begins with some questionable recounting of Park's conclusions, asserting that Park cites prayer studies that "he claims are meaningless because it is impossible to measure prayer." But PW never refutes this seeming dismissal on Park's part by explaining what's wrong with it. In fact, Park doesn't just claim these studies are meaningless. He correctly explains that there is no logical reason or mechanism by which intercessory prayer should work (which is perfectly reasonable, since there isn't), and reports on the questionable nature of this study, the shady status of those who conducted it (which include stints in prison for fraud), and how the study did not follow the proper standards of the Peer Review Process. This study, in fact, was debunked in the skeptical press, but PW never mentions any of this.
PW focuses the brunt of its attack on Chapter 4, "Giving Up the Ghost", in which Park argues against the existence of the soul. PW begins by complaining that Park "interprets the Bible to his own purposes". What point PW is attempting to make here is difficult to discern. All people who read the Bible, after all, attempt to interpret it as best they can. While the degree to which each reader is guided by a good faith, a provisional desire to understand the intent of its writers, human decency, and/or a tendency to bolster the less-than-enlightened biases they bring to it, interpretation of the Bible is unavoidable, even for those who claim to be literalists. One would think that any analysis of someone's interpretation of the Bible should be governed by an assessment of the interpreter's adherence to accuracy, literary and historical context, and scholarly consensus. If Park failed to do this, or even committed the sin of deriving an interpretation at odds with that of PW's reviewer, the reviewer never elaborates on how Park's understanding is false or flawed, leaving one to wonder if PW's criticism is leveled solely because Park dared to interpret it at all, as if doing so is some type of transgression in itself.
For the prospective reader actually interested in what Park said, he begins this portion of the chapter by examining how different religions differ on when a life is imbued with a soul. He points to Genesis 2:7, which he says Jews and liberal Christians cite in support of the idea that a soul is imbued when an infant draws its first breath. He follows up by observing that the fact that Adam began life as a man and not an infant illustrates how the Bible is rich with metaphors, and that people interpret these metaphors according to the diverse imaginations and biases they bring to them, before he moves onto when other religions the believe the soul begins. The passage, therefore, is not only seemingly innocuous, as Park is making a perfectly reasonable observation in service the chapter's greater point, but ironic, given that PW is accusing Park of doing what Park flat-out *states* everyone does. Again, one wonders why or how PW disagrees with this passage, as its reviewer never says. Which part does it dispute? The accuracy of the passage? The fact that Adam first appeared as an adult? Its use of metaphors? Does PW know of anyone who does not come away from reading the Bible with interpretations? We'll never know, because PW substitutes histronics for a cogent elaboration.
Where PW does offer a more elaborate rationale for its ire toward this chapter is in its most bizarre statement: "But this chapter also shows how disjointed his arguments can be, as he jumps from the Plan B contraceptive to genes and memes to stem cells and ghosts." Read that carefully. PW is basically saying that in a 16-page chapter in which someone argues against the existence of the soul, that to employ various different elements is "disjointed". Yes, Park does touch upon these things in this chapter, and the manner in which they bear relevance is self-evident to anyone who actually reads it. Park does not merely opine that there is no such thing as a soul, but illustrates how he feels belief in it is both pervasive and harmful, and these elements appear in it for reasons that are clear:
*PLAN B: The belief that an embryo has a soul informs opposition to emergency birth control. Park reports
on how two evangelical Christian appointees of George W. Bush's to an FDA advisory panel (one of whom had
no credentials in medical science, the one of whom was trained in veterinary medicine, and who eventually
resigned after pleading guilty to conflict of interest and false reporting of information about stocks he
owned in food, beverage and medical device companies he was in charge of regulating) were responsible for
overriding a majority FDA opinion that Plan B should be made available without prescription to women.
*MEMES: In the next section of the chapter (yes, that's right, PW, authors sometimes separate chapters
into sections in order to underscore how one portion of a thesis leads into another), Park contends that
the belief in a soul at conception is just a modern-day descendant of vitalism, an idea that modern
genetics rendered scientifically obsolete, as the discovery of DNA, and its interaction with
environment, including the cultural transmission of information by memes, have answered the question of
where individual personhood comes from.
*STEM CELLS: In the next section, Park explains how in vitro fertilization practices generate copious
amounts of embryos, and how some are used to harvest embryonic stem cells, lest they merely be thrown
out, and may be a promising avenue of research. Park details how the Bush administration was accused by a
group of 60 leading scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, of manipulating the scientific advisory
process over this matter, and dismissed two advocates of such research from the Council on Bioethics, and
replaced them with people whose only qualifications were a record of faith-based opposition to stem-cell
research.
*GHOSTS: Park then touches upon Duncan MacDougall's idea that the soul weighs 21 grams, and how that has
become a cultural meme, despite the fact that they had no scientific merit. Park uses this example and
and others to illustrate how our culture embraces the idea of a soul despite the lack of any scientific
reliability behind it. Although Park leads off this passage by mentioning reports of ghosts rising up
from dead bodies two centuries ago, which leads into MacDougall's work, this is the only appearance of the
idea of "ghosts" in the chapter, or in the book, as the word "ghost" doesn't even appear in the book's
index. PW ignores the relationship of MacDougall's idea to the modern belief in a soul, and focuses
instead on what is essentially an offhand setup, which is roughly equivalent to writing a movie review without informing the reader that it is based entirely on the contents of the film's preview trailer.
At first glance, such varied ideas as Plan B, stem-cells, memes and ghosts do not appear to bear any connection, particularly when a reviewer deliberately omits the context in which they are brought up. In doing this, PW deliberately distorts Park's writing, and it's difficult to understand why they did this, if they actually read the chapter in question. I am forced to wonder if PW did this so that prospective buyers who are on the fence, or perhaps already biased against its naturalism-driven thesis, would conclude in knee-jerk fashion that the book's exploration of these ideas is as incoherent as PW implies, and be satisfied that it's not worth the read. Again, it is difficult not to note the irony of someone employing such deliberately incoherent reasoning in order to accuse someone of supposedly making a flawed argument.
Park himself has reported in his online What's New column that the PW reviewer was offended at his assertion that "science is the only way of knowing". As most of the criticism of books like "The God Delusion", "God is Not Great", et al., tends consist of ad hominem arguments and deliberate distortions or ignorance of their actual content, this is not very difficult to believe.
Regardless of where it appears on Amazon, reasoned, calm, intellectually honest criticism of books should not only be permitted, it should be encouraged. But this willfully mendacious rant doesn't qualify.
Park and his book deserve better.
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