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Weird Water & Fuzzy Logic: More Notes of a Fringe Watcher

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Nothing is more fascinating than to follow a lively mind poking about for curiosities. And nobody had a livelier mind than Martin Gardner.

The Oklahoma philosopher played with ideas as varied as the background to Lewis Carroll and mathematical games and brain-teasers.

Other writers, too, have been interested in "Alice in Wonderland" and in brainteasers. Gardner was a unique national asset because of the effort he expended on cranks.

For many years, a main outlet for his inquiries was Skeptical Inquirer magazine, the journal of what used to be the Center for the Scientific Investigation of the Paranormal and is now just PSICOP. Sixteen of his "Notes of a Fringe-Watcher" columns are reprinted in "Weird Water & Fuzzy Logic," along with almost 50 book reviews.

He gives most attention to repressed memory therapy and false memory syndrome.

The explosion of claims by adults that they were sexually abused as children is called "the greatest scandal of the century in American psychology." Gardner does not deny that there are many case of unreported child sexual abuse -- who would dare? -- but he does contend that these cases are hidden, not forgotten.

His book was written well before the revelations of sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests. What we learned from that tends to confirm Gardner's opinion.

Already, he wrote, a vast industry of memory creators was at work. It includes -- it is with us yet -- therapists, most with dubious or non-existent credentials; gullible cops and social workers; and prosecutors run amok. Gardner does not say so, but in some of the worst witchhunts, it seems pretty clear that prosecutors pushing these cases were deranged.

What else can explain going to court with cases of horrible physical assaults that children describe, but which leave not a mark on their bodies?

The claims of the people who believe these wild tales are not noted for the rigor of their evidence, and the repressed memory people are heavily cross-fertilized with believers in alien abductions and satanic cults, for which evidence is equally lacking.

Hundreds of people already have been imprisoned by these witchhunts and more hundreds have had their lives ruined.

A lot of what Gardner writes about is more goofy than anything else, but false memory syndrome is another matter altogether. In recommending Lawrence Wright's book "Remembering Satan," which recounts a monstrous Washington case, Gardner states solemnly: "It is a book every American should read. Someday you may be called for jury duty on a repressed-memory case that can result in terrible injustice unless you and your fellow-jurors are adequately informed."

Usually, however, Gardner is involved in realms where the looniness is comparatively harmless. These include a famous case in which scads of Ph.D.s in mathematics made fools of themselves over a fairly simple problem in logic, Margaret Mead's humbug in Samoa and a collection of scientific blunders in novels.

The blunders are original compilations by Gardner; many of the other columns are simply charmingly retold exposes done by others, such as Derek Freeman's destruction of Mead's reputation.

For those who delighted in these pieces in Skeptical Inquirer, the book version is even better, because it includes the responses of the wounded and bellowing pedagogues whom Gardner has skewered.

One was set off by his review in Book World magazine of a life of Joseph Campbell, who is revealed as a sap and an anti-Semite. The bellows of the Campbellites were loud indeed.

Few of us would ever have heard of Campbell, a shabby pretender, if it had not been for the drumbeating on public television by that ignorant hedge-preacher Billy D. Moyers. Gardner uncharacteristically passes up a chance to heave a harpoon into Moyers' sleek hide.

Too bad. That would have generated more letters and more fun.

Fantastic book, nearly ever essay a clear and brillant piece attacking superstition and blatant pseudoscience

The positive emphasis of this compilation - that any and all claims are best meticulously and exactingly examined in an organized manner - is disappointingly marred by Martin Gardner's shallow knowledge and research of the topics he seeks to debunk.