Rating: 
Summary: Beware--this book is slick
Review: This book is insidious. When I read it as a college freshman, I was mesmerized and delighted by its apparent clear-headedness, logical rigor, and ability to debunk all things paranormal. Five years worth of philosophy later, I am appaled at some of the things this book gets away with saying. Reviewers who criticized it's one-sidedness are correct. It often constructs straw-man arguments for opposing viewpoints, or more commonly simply ignores the best arguments of its opponents. If their position looks convincing, it is because they don't give you any other decent alternatives. This is most apparent when they give a convincing demolition of some dubious ontological relativisms and then fail to even address the much more plausible and interesting epistemological relativisms. One is left with the naive impression that all relativism must be silly. In general, it fails to take seriously anything other than the most dogmatically pro-science view. This might have been tolerable in the 50s, but not today. It gives a misleadingly timeless, non-social, and idealistic picture of how science works--a picture that is very difficult to swallow by anyone who takes the history of science seriously. In this book, veiws which are highly contraversial among the experts are frequently put forth pedagogically as accepted fact. Based on the authors they quote (e.g. Kuhn, Laudan, Lakatos) they must be aware of this, yet they fail to acknowledge it. This is intellectually irresponsable if not dishonest. It isn't all bad though. The prose is very readable, it has a wealth of great quotes and examples, and it is amazingly fun. If it could only manage to take its opponents seriously, it would be a fabulous book. Of course it would also be 1000 pages long and too complex to be interesting to the average reader. Much of this is to be expected since it attempts an impossible task to begin with--popularizing philosphy of science.
Rating: 
Summary: Only if you're not afraid to get your hands dirty . . .
Review: This book is on my very short list of must-read books, as in I believe that everyone should read it. The book covers the underpinnings of critical thinking, such as the self-defeating nature of relativism and the historical move to empirical rigor. Beyond that, though, it gives current extraordinary claims a look under the scrutiny of critical thinking. In doing so, the book takes a risk - such things are open to heated debate. In doing so, I applaud Schick and Vaughn. They show that, unfortunately, someone has got to be wrong about these things. In this current age of "believe anything you want" I think this book is a breath of fresh air and a wake-up call. Oh, and did I mention that it's easy to read too?
Rating:
Summary: Only if you're not afraid to get your hands dirty . . .
Review: This book is on my very short list of must-read books, as in I believe that everyone should read it. The book covers the underpinnings of critical thinking, such as the self-defeating nature of relativism and the historical move to empirical rigor. Beyond that, though, it gives current extraordinary claims a look under the scrutiny of critical thinking. In doing so, the book takes a risk - such things are open to heated debate. In doing so, I applaud Schick and Vaughn. They show that, unfortunately, someone has got to be wrong about these things. In this current age of "believe anything you want" I think this book is a breath of fresh air and a wake-up call. Oh, and did I mention that it's easy to read too?
Rating:
Summary: Should be required reading for all college freshmen...
Review: This book is readable, concise and full of excellent examples of the application of critical thinking to real-world examples of pseudoscience. I think the book should be taught early in college, to perhaps innoculate people against fuzzy thinking. Since it is concerned with issues relevant to nonscientists, it may well be a better introduction to scientific method than a freshman chemistry or biology class, where methodology and application of said methodology gets drowned in a sea of facts most students will soon forget. One reviewer complained that the examples are "straw men" set up to be decimated by application of the theory set forth in the book. I think that this misses the point. The examples are simple enough to demonstrate the power of the method and illustrate its use on real, current problems. I think anyone interested in understanding "wierd things" should buy and read this book.
Rating:
Summary: A must-read for any and all thinking people
Review: This is a fine piece of writing, and a very complete introduction to critical thinking -- a skill which is more desperately needed (yet also more desperately lacking) now than in any other time. I wish that every college-student, professor, and, in fact, all thinking individuals would read this book. Critical thinking is one of the most crucial skills for any thinking person, yet is most often ignored or left out of the educational system. The ideas presented in this book are clear, concise, well thought-out, and well-researched. In addition, the writing style keeps the reader interested, with relevant quotes, articles, and true stories, to provide examples of the concepts covered in the book. If you are a lover of wisdom, learning, and/or knowledge; are open to the idea of questioning, or are looking for a clear and logical foundation upon which to base your life's philosophy, this book is an excellent tool in your pursuits. Critical thinking is not a prepackaged belief system; it is a system for analyzing claims and making rational, reasonable, and logic decisions about your philosophy, your ethical code, and your belief-system. In that capacity, this book serves as a wonderful introduction and resource. Do not miss reading this book!
Rating:
Summary: Muhlenberg College is great fit for Dr. Schick
Review: This is a great book; enjoyable to read and life-altering in its commitment to reason and living, as Socrates recommended, "the examined life." Dr. Schick who teaches at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania shows himself to be open-minded, but not feeble minded. Muhlenberg's honest and hard-working community is a great place to have such a scholar as Dr. Schick.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent intro to critical and scientific thinking
Review: This is a most readable and mind-opening introductory text to critical thinking, with particular focus on logical and scientific thinking. The authors state that this work is essentially a volume on "applied epistemelogy." (1999, p. 235) It ought to be mandatory reading for high school and university students.
Topics discussed include logic, the Forer effect, perceptual constancies, confirmation bias, expectation, availability error, criteria of adquacy in evaluating hypotheses, placebo effect.
All throughout the text the authors have highlighted (literally) certain guidelines that bear committing to memory. Among the 35 the more notable ones are:
"Just because you can't explain something doesn't mean that it's supernatural." (21)
"When evaluating a claim, look for disconfirming as well as confirming evidence." (137)
"A hypothesis is scientific only if it is testable, that is, only if it predicts something other than what it was introduced to explain." (161)
"Other things being equal, the best hypothesis is the one that is the most conservative, that is, the one that fits best with established beliefs." (170)
Chapter 8 is devoted to guidelines and criteria for assessing claimed medical treatments. This is essential reading for all, since nowhere else do we fumble more egregiously in our judgement than in the evaluation of cures, treatments, and therapies.
In Chapter 9 the authors introduce what they call the SEARCH formula, an "arbitrary and artificial" (as they admit) acronym for a 4-step procedure in evaluating claims/hypotheses. It consists of Stating the claim, examining the Evidence, considering Alternative hypotheses, and Rating according the the Criteria of adequacy each Hypothesis. Lessons learned in the previous chapters are applied using such phenomena as homeopathy, dowsing, alien abduction, channeling, and near-death experiences.
An appendix lists some informal fallacies. It is a good enough primer; however, it is incomplete. For a more comprehensive list of fallacies there are various websites and other titles to turn to.
Schick and Vaughn in their introduction state that their book is about "how to test the truth or reality of some of the most influential, mysterious, provocative, bewildering puzzles we can ever experience. It's about how to think clearly and critically about what we authors have dubbed 'weird things'--all the unusual, awesome, wonderful, bizarre, and antic happenings, real or alleged, that bubble up out of science, pseudoscience, the occult, the paranormal, the mystic, and the miraculous." (2) I believe the authors succeed in supplying their readers with basic tools with which to test "weird" claims.
I highly recommend this book. Understanding and keeping in mind the lessons that Shick and Vaughn provide adequately equips us to become critical thinkers.
Rating: 
Summary: A good read for any free thinker
Review: This is a useful and informative read for anyone with an open mind who is willing to possibly rethink some of their erroneous beliefs...Interesting and informative overall, with great examples regarding almost every topic..I would only subtract a star only because at times the book is repetitive, as the authors tend to beat some of their logic concepts over the readers' heads to ensure the reader understands the points they are trying to make..
Rating: 
Summary: Okay, but I wish I'd found it at the library!
Review: This is an acceptable book on the topic, but not anything special. There is considerable coverage of epistomology (how we know what we know), plus short discussions addressing a variety of "weird" claims such as alien abductions, esp, etc. I don't agree with the reviewer who said the book was readable and good for young people--I found it a bit plodding in some places. I had the vague feeling that the author was wheeling out successive claims for us to admire his technique in "smoking" them, but I must admit that I have no serious criticism of his analysis. Overall, "Why People Believe Weird Things" is a better book on a similar topic, though it doesn't have the philosophical analysis that this book does.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book!
Review: This is an EXCELLENT book on critical thinking; I think that a critical thinking class (perhaps with this book or something like it as text) should be mandatory from grade-school on up. I find it interesting that one reader chastised this book for its "pro-science" viewpoint, without ever bothering to explain WHY "pro-science" is BAD? I'm also curious as to whether that reader actually READ the book; if so he'd note that Schick and Vaughn are very careful to give balanced treatment to all paranormal claims. They make certain to point out, for instance, that "this doesn't mean ESP doesn't exist, of course..." merely that a particular claim doesn't validate our belief in it. Throughout the book, Schick and Vaughn are very gentle in their handling of paranormal claims. And yet the reviewer claims that Schick and Vaughn "don't take [them] seriously" or ridicule claims they don't like. Nothing could be farther from the truth. In addition, the poster tried to draw a distinction between ontological and epistemic relativism, without noting that when considering a philosophy like realism (the view that there is a real, measurable, consensual reality -- a prerequisite for being a skeptic) the ontological relativism IS the epistemic relativism. Being IS the basis of our belief system -- if there's no "out there" out there, realism is a baseless philosophy. Schick and Vaughn do a VERY good job of dissecting and laying to rest the relativistic and solipsistic claims that are so popular today (IE, "there's no such thing as reality" or "whatever's true for you..."). And again, they are relatively gentle (for a less gentle treatment of the fad of social constructivism, see some of Sokal's books, for example). All in all this is an EXCELLENT, clear, well-rounded, and balanced look at critical thinking in an age of bizarre claims.
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