Rating: 
Summary: Continuing in the skeptical tradition.
Review: Truth be told, I didn't like this book as much as I liked Shermer's other book, "Why People Believe Weird Things." It was a little less to the point, and seemed more to want to prove Shermer's belief system--with which I concur--than the other book. However, among the things I liked about this book right off was that it established no sacred cows. Shermer began with a historical analysis of sort of institutional skepticism, mentioning, for example, that godfather (sorry) of skepticism, Martin Gardner. He covered a number of concepts, including an issue covered in a recent issue of "Skeptic" magazine which he edits: why is it that blacks dominate in sports? The fact is, they don't! He discusses the viability of some items, despite their prominent place in, say, Hollywood, of things like cloning. In an important part of the book, Shermer evaluates on a "fuzzy fraction" scale of .9 (highest) to .1 (lowest) what is normal science, what is borderland science, and what is nonscience. There are quite a few .9s, including that elusive tidbit I have a hard time figuring out, quantum mechanics. But some subjects get less than that, e.g., neurophysiology of brain functions (.8) and intelligence and intelligence testing (.3!) Of course, the nonsciences, astrology, bible code, alien abductions, and others, get a .1. But this exercise was helpful particularly because of the borderlands science, "in the borderlands between normal science and nonscience." A nonscientist like myself may assume that these are "true" sciences. But Shermer gives superstring theory, for example, only a .7; theories of consciousness, SETI and hypnosis only a .5. And he does give chiropractic, one of the (sometimes legitimate) punching bags of some skeptics a .4. So he doesn't flat out reject it, just challenges it. To be honest, I wasn't sure of the author's point in the middle portion of the book. He covers some interesting material, e.g., whether Darwin was really a pioneer, whether he had changed "paradigms." But he included in that discussion a system he'd set up with Frank Sulloway who'd written a book on personalities likely to rebel, in essence. I mean the chapters were pretty interesting. In one, he discussed Darwin and his contemporary, Alfred Russell Wallace, the latter of whom also got into spiritualist trends of his time, such as phrenology and seances. Again, it was interesting, but I wasn't not sure what his point was, to discuss why Darwin rejected some of those fads while Wallace accepted them. And the chapter on Carl Sagan, part of that section, again, was interesting, but I'm not sure why it was included. For instance, people-myself at one point-resented Sagan because he was a popularizer of science rather than a pioneer or creator in the field. Shermer points out that it's not necessarily one vs. the other, i.e., maybe he could be both and good at both. But Sagan's political idiosyncrasies are inconsequential to me. So, Shermer concludes that, while Sagan may have been a little of a hypocrite, he was a great man. Well, so. Then Shermer got into a subject that's dear to me, what he called the "BPM" or "beautiful people myth." Much of contemporary legend, from the "fashionable nonsense" of too many post-modernist academics to some of the more radical feminists, reminisce a period before us white, European males (or DWEMs, the "d" indicating "dead) showed up. You see, we set up a patriarchal, warlike, competitive world since, and that's a disaster. Well, Shermer's research indicates that there never was this Eden, despite religious traditions that refer to it. Indeed, throughout "prehistory," many a species fell prey to people "of color." The evidence is overwhelming, and quite interesting! There are areas all over the globe where the influence on non-white, non-European, but certainly just as dead persons committed "ecocide" usually a consequence of overpopulation. Then fortunately Shermer suggests that we could be on that same course now and, unlike those of earlier times, we can do something about it--and need to! He then returned to Darwin, and a debate as to whether Darwin or Wallace was more responsible for the origin of species. That part got dry, and I again wondered Shermer's point. Then, while contemplating it, I realized that his point is: how science works. There ARE biases; there ARE human elements to it too. And, of course, there are conspiracy theorists, those, for example, who felt that Darwin had ripped of Wallace's theory. Shermer does a commendable job of demonstrating that Wallace and Darwin were actually allies, that there needn't be a "zero sum" in which one won and the other lost, but, rather, there was a "plus sum" in which both-and history and science-ALL benefited from the discoveries! The final chapter on Piltdown would have made an amusing essay in itself. I always mix up Piltdown man, the hoax perpetrated by someone that lasted for 40 years, with the scheme devised by P.T. Barnum. This chapter clarified for me that it was a dramatically different subject, though no less a hoax. And, again, it was a sign of how science works; there WERE cultural biases that played a part in people's acceptance of the hoax for so long. (Shermer wisely covers who may have been responsible for it, and concludes that a court would convict no one. But Tielhard de Chardin may have been responsible!) No, scientists are not immune from all-too-human influences! Frankly, I'll read this book again before long. It was good, and I think a valuable contribution to my library. But next time maybe I'll concentrate more. I'll then have the arguments I need to refute those who argue that science is just one among many equally viable means to reach a conclusion.
Rating:
Summary: Not the Applied Skepticism book I wanted, but good anyway.
Review: What I'm looking for is a detailed users' manual for a Baloney Detection Kit (as Carl Sagan called it.) I'd hoped to find this in one of Shermer's previous works, Why People Believe Weird Things, and I'd hoped to find it here. In both cases, the first part of the book did exactly this, but somewhere along the way it turned into case studies of debunking, rather than the process of debunking. (That's okay: they're well-written.) Michael Shermer's background is psychology and ultra-long-distance cycling; he's written a number of books on cycling and analysis of (and refutation of) Holocaust deniers. He's also president (apparently for life) of the American Skeptics society and a reasonably good writer. In this book, Shermer spends a lot of time talking about the scientific method, its strengths and potential flaws -- and, more importantly, its system for dealing with its flaws (which he claims "sets science apart from all other knowledge systems and intellectual disciplines" -- a heady claim I wish he discussed more.) Since this is supposed to be a review of Borderlands and not Weird Things, I'll just say that if you like this, you'll like the other as well. In The Borderlands Of Science, he analyzes beliefs that are at defensible, beliefs that could (or were once thought to) be scientifically accurate. Among these are, for instance, ramifications of cloning, confirmation bias in explaining racial differences in sports (about which Malcolm Gladwell has also written), and a whole, whole lot of discussion of Alfred Wallace. Wallace and Charles Darwin were both responsible for the theory of evolution. Wallace is not remembered as widely for a number of reasons, which are explored in frightening detail in roughly 3.5 of the 16 chapters of this book. Shermer did his doctoral thesis on Wallace, not coincidentally. The ratio of stuff-about-Wallace-or-Evolution to everything-else, by chapter, is 3:7; Shermer is pretty focussed on this specific discussion.
The book has four sections: a short introduction (which is quite heavy in skeptical theory, exactly what I wanted) and the main body, discussing borderlands theories, people, and history. In theories, he tends to stray a little from 'why people believe weird things' into 'why stupid people believe weird things' (as he did in the book of the same title) and that's fun. He covers a lot of quite current topics (like cloning, Wacky Unified Field Theories, the importance of Punctured Equilibrium in the evolution of evolutionary theory.) In section two: people, he discusses the Copernican revolution and its effects, then goes off about Alfred Wallace. Here, he does something weird that needs more discussion. In analyzing Wallace, he constructs a psychological profile, which he derived by having a large number of Wallace experts fill out a survey of the "strongly agree, 9, 8,.. 3, 2, strongly disagree" sort, and then uses the results of these surveys to fill in his discussion of why Wallace became a scientific spiritualist, for instance. It's an interesting technique that he also uses with Steven Jay Gould and Carl Sagan. It is tempting to ask how much confirmation bias exists in a survey of this sort, though. Since I've already let the spoiler out of the bag, Shermer discusses Gould and Sagan, spends some time doing a statistical analysis of Sagan's greatness as a scientist (by comparing published papers by topic with a number of other contemporary, canonically great scientists) and pauses briefly to smack Freud upside the head in a somewhat snarky comparison of Freud and Darwin. Finally, in section three: histories, he does a lovely discussion of the myth of pastoral tranquillity, including a quick summary of four ancient civilizations that probably managed to destroy themselves through environmental stupidity without (as he puts it) any need of Dead White European Males coming in and inflicting devastation from outside. Shermer then analyzes (and debunks) the theory of transcendent genius, the Mozart Myth, as he calls it, and goes back to two more chapters on Wallace and evolution, in a discussion of the Piltdown Man hoax and why that should (but doesn't seem to have) support the idea that science can be self-correcting and learn from its mistakes. I like what Shermer is doing, and he writes well and readably. If I sound a bit impatient, it's because I want him to be writing about the application of critical thinking rather than case studies, and when he starts out writing just what I want to read, then goes off in a different direction, he leaves me standing at the intersection saying "hey, wait, this isn't the bus I wanted." The book could stand to be either edited down into two books: a Wallace analysis and a case studies in how science inspects itself discussion, or edited up with a clearer discussion of the math involved in his statistical analysis of Sagan or his psychological profiling of people. In the end, I liked it, I learned a fair bit from it, and I would recommend it to people who want to learn more about both critical thinking and science history.
Rating:
Summary: Not the Applied Skepticism book I wanted, but good anyway.
Review: What I'm looking for is a detailed users' manual for a Baloney Detection Kit (as Carl Sagan called it.) I'd hoped to find this in one of Shermer's previous works, Why People Believe Weird Things, and I'd hoped to find it here. In both cases, the first part of the book did exactly this, but somewhere along the way it turned into case studies of debunking, rather than the process of debunking. (That's okay: they're well-written.) Michael Shermer's background is psychology and ultra-long-distance cycling; he's written a number of books on cycling and analysis of (and refutation of) Holocaust deniers. He's also president (apparently for life) of the American Skeptics society and a reasonably good writer. In this book, Shermer spends a lot of time talking about the scientific method, its strengths and potential flaws -- and, more importantly, its system for dealing with its flaws (which he claims "sets science apart from all other knowledge systems and intellectual disciplines" -- a heady claim I wish he discussed more.) Since this is supposed to be a review of Borderlands and not Weird Things, I'll just say that if you like this, you'll like the other as well. In The Borderlands Of Science, he analyzes beliefs that are at defensible, beliefs that could (or were once thought to) be scientifically accurate. Among these are, for instance, ramifications of cloning, confirmation bias in explaining racial differences in sports (about which Malcolm Gladwell has also written), and a whole, whole lot of discussion of Alfred Wallace. Wallace and Charles Darwin were both responsible for the theory of evolution. Wallace is not remembered as widely for a number of reasons, which are explored in frightening detail in roughly 3.5 of the 16 chapters of this book. Shermer did his doctoral thesis on Wallace, not coincidentally. The ratio of stuff-about-Wallace-or-Evolution to everything-else, by chapter, is 3:7; Shermer is pretty focussed on this specific discussion.
The book has four sections: a short introduction (which is quite heavy in skeptical theory, exactly what I wanted) and the main body, discussing borderlands theories, people, and history. In theories, he tends to stray a little from 'why people believe weird things' into 'why stupid people believe weird things' (as he did in the book of the same title) and that's fun. He covers a lot of quite current topics (like cloning, Wacky Unified Field Theories, the importance of Punctured Equilibrium in the evolution of evolutionary theory.) In section two: people, he discusses the Copernican revolution and its effects, then goes off about Alfred Wallace. Here, he does something weird that needs more discussion. In analyzing Wallace, he constructs a psychological profile, which he derived by having a large number of Wallace experts fill out a survey of the "strongly agree, 9, 8,.. 3, 2, strongly disagree" sort, and then uses the results of these surveys to fill in his discussion of why Wallace became a scientific spiritualist, for instance. It's an interesting technique that he also uses with Steven Jay Gould and Carl Sagan. It is tempting to ask how much confirmation bias exists in a survey of this sort, though. Since I've already let the spoiler out of the bag, Shermer discusses Gould and Sagan, spends some time doing a statistical analysis of Sagan's greatness as a scientist (by comparing published papers by topic with a number of other contemporary, canonically great scientists) and pauses briefly to smack Freud upside the head in a somewhat snarky comparison of Freud and Darwin. Finally, in section three: histories, he does a lovely discussion of the myth of pastoral tranquillity, including a quick summary of four ancient civilizations that probably managed to destroy themselves through environmental stupidity without (as he puts it) any need of Dead White European Males coming in and inflicting devastation from outside. Shermer then analyzes (and debunks) the theory of transcendent genius, the Mozart Myth, as he calls it, and goes back to two more chapters on Wallace and evolution, in a discussion of the Piltdown Man hoax and why that should (but doesn't seem to have) support the idea that science can be self-correcting and learn from its mistakes. I like what Shermer is doing, and he writes well and readably. If I sound a bit impatient, it's because I want him to be writing about the application of critical thinking rather than case studies, and when he starts out writing just what I want to read, then goes off in a different direction, he leaves me standing at the intersection saying "hey, wait, this isn't the bus I wanted." The book could stand to be either edited down into two books: a Wallace analysis and a case studies in how science inspects itself discussion, or edited up with a clearer discussion of the math involved in his statistical analysis of Sagan or his psychological profiling of people. In the end, I liked it, I learned a fair bit from it, and I would recommend it to people who want to learn more about both critical thinking and science history.
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