Science or Pseudoscience: Magnetic Healing, Psychic Phenomena, and Other Heterodoxies

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Summary: Essential Reading For the True Skeptic
Review: For any skeptic willing to question their own foundations, this book is a must. Not only is it an excellent companion to the works of Michael Shermer and like-minded skeptics, it adds a much needed dose of reality to said skeptical works. It seems a vocal few have boldy proclaimed what science is and is not. H. Bauer provides a blueprint (along with his previous work Scientific Literacy and the Myth of the Scientific Method) for what "raw' science truly is, undiluted with politics or beliefs.

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Summary: How Much We Don't Yet Know!
Review: To really grasp what is going on with Big Science and why there is such resistance to new ideas, you need a copy of Dr. Henry Bauer's Science or Pseudoscience: Magnetic Healing, Psychic Phenomena and Other Heterodoxies published this year by the University of Illinois Press. Henry H. Bauer, Dean Emeritus of Arts & Sciences, Professor Emeritus of Chemistry and Science Studies Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Scientific Exploration, and the author of several other books like The Enigma of Loch Ness: Making Sense of a Mystery and Scientific Literacy and the Myth of the Scientific Method, which we recommend almost monthly to our listener and guests on ....

The most original aspect of this book is the way that Dr. Bauer has of defining normal, revolutionary, premature, and "pseudo" science in terms of the three facets of data, method, and theory. He makes detailed comparisons of the actual working practices in natural science, social science, and denigrated science and reexamines notorious cases from this fresh perspective. Normal science doesn't try to do anything revolutionary in any of these three facets, according to Bauer. As he says, "Scientific "revolutions" (quantum mechanics, relativity) change only one of those at a time. Looking for novelty in two of the three simultaneously produces "premature" science: Mendel's theory of genetics, Wegener's theory of drifting continents - ignored or rejected by science for decades. Novelty in all three areas characterizes looking for Loch Ness Monsters or UFOs or studying psychic phenomena; the difficulties are enormous and the chances of success slight, but that doesn't make the quest useless or to be criticized."

Some of our favorite subjects that have been dismissed as "pseudo science" are reexamined as "scientific" with this perspective, and Bauer relates the search for the giant squid, the search for extraterrestrials, pre-Clovis people in the Americas, cold fusion, the idea that HIV causes AIDS, and much more.

Bauer is a humorous writer and acknowledges that his critics will probably not be able to keep from being nasty. He recommends that if the skeptics insist on being nasty, they should at least distinguish genuine knowledge-seekers from self-promoting confidence tricksters. As he points out, many cryptozoologists, parapsychologists, and ufologists are perfectly honest, genuine seekers of understanding (while some mainstream researchers are not very honest).

For an unusually unbiased, yet scientific, approach to some of the subjects that are "borderland" respectable - sometimes called pseudo-science, sometimes admitted into science, but generally still controversial ("how much don't we yet know about electromagnetism and living processes! About archaeoastronomy!") you must read this book.