The Enigma of Loch Ness: Making Sense of a Mystery

Rating:
Summary: A Good Book About Nessie; A Great Book About Science
Review: Remember your high school science textbooks' dry-as-dust rundown of "The Scientific Method?" Well, here's the intro to scientific reasoning you *should* have gotten back then: A ferociously intelligent, smoothly written guide to thinking rationally about the natural world.

The title promises a comprehensive, clear-eyed look at the Loch Ness mystery written by an author with an open mind. The book delivers on that promise, and the result is a delight to read. Bauer walks you, surefootedly, through sixty-odd years of Nessie sightings, as well as reactions to them by the public and the scientific community. If you want a reliable, detailed, neutral study of the Loch Ness mystery--here's your book.

The icing on the intellectual cake is that Bauer is interested in more than just Loch Ness. He makes clear in his introduction that he wants to explore how science works and, once again, the book delivers. Bauer walks you, again surefootedly, through concepts like "data" "proof" "theory" and so forth, carefully leaving in the kinds of grey areas that working scientists have to deal with. Two of the best chapters in the book are titled "Bad Reasons for Believing" and "Bad Reasons for Not Believing." Together (especially in the context of the entire book) they're one of the best discussions of scientific reasoning I've ever read.

Recommended for anyone with a serious interest in science . . . even if you don't really care whether there's anything bigger than a trout in Loch Ness.

Rating:
Summary: LOCH NESS MYSTERY UNRAVELLED
Review: This book, is, without doubt, one of the best volumes to be published on the mystery of the Loch Ness Monster. Bauer speaks sensibly of the enigma and provides both positive and negative information to the reader. Bauer produces academic analytical skills as well as those gained by the physical search of Loch Ness to support his undoubted knowledge which he imparts in most readable prose. I thoroughly recommend this work to anyone interested in the case Loch Ness Monster, it provides virtually everything one would need to know.