edhall@randvax.ARPA (Ed Hall) (01/23/84)
------------------------------ Lew Mammel mentions Martin Gardner's book `Science: Good, Bad, and Bogus'. This book is a collection of various articles the author has written over the years, many with postscripts describing reactions to the original along with subsequently discovered facts. In a word, it is fascinating. Gardner tackles just about every facet of psuedoscience, from Velikovsky to biorhythm to Uri Geller, and, of course, Puthoff & Targ. He is scrupulous with his facts, and is usually careful to give references. It is simply astonishing what some well-credentialed `scientists' will believe, or how easily they are fooled. Gardner's prose is lucid (as readers of his former column in Scientific American will atest). There is a certain amount of repetition and lack of cohesion due to the large number of sources for the book's chapters, but this makes it all the better for `browsing'. For a no-holds-barred attack on psuedoscience and psuedoscientists, nothing beats James Randi's `Flim-Flam!'. Randi (`The Amazing') is a professional magician. He exposes psychic experimentation for what it is--poorly designed experiments with few controls, such that even an amateur magician has no problem producing `paranormal' results. What's more, records of such experiments often show evidence of such tampering, yet many researchers ignore or discard such results. He is especially damning of Puthoff and Targ, calling them `the Laurel and Hardy of Psi', and examines both their ESP and remote viewing experiments. His general opinion is that parapsychologists are simply duped by their subjects, or are observing the results of unconcious cueing or faulty equipment. The antidote is proper experimental controls, and his claim is that all experiments where such controls are rigorously applied have turned up negative. Randi has put up a $10,000 offer to anyone who can present evidence of paranormal powers in his presence in a controlled experiment. His descriptions of the performances of people who try to take him up on his offer are often quite funny. Though Randi is hardly a professional writer, the book reads clearly and my attention never flagged. The index and bibliography (which the Gardner book lacked) are both quite good. -Ed Hall decvax!randvax!edhall (UUCP) edhall@rand-unix (ARPA)