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Author: Bryan Farha
Publisher: University Press of America
ISBN: 0761862935
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 195
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Book Description
Pseudoscience and Deception is a compilation of some of the most eye-opening skeptical articles pertaining to extraordinary claims and pseudoscience. The articles explore paranormal, extraordinary, or fringe-science claims and reveal logical explanations or outline the deceptive tactics involved in convincing the vulnerable. Topics include claims of astrology, psychic ability, alternative medicine, after-death communication, psychotherapy, and pseudoscience. The contributors to this book are among the most accomplished critical thinkers, scientists, and educators in the world and tackle their respective topics from a rational, logical, and skeptical perspective. Most students are seldom excited to study “critical thinking”—with the exception of allegedly paranormal phenomena as the subject matter. Educators must seize this golden opportunity to witness and experience students’ genuine engagement in studying critical thinking.
Author: Bryan Farha
Publisher: University Press of America
ISBN: 0761862935
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 195
Get Book
Book Description
Pseudoscience and Deception is a compilation of some of the most eye-opening skeptical articles pertaining to extraordinary claims and pseudoscience. The articles explore paranormal, extraordinary, or fringe-science claims and reveal logical explanations or outline the deceptive tactics involved in convincing the vulnerable. Topics include claims of astrology, psychic ability, alternative medicine, after-death communication, psychotherapy, and pseudoscience. The contributors to this book are among the most accomplished critical thinkers, scientists, and educators in the world and tackle their respective topics from a rational, logical, and skeptical perspective. Most students are seldom excited to study “critical thinking”—with the exception of allegedly paranormal phenomena as the subject matter. Educators must seize this golden opportunity to witness and experience students’ genuine engagement in studying critical thinking.
Author: Charles Seife
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9780670022168
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 295
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Book Description
The best-selling author of New York Times Notable Book Zero shows how mathematical misinformation pervades--and shapes--people's daily lives and is used to bring down government officials, convict the innocent, ruin the U.S. economy and more.
Author: David Michaels
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0190922664
Category : Deception
Languages : en
Pages : 343
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Book Description
"Opioids. Concussions. Obesity. Climate change. America is a country of everyday crises -- big, long-spanning problems that persist, mostly unregulated, despite their toll on the country's health and vitality. And for every case of government inaction on one of these issues, there is a set of familiar, doubtful refrains: The science is unclear. The data is inconclusive. Regulation is unjustified. It's a slippery slope. Is it? The Triumph of Doubt traces the ascendance of science-for-hire in American life and government, from its origins in the tobacco industry in the 1950s to its current manifestations across government, public policy, and even professional sports. Well-heeled American corporations have long had a financial stake in undermining scientific consensus and manufacturing uncertainty; in The Triumph of Doubt, former Obama and Clinton official David Michaels details how bad science becomes public policy -- and where it's happening today. Amid fraught conversations of "alternative facts" and "truth decay," The Triumph of Doubt wields its unprecedented access to shine a light on the machinations and scope of manipulated science in American society. It is an urgent, revelatory work, one that promises to reorient conversations around science and the public good for the foreseeable future"--Provided by publisher.
Author: Georges Charpak
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801878671
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 170
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Book Description
During the most scientifically advanced period in human history, belief in the paranormal and the supernatural is alarmingly common. Nobel Prize winner Georges Charpak and physics professor Henri Broch team up to show you the tricks of the trade and sleight of hand that keep astrologers, TV psychics, and spoon benders in business. Using only the simplest of science, the authors explore the effectiveness of horoscopes--the blander the better--and why, with a television audience in the millions, any strange, unlikely prediction is almost certain to come true. Not merely an exposé of magic tricks, this book demonstrates how pseudoscientists use science, statistics, and psychology to bamboozle an audience--sometimes for fun, sometimes for profit. Entertaining and enlightening, Debunked! is the antidote, vigorously asserting the virtues of doubt, skepticism, curiosity, and scientific knowledge.--From publisher description.
Author: Zixin Lin
Publisher: Prometheus Books
ISBN: 1616140712
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 155
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Book Description
Qigong is a 2,500-year-old form of traditional Chinese medicine based on the concept that an energy known as Qi flows through meridians of the body and from the fingertips of "masters", who allegedly heal various maladies of the human body, including hypertension and cancer. This book separates fact from folklore.
Author: Henry H. Bauer
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252072161
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 306
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Book Description
A book that all scientists should read, and a book that all who are interested in the unexplainable will want to read, Bauer explores how examining anomalies have profited humankind and restores the respectability--and necessity--of such pursuits in a fascinating overview of science and the pursuit of the unknown. Although science attempts to draw a clear line separating its endeavours from those of "pseudoscience," Henry Bauer reveals that the distinction is both equivocal and misleading. Setting aside science's snowy mantle of truth, Bauer presents pseudoscience--or anomalistics--not as the opposite of science but as something that develops parallel to it. Science assumes anomalies--that is, phenomena that contradict the existing store of knowledge--result from error, contamination, or even deception: in short, from bad research technique, at best, and deliberate hoax, at worst. Anomalists, by contrast, accept such occurrences, often on the basis of eyewitness claims, as important in themselves and worthy of further study, even if they contradict prevailing theories and offer a minimal degree of reproducibility.Science or Pseudoscience explores the diffuse and porous borders between mainstream and unorthodoxy. A scientist himself, Bauer points out that some phenomena that have turned out to be spurious, such as polywater and cold fusion, were for a time taken quite seriously by respected members of the scientific community. Other anomalies, such as ball lightning and meteorites, were dismissed by many scientists but turned out to be legitimate discoveries. Meanwhile, science has failed to prove that phenomena encompassed by the "big three" subjects in anomalistics--parapsychology, ufology, and cryptozoology (e.g., the Loch Ness monster)--do not exist. Rather, science theorizes that these phenomena cannot exist, since today's scientific laws seem to hold them to be impossible. Bauer discusses anomalies such as archaeoastronomy (e.g., Stonehenge) and bioelectromagnetics and looks at how institutional, commercial, and political interests influence borderline research in mainstream laboratories. He also draws a distinction between fraud and commercial huckstering, on the one hand, and genuine knowledge-seeking about matters ignored by the established intellectual disciplines, on the other. Bauer notes that the more closely anomalistic research approaches science, the more strenuously it is criticized by the establishment, often in terms of heresy. Reminding us that geniuses are cranks who happen to be right while cranks may be geniuses who happen to be wrong, Science or Pseudoscience offers a measured and thoughtful assessment of this volatile debate.
Author: Brian Clegg
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1250019060
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 322
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Book Description
Examines whether ESP, telekinesis, and other seemingly supernatural abilities are actual talents or manifestations of fantasy, documenting the research of scientists while assessing the possible physical mechanisms for ESP.
Author: Michael Shermer
Publisher: Holt Paperbacks
ISBN: 9781429996761
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 384
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Book Description
Revised and Expanded Edition. In this age of supposed scientific enlightenment, many people still believe in mind reading, past-life regression theory, New Age hokum, and alien abduction. A no-holds-barred assault on popular superstitions and prejudices, with more than 80,000 copies in print, Why People Believe Weird Things debunks these nonsensical claims and explores the very human reasons people find otherworldly phenomena, conspiracy theories, and cults so appealing. In an entirely new chapter, "Why Smart People Believe in Weird Things," Michael Shermer takes on science luminaries like physicist Frank Tippler and others, who hide their spiritual beliefs behind the trappings of science. Shermer, science historian and true crusader, also reveals the more dangerous side of such illogical thinking, including Holocaust denial, the recovered-memory movement, the satanic ritual abuse scare, and other modern crazes. Why People Believe Strange Things is an eye-opening resource for the most gullible among us and those who want to protect them.
Author: Philip Kitcher
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262610377
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 228
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Book Description
Abusing Science is a manual for intellectual self-defense, the most complete available for presenting the case against Creationist pseudo-science. It is also a lucid exposition of the nature and methods of genuine science. The book begins with a concise introduction to evolutionary theory for non-scientists and closes with a rebuttal of the charge that this theory undermines religious and moral values. It will astonish many readers that this case must still be made in the 1980s, but since it must, Philip Kitcher makes it irresistibly and forcefully. Not long ago, a federal court struck down an Arkansas law requiring that "scientific" Creationism be taught in high school science classes. Contemporary Creationists may have lost one legal battle, but their cause continues to thrive. Their efforts are directed not only at state legislatures but at local school boards and textbook publishers. As Kitcher argues in this rigorous but highly readable book, the integrity of science is under attack. The methods of inquiry used in evolutionary biology are those which are used throughout the sciences. Moreover, modern biology is intertwined with other fields of science—physics, chemistry, astronomy, and geology. Creationists hope to persuade the public that education in science should be torn apart to make room for a literal reading of Genesis. Abusing Science refutes the popular complaint that the scientific establishment is dogmatic and intolerant, denying "academic freedom" to the unorthodox. It examines Creationist claims seriously and systematically, one by one, showing clearly just why they are at best misguided, at worst ludicrous.
Author: Michael Pettit
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226923746
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 323
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Book Description
Michael Pettit reveals how deception came to be something that psychologists not only studied but also employed to establish their authority. They developed a host of tools for making deception more transparent in the courts and elsewhere.
