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cunningba's review
4.0
Still interesting
This book, though a little dated in its examples and details, is still a classic and worth a read.
This is actually at least the third time that I’ve read it. The first time was sometime in the late 1950s when I was still in elementary school. Much of it was above my head then, so I think I didn’t finish it then, getting bogged down someplace in the orgones.
I read it again around 1970 during my senior year at MIT. It was a good reminder to me at that time of what science was about and that however cool and trendy the psychic hoogie-moogie, astrology, and occultism of my friends early in the Aquarian Age seemed, ultimately it had to be self delusion or fraud.
The bits that are now the most dated are simply the refutations of the fallacies being debunked; 70 more years of scientific progress makes it much easier find disproofs, especially in the fields of genetics, biology, planetary science, and physics.
This book, though a little dated in its examples and details, is still a classic and worth a read.
This is actually at least the third time that I’ve read it. The first time was sometime in the late 1950s when I was still in elementary school. Much of it was above my head then, so I think I didn’t finish it then, getting bogged down someplace in the orgones.
I read it again around 1970 during my senior year at MIT. It was a good reminder to me at that time of what science was about and that however cool and trendy the psychic hoogie-moogie, astrology, and occultism of my friends early in the Aquarian Age seemed, ultimately it had to be self delusion or fraud.
The bits that are now the most dated are simply the refutations of the fallacies being debunked; 70 more years of scientific progress makes it much easier find disproofs, especially in the fields of genetics, biology, planetary science, and physics.
stephenmeansme's review against another edition
4.0
A justified classic of scientific skepticism, and don't let the mid-20th-c. publication date fool you: a large chunk of the titular fads and fallacies Gardner describes are still limping along into $CURRENT_YEAR, and in several cases are stronger than ever. (Especially depressing are the cases of homeopathy, anti-vaccine hysteria, UFOs, creationism, and Scientology, all of which Gardner believed would peter out relatively quickly.)
Caveats: Gardner was a decent and liberal-minded man but some of the terminology of the Fifties is just not. Perhaps a bigger problem, though, is that Gardner is rather inconsistent with his citations - he freely name-drops books and articles for further information reading, but there's no structured bibliography which makes reference harder.
Overall, 4.5 stars, rounded down because of the aforementioned blemishes.
Caveats: Gardner was a decent and liberal-minded man but some of the terminology of the Fifties is just not. Perhaps a bigger problem, though, is that Gardner is rather inconsistent with his citations - he freely name-drops books and articles for further information reading, but there's no structured bibliography which makes reference harder.
Overall, 4.5 stars, rounded down because of the aforementioned blemishes.
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