what's this? another Bogus Science review?

[realthog]

The blogger skullsinthestars has given an overall very favourable review to Bogus Science -- I say "overall" because s/he spends a lot of time talking about how s/he wishes I'd taken on the anti-vaccination crew and the Creationists/IDiots. (Answer: I decided to leave the former for a future volume and I treated the latter in both Discarded Science and Corrupted Science.) Whatever . . . here are the bits you're aching to read:

The book is very good; as a first statement I can highly recommend it. [. . .] filled with wonderful wry and biting humor [. . .] exhaustively researched, and contains many stories and anecdotes that even a long-time observer of woo such as myself has not heard of [. . .] Grant’s Bogus Science is a wonderfully entertaining and informative book about the insane beliefs of fringe groups. [. . .]

I am also, I discover, a bad-assed writer . . . which I'm taking as a compliment.

I'd not heard of Skulls in the Stars ("Physics, pulp fantasy and horror fiction, and a bit of politics") before my Google Alert picked up the review. It's a pretty good blog, and I've added it to my RSS list. I also found, dating from January 2008, a truly excellent review it had run of Corrupted Science which had somehow slipped through Google's net. I won't extract quotes here because really it's ALL GOOD.

Google Alerts picked up another blog reference to Bogus Science (and generated another addition to my RSS list) -- this time not a review but a mention in Richard Elen's engaging account of his visit to Oxford, with friends, to see the exhibition of Steampunk art at the Museum of the History of Science. The essay ends thus:

Mid-afternoon we ended up at Blackwells’ where we all seemed to acquire a set of John Grant’s series of science books, Discarded, Corrupted and Bogus Science.

What excellent people!

Comments

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

Very, very nice.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Very, very nice.

Many thanks, kind sir!

My Bogus Science wishlist

[(Anonymous)]

John Grant / Paul Barnett:

Very much enjoyed Bogus Science; from your introductory chapter which catalogs some of the frightful things that apparently educated and industrialized persons believe, well, I was on board at that point. I used to teach English composition and I spent most of the time TRYING to get across the need to students for them to use critical thinking.

For what it's worth, I offer my own experience, in relation to some of what is set forth in your book, Bogus Science. I always found that when starting at a basic level of pointing out logical fallacies in commercials and print advertisements, there was a "so-what" factor because my students had already assumed that all advertising was by definition filled with nothing but false statements. However, when the same logical fallacies appeared in a book, a newspaper article, a magazine, etc., they were very often readily accepted without question
by students. Horrifying.

In Bogus Science, you make a point, when discussing the Bermuda Triangle, that not everyone has the means, the time, the patience, to refute every crackpot illogical idea that poses as science. Further, that because of the nature of the SOURCE of such bogus science (my invisible friend Binky, my personal contact from Atlantis, etc.) it is very difficult, if possible, to take on the prospect of any type of attempted scientific verification of "foundation" ideas of bogus science. I agree, and am much more frustrated than you seem to have been by these problems.
There are sections of your book which catalog bogus science ideas which on the whole are so preposterous as to warrant nothing more than their collected restatement (reprinting) as a rebuttal. I am not accusing you of the same practice that the bogus science lovers engage in, thereby outpacing scientific scrutiny or testing merely by assembling all the "unexplained" into a compendium, as if to say, "if there's THIS MUCH unexplained stuff going on out there, then SURELY there's something to it..." (a scary twin of the "20 million people can't be wrong" advertising claim). I do wish that, for many of the minor or detour-level bogus science ideas, you had had the space and time to (patiently, and without the smug chuckling which I credit your book with avoiding) to skewer them as thoroughly as you do, for example, the flat-earth-ers.
My personal hobby horse is spontaneous combustion; despite all the bogus science you've seen or heard in writing your books, you might still be surprised at the acceptance of this idea.

Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed the book and have just passed it off to a friend and recommended it to others!
Quentin Daniels
Jackson, MS

Re: My Bogus Science wishlist

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Hi, Quentin

Many thanks for all the kind words. I'm glad you enjoyed the book.

Spontaneous combustion is one of the odder bogus phenomena -- you're quite right. After some umming and hawing I decided to leave it for the book I'm working on at the moment (although it has yet to be signed up by a publisher, my current publisher having decided to wind operations down, dammit), called something like Psi High.

am much more frustrated than you seem to have been by these problems

You underestimate my frustration levels here! I am equally frustrated by the phenomenon you mention whereby people tend to think that, if it's in the newspaper (or on a self-proclaimed new tv channel), it must be true. The converse is, of course, almost worse: the trait of birthers, teabaggers et al to assume that anything told to them by conscientious sources is, because of its source, by definition false: they regard Glenn Beck as a reliable information source over, say, the ICCC because the latter is a properly accredited body of people who know what they're talking about.

Anyway, again many thanks for your kind words.