Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science

Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science (1957) was Martin Gardner's second book{{mn|Antioch|0}}, and has become a classic in the literature of entertaining skepticism.

Related Topics:
Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science - 1957 - Martin Gardner - Skepticism

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The book debunks pseudoscientific ideas, and examines how they arose. It is currently in its 31st printing. It was expanded from an article first published in the Antioch Review in 1950{{mn|Antioch|1}}, which became the first chapter of the book; chapter one explains the attraction of science to "cranks" and "pseudo scientists", who he describes as having five invariable characteristics:

Related Topics:
Pseudoscientific ideas - 1950

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• The pseudo-scientist has a profound intellectual superiority complex.
• The pseudo-scientist regards other researchers as idiotic, and always operates outside the peer review system (hence the title of the original Antioch Review article: The Hermit Scientist).
• The pseudo-scientist believes there is a campaign against their ideas, a campaign compared with the persecution of Galileo or Pasteur.
• Instead of side-stepping the mainstream the pseudo-scientist attacks it head-on: The most revered scientist is Einstein so Gardner writes that Einstein is the most likely establishment figure to be attacked. He writes: "A perpetual motion machine cannot be built. He builds one".
• He coins neologisms.

These pyschological traits are amply demonstrated throughout the remaining chapters of the book, in which he examines particular "fads" he labels pseudo-scientific. Most of the book's targets have since passed into obscurity, but a few of the ideas labelled "modern pseudoscience"{{mn|Modern|2}} by Gardner are still extant nearly a half century after the book was first published:

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• Charles Fort's magazine is still popular, and still even more skeptical than Gardner himself. (Gardner sees some value in Fort's "doubt everything" Hegelian philosophy, but finds the unwillingness to accept varying degrees of confidence "blind".{{mn|Blind|3}})
• Creationism.
• Organic farming, whose leader is dismissed in the "Food Fadists" chapter as a self-publisher who is "even more extreme than the vegetarians"{{mn|FoodFad|4}}
• Rudolf Steiner's philosophy (described as an "anthroposophical cult" on page 224) and his belief in Gaia have both become more popular since the book's first publication.
• Dianetics.
 
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