Fads and fallacies in the name of science

Martin Gardner

As I pointed out in the previous post, Martin Gardner published in 1952 a book with the same title as this one. My edition, dated in 1957, contains an updating appendix and a new chapter, making a total of 26 chapters. Each chapter refers to one or more cases of pseudoscience. The book bears the following subtitle:

A study in human gullibility

I am sure that more than one of my readers will be outraged by at least one of Gardner’s selected pseudosciences, because they will not be considered pseudoscience. Like any human activity, the critique of pseudosciences is also debatable. I am not going to give my opinion. I will just summarize Gardner’s pseudosciences, although not all of them, for a few are no longer interesting. Nor will I mention those that have appeared after the publication of Gardner’s book, although I will dedicate other posts to some of these.

Science or pseudoscience?

Martin Gardner

The word pseudoscience is defined as follows in the Cambridge Dictionary:

a system of thought or a theory that is not formed in a scientific way

As for Wikipedia, it is defined like this:

statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method

We can deduce that pseudoscience is a theory or discipline presented as scientific, but not really scientific. The distinction between science and pseudoscience is important, because there are many pseudosciences, almost more than sciences, although sometimes it is difficult to distinguish them, because throughout history, ideas about what is scientific and what is not, have changed.