SHADOWS OF SCIENCE

In this enlightening and entertaining book author and Skeptical Inquirer editor Kendrick Frazier takes readers on a journey to the contentious boundary zone between science and its antagonists pseudoscience pretend science and anti science open hostility to science Pseudoscience romps in the shadows of science but takes on the guise of science to excite sell mislead and deceive the public Anti science denigrates even denies findings of science for ideological ends In this dangerous age of misinformation and dis information we need science s remarkable truth seeking tools more than ever to help counter society s crazier impulses in which opinion beliefs and lies trump facts evidence and truth In one sense Shadows of Science is Frazier s love letter to science one of humanity s greatest inventions one we should exalt for its unique ability to find provisional truths about nature In congenial prose he reports on recent discoveries and describes how science works and how its error correcting mechanisms lead eventually to new knowledge He tells the stories of some of our champions of science and reason He describes the little appreciated values of science how it embraces uncertainty and humility and its emphasis on fact based observation and ex