Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time by Michael Shermer , Stephen Jay Gould Search Amazon for other books by or about Michael Shermer. Rating: Reviewed by: David Smillie

Full Title:Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition and Other Confusions of our Time

I'd like to begin, if I may, with a joke:

An elderly woman goes to hear a talk by a respected geographer. After the talk, she says to him, "This talk about a round earth is all very well, but I know the earth sits on the back of a giant turtle."
"Well," says the geographer, trying to persuade her of her folly, "What does the turtle stand on?"
"Another turtle."
"And that turtle?"
"Another turtle."
"But if you keep going down, eventually you'll reach the bottom, right? So what is that turtle standing on?"
The old lady just smiles and shakes her head, "Oh, you can't fool me like that. It's turtles all the way down."

Reading Why People Believe Weird Things, I felt an intense empathy for the author, Michael Shermer. His life seems to consist, in the main, of going on talk shows as the obligatory "voice of reason" to challenge faith healers, psychics and creationists. It's a thankless job, and perhaps a hopeless one.

Shermer is head of the Skeptics Society, and editor of the magazine Skeptic. Surprisingly, in a book dedicated to Carl Sagan, and with a foreword by Stephen Jay Gould, Shermer himself isn't a scientist. Nor is he a life-long skeptic. In fact, the most engaging part of the book is unquestionably Shermer's admission of his own credulous nature, and some of the irrational things he used to believe and do.

Most of Shermer's book can be summed up as follows: people believe irrational things because they want to. The problem with that is, when you tell them their belief is irrational, that's not what they want to hear. So they aren't always receptive to attempts at persuasion. Hence my pity for Sherman. Frankly, his litany of what people are willing to believe made mewant to buy a shotgun, move out into the woods and live off convenience store robberies. The reason I don't do that is because there are still people like Sherman plugging away on our behalf.

When someone believes the earth is sitting on the back of a turtle, there's precious little you can do to dissuade them. But Sherman's book is aimed at the rest of us. Those who might be unsure about that turtle, and are looking for an intelligent way to judge. And what Sherman provides is a balance for weighing information critically and then making judgments. And make no mistake, this is important stuff. Whether it's creation "science", Holocaust denials, or The Bell Curve, we can all use a healthy dose of skeptical thought. And Shermer's book provides it in spades. It's ironic in a time that may well be known as the Age of Cynicism, we're still so credulous. Michael Shermer's book argues for skepticism in place of cynicism, and does an excellent job of arming those who would do battle with irrationality in all its guises. It's well-written, well-researched and entertaining. I recommend it thoroughly.