The Experts Speak : The Definitive Compendium of Authoritative Misinformation by Christopher Cerf , Victor S. Navasky Search Amazon for other books by or about Christopher Cerf. Rating: Reviewed by: David Smillie

I really enjoy books like The Experts Speak. Essentially it's a smart-ass compendium of some of the dumbest predictions, affirmations or statemtents of fact made by "experts".

And as we live in what could be termed the "Age of Experts" (or its television equivalent, the "Age of Pundits"), this book is a healthy reminder of why it's not always such a great idea to listen to the experts.But hey, don't take my word for it ... I'm hardly an expert, after all.Instead, why not consider the following:

"Radio has no future." --Lord Kelvin, 1897

"Television won't matter in your lifetime or mine." --Rex Lambert, editorial in The Listener, 1936

"The energy produced by the atom is a very poor kind of thing. Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformation of these atoms is talking moonshine." --Ernest Rutherford, September, 1933

"Nuclear powered vacuum cleaners will probably be a reality within 10years." --Alex Lewyt (vacuum-cleaner manufacturer), 1955

While it's easy (some would say mean-spirited) to take people to task with the undoubted advantage of hindsight, I still think this book is more than just entertaining. Particularly for those of us interested in science. Next time you read a story about some scientific advance, or hear some expert confidently predict we've got all the answers to a given problem, it wouldn't hurt to remember this editorial from the New York Times in 1923, reacting to the absurd suggestion by Robert Goddard that rockets could be used for flight through space:

"That Professor Goddard with his "chair" at Clark College and the countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution does not know the relation of action and reaction, and the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react - to say that would be absurd. Of course he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools."

So if I were you, I'd keep this book handy. It's a subersive history, filled with the times we've been wrong, and some of the biggest bone-head comments made by people who should have known better. But what makes us think we're any smarter?