快猫短视频

Science or Pseudoscience: Magnetic healing, psychic phenomena, and other
heterodoxies by Henry Bauer, University of Illinois Press, $29.95, ISBN
0252026012

HENRY BAUER prefers the term 鈥渁nomalistics鈥� to pseudoscience. That鈥檚 his case
in a nutshell. Pseudoscience implies a rushed judgement. He makes the point by
asking a few questions. For example, how does a placebo work? He maintains that
the answer from science is no better than that from alternative medicine. In
other words, neither can answer satisfactorily. We do not understand the placebo
effect.

But in Science or Pseudoscience, he isn鈥檛 out to disparage
science鈥攈e is, after all, a professor emeritus of chemistry鈥攁nd is
only anxious for some respect to be given to efforts to explain anomalies that
are outside the boundaries of accepted science. In the case of subjects such as
cryptozoology, parapsychology and ufology, this is possibly more than many
people are prepared to allow. For scientific breakthroughs to be accepted, they
inevitably have to be tested against existing knowledge. Yet Nobel prizes have
been won for discoveries made years earlier that were first greeted with
scepticism, if not outrage.

Science or Pseudoscience ranges over the whole territory of
anomalistics, from the Bermuda Triangle to cold fusion, perhaps making
uncomfortable reading in places. While he is not taken in by fraudsters, Bauer
acknowledges that a lot of activity in beyond-the-fringe areas is genuinely
concerned with finding the truth. He finds the lack of restraint in these
investigations attractive, compared with those of conventional science, and
conducive to originality.