Resource to Help You Combat Climate Science Denial
Tom Kuntzleman | Sat, 06/10/2017 - 06:29
A fantastic resource to help you learn more about how to teach climate change and global warming is described.
Pseudoscience
Is Gwyneth Paltrow Wrong About Everything?, by Timothy Caulfield
Hal Harris | Thu, 07/07/2016 - 13:31
How the famous sell us elixirs of health, beauty, and happiness.
The Doomsday Scam by C. J. Chivers
Hal Harris | Tue, 11/24/2015 - 16:03
For decades, aspiring bomb makers - including ISIS - have desperately tried to get their hands on a lethal substance called red mercury. There's a reason they never have.
"The Unpersuadables" by Will Storr
Hal Harris | Fri, 07/11/2014 - 10:53
Journalist Will Storr provides sixteen vignettes about people who hold decidedly minority views about scientific and historical topics. Rather than just saying, "This is what these people believe, and here is why they are wrong", Storr allows each of them to tell their own story, and lets their words speak largely for themselves.
Climate Change Denial in the Classroom
Hal Harris | Sat, 05/04/2013 - 23:40
Universities should be and are expected to be sources of truthful and unbiased information about controversial subjects, especially in the sciences. Unfortunately, that is not always the case.
Trick Or Treatment: The Undeniable Facts About Alternative Medicine
Hal Harris | Tue, 11/02/2010 - 02:00
"Trick or Treatment" is a critical (very critical) examination of several varieties of alternative medicine. I was surprised to see Simon Singh as lead coauthor of a book about health because I know him as author of a book about math, "Fermat's Enigma", that I recommended in December of 1999. I thought it was the best science/math book of that year.
Bad Science: Quacks, Hacks, and Big Pharma Flacks
Hal Harris | Mon, 11/01/2010 - 01:00
I am a fan of Ben Goldacre's "Bad Science" column in The Guardian. Several hundred of his articles are available free online at http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/series/badscience. His pieces are always well-researched and well-reasoned, and he writes with flair and wit. This slightly edited collection of his essays has recently been released in paperback in the US, after having been on the market in the UK since 2008.
On Fact and Fraud: Cautionary Tales from the Front Lines of Science
Hal Harris | Sat, 05/01/2010 - 01:00
David Goodstein has enjoyed a long and productive career at the California Institute of Technology as a professor of physics and as Vice Provost. He brings to this small book on scientific ethics the perspective of an administrator of scientific research, a viewpoint that I have not seen expressed in any other place.
Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives
Hal Harris | Sun, 11/01/2009 - 01:00
One part (but only one part) of the decline in science in the US is the growing minority of citizens who semiautomatically adopt positions antagonistic to those of the scientific consensus, regardless of the issue. The "scientific community" is not a monolith, and skepticism and dissent are essential to the process of science.
Plastic Fantastic: How the Biggest Fraud in Physics Shook the Scientific World
Hal Harris | Mon, 06/01/2009 - 01:00
Jan Hendrik Schön published some of the most exciting and ground-breaking physics of the past decade. He published it in the most prestigious specialty journals such as Physical Review Letters, Nature and Science. He won several important prizes and was being nominated for more of them when a problem came to light. The problem was that Schön had no data to substantiate his discoveries .