To be honest, I don't think this book lived up to its title. "Vague writings on weird things people believe", or "Why these people are wrong" was the more common theme. Some interesting content, but very little of what I expected - ie social theory re: how 'weird things' catch on. There are three chapters entirely devoted to debunking weird things, which, again, is interesting, but not what I was expecting. Some fascinating footnotes, though. ( )

Shermer helps me understand why so many people believe so many weird things. ( )

Brings up important ideas about epistemology, does a good job of describing methodologies that can tackle pseudoscience in a persuasive fashion. It does not give me a lot of optimism about the ordinary person's ability to follow such a program. We rely on other experts to evaluate pseudoscience. When our experts and leaders are motivate to reason to support pseudoscience, we are stuck again with lots of people being willing to believe weird things.

Technically, the book shows its history of being a bunch of long magazine articles, it has below average cohesion, some chapters were much stronger than others, some had odd overlap.

One flaw I found in this book and the entire genre is that they tackle ideas that are way out there- like a cat pushing small objects off the edge of a table. It is very satisfying, but what is amazing is that people believe bunk, not that it can be debunked to a more objective observer, sometimes easily. So people at the end of the book can feel good about themselves because they don't believe in aliens or fictional alternative histories, yet have unexamined beliefs about more mundane things like their seeming centrist political opinions and we cling to these ideas with the ferocity of a ufologists belief in UFOs. ( )

Started to reread this. But the author asserts rather than proves, especially annoying in a book that purports to teach that one needs reliable proof to believe something. On page 27 one finds the following sentence. "Shouldn't we know by now that the laws of science prove that ghosts cannot exist?" I followed up by reading every other reference to ghosts in the index. On 28-29 the author compares ghosts to mental abstractions such as the law of gravity. I didn't find this especially convincing since it only addressed the false proposition that the law of gravity didn't exist before Newton named it. Page 33 continues this false dichotomy with an assertion that ghosts have never been confirmed to any extent. But to make this statement one should explain what would constitute confirmation. For example, if I am trying to prove that Vitamin D is essential to mammalian life, I need to assert something like "the rate of illness in the experimental group will be significantly higher than that in the control group." Or, if I am trying to establish that an endangered species has made a comeback, I could specify what evidence: den sites, evidence of feeding, excrement, actual sightings or photographs from trail cameras, dead specimens in the excrement or stomach contents of prey animals, I would expect to find. On page 55 the author notes that mundane explanations for odd noises should be ruled out before concluding that the noises are evidence of ghosts. Well, I don't know of any reputable paranormal investigator who doesn't do just that. Is there a highway or train track nearby that would explain noises or lights? is there an ill-fitting window to explain cold spots? is there a likelihood of a person faking evidence? But what, pray tell, is the scientific law that rules out the existence of unknown types of energy or substances? If we grant that radio waves existed before we developed radios what makes it _impossible_ for ghosts to exist in the absence of an ectoplasmeter? I suppose there may be such a law, but the author expects us to take it on faith. Ironic.

This book includes a wide-ranging series of topics that touch on individuals’ and groups’ unusual beliefs. The summaries address issues such as philosophy of science, social-cognitive psychology, and popular psychology, but with several hard-to-classify outliers. My interest in the topics varied, and I could seldom read more than a few pages at a time before turning to something else. ( )