The Borderlands Of Science

john writes "What I'm looking for is a detailed users' manual for a Baloney Detection Kit (as Carl Sagan called it.) I'd hoped to find this in one of Shermer's previous works, Why People Believe Weird Things, and I'd hoped to find it here. In both cases, the first part of the book did exactly this, but somewhere along the way it turned into case studies of debunking, rather than the process of debunking. (That's okay: they're well-written.)" Read on for john's review of The Borderlands of Science. The Borderlands Of Science: Where Sense Meets Nonsense author Michael Shermer pages 360 publisher Oxford University Press rating 7 reviewer john ISBN 0195157982 summary Explaining belief in things that seem silly.

Michael Shermer's background is psychology and ultra-long-distance cycling; he's written a number of books on cycling and analysis of (and refutation of) Holocaust deniers. He's also president (apparently for life) of the American Skeptics society and a reasonably good writer. In this book, Shermer spends a lot of time talking about the scientific method, its strengths and potential flaws -- and, more importantly, its system for dealing with its flaws (which he claims "sets science apart from all other knowledge systems and intellectual disciplines" -- a heady claim I wish he discussed more).

Since this is supposed to be a review of The Borderlands Of Science and not Weird Things, I'll just say that if you like one, you'll like the other as well. In Borderlands, Shermer analyzes beliefs that are defensible, beliefs that could (or were once thought to) be scientifically accurate. Among these are, for instance, ramifications of cloning, confirmation bias in explaining racial differences in sports (about which Malcolm Gladwell has also written), and a whole, whole lot of discussion of Alfred Wallace. Wallace and Charles Darwin were both responsible for the theory of evolution. Wallace is not remembered as widely for a number of reasons, which are explored in frightening detail in roughly three and a half of the 16 chapters of this book. Not coincidentally, Shermer did his doctoral thesis on Wallace. The ratio of stuff-about-Wallace-or-Evolution to everything-else, by chapter, is 3:7; Shermer is pretty focussed on this specific discussion.

The book has four sections: a short introduction (which is quite heavy in skeptical theory, exactly what I wanted) and the main body, discussing borderlands theories, people, and history. In "Theories," Shermer tends to stray a little from 'why people believe weird things' into 'why stupid people believe weird things' (as he did in the book of the same title) and that's fun. He covers a lot of quite current topics (like cloning, Wacky Unified Field Theories, and the importance of Punctured Equilibrium in the evolution of evolutionary theory).

In section two, "People," he discusses the Copernican revolution and its effects, then goes off about Alfred Wallace. Here, he does something weird that needs more discussion. In analyzing Wallace, he constructs a psychological profile, which he derived by having a large number of Wallace experts fill out a survey of the "strongly agree, 9, 8,.. 3, 2, strongly disagree" sort, and then uses the results of these surveys to fill in his discussion of why Wallace became a scientific spiritualist, for instance. It's an interesting technique that he also uses with Steven Jay Gould and Carl Sagan. It is tempting to ask how much confirmation bias exists in a survey of this sort, though. Since I've already let the spoiler out of the bag, Shermer discusses Gould and Sagan, spends some time doing a statistical analysis of Sagan's greatness as a scientist (by comparing published papers by topic with a number of other contemporary, canonically great scientists) and pauses briefly to smack Freud upside the head in a somewhat snarky comparison of Freud and Darwin.

Finally, in section three, "Histories," he does a lovely discussion of the myth of pastoral tranquillity, including a quick summary of four ancient civilizations that probably managed to destroy themselves through environmental stupidity without (as he puts it) any need of Dead White European Males coming in and inflicting devastation from outside. Shermer then analyzes (and debunks) the theory of transcendent genius, the Mozart Myth, as he calls it, and goes back to two more chapters on Wallace and evolution, in a discussion of the Piltdown Man hoax and why that should have (but doesn't seem to have) supported the idea that science can be self-correcting and learn from its mistakes.

I like what Shermer is doing, and he writes well and readably. If I sound a bit impatient, it's because I want him to be writing about the application of critical thinking rather than case studies, and when he starts out writing just what I want to read, then goes off in a different direction, he leaves me standing at the intersection saying "hey, wait, this isn't the bus I wanted." The book could stand to be either edited down into two books (a Wallace analysis, and a case-studies book on how science inspects itself), or edited up with a clearer discussion of the math involved in his statistical analysis of Sagan or his psychological profiling of people.

In the end, I liked this book, I learned a fair bit from it, and I would recommend it to people who want to learn more about both critical thinking and science history.

You can purchase The Borderlands of Science from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Comments

I'd also recommend

[k98sven]

"Flim-flam!" or just about anything by James Randi (the guy who exposed Uri Geller),
he's a magician, not a scientist and has a good sense of humor.

(Also don't miss out on his $1 million dollar prize or his weekly newsletter on what the kranks are up to..)

Re:I'd also recommend

[ShavenYak]

I understand that Catholic faith dictates that priests should be forgiven once they complete the sacrament of confession; however they should be made to answer to civil authorities. Just because they have made peace with their God, church, and faith, doesn't mean that they are free from criminal prosecution.

This is exactly true, and the official teaching of the Church is that the Sacrament of Reconciliation grants forgiveness of sins. It does not grant immunity from the consequences of the sins.

That said, if a priest (or anyone else) confesses a heinous crime within the Sacrament, the priest hearing the confession may not reveal the confession to anyone. They may, however, strongly suggest that the perpetrator turn himself in to the authorities. In fact, I suppose they could make that part of the penance, and the penitent would be obligated to do so in order to receive absolution.

The sinner-priest confidence of Reconciliation was never an issue in the scandal, though. These were all cases where the Church knew of the wrongdoing through other means, and took it upon itself to cover up the incidents.

In the same sense, a preacher should be made to answer to civil authorities if he knowingly commits fraud (as in the case of a great many "born-again," bible-thumping, hellfire & brimstone, tent preachers & TBN).

Agreed. The First Amendment is intended to keep religion out of government, not to provide a legal defense for charlatans. There's no way a reasonable person could interpret "shall make no law regarding an establishment of religion" to mean "shall let anyone who claims himself to be a holy man do whatever he wants".

Punctuated NOT Punctured

[D3]

The theory that sometimes evolution happens in spurts as opposed to slow gradual change is Punctuated Equilibrium, not Punctured Equilibrium. I used to be a Molcular Biologist.

Re:Hmm.. interesting

[crawling_chaos]

Heck.. medical science STILL cant tell you _why_ it works, just that it does.

Urban legend. Try googling "How Aspirin works" The entire line of COX-2 inhibitors came about because someone finally did figure out aspirin works a couple of decades ago. Before that time, there wasn't much need to. Aspirin was on the FDA's GRAS list, so it was not a big candidate for major research dollars.

Additional resources

[artch]

Fred Cohen (of the Deception Toolkit fame, http://all.net) offered the following suggestions in a posting to RISKS-22.44.

"... If you are studying criminal behavior, reading books by crooks is probably a good idea. But if you want to know about cons, far better books are:

"Flim-Flam" by James Randi
"Scam School" by Chuck Whitlock
and "Rip-Off" by Fay Faron

All three are by legitimate researchers who present results taken from scores to hundreds of incidents and present how and why scams work, the
techniques used, the different plots, and so forth. They present many excellent examples of how these sorts of crimes work, how they impact
the victims, the psychology of the criminals, and so forth.

[snip]"

Historical Note

[johndiii]

The prototype for this type of work is Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, by Charles MacKay. On Amazon, here.

Re:Hmm.. interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, I did the Google search. I read the first three articles cited. The third one talked about headaches being caused by "toxic blood" from bad food with aspirin's beneficial effect coming a "teaspoon worth of bleeding in the stomach" - is this the scientific explanation you suggest we believe?

The articles which did talk about the prostaglandin/COX-2 inhibitor relationship STILL didn't explain HOW it works. They gave much more detailed observations about the links in the chain but they did not explain the WHY of it. Moving from "aspirin relieved the headache" to "salicylic acid is a COX-2 enzyme inhibitor and therefore reduces the production of prostaglandin" is a more detailed observation, not an explanation, Nobel prize not withstanding.

Making detailed observations is not the same as producing an explanation. Failure to recognize the difference is a classic oversight in science. Giving names to things you've seen but can't explain gives them names, not explanations.

There are plenty of highly detailed observations on how natural processes work but darn few real explanations. Gravity? Sure, there are lots of observations which allow detailed calculations but nobody has a clue what's really at work. Electricity? Magnetism? Light? Cancer? Nutrition? All the same. Observations, not explanations.

Re:Hmm.. interesting

[pcb]

For that matter, you couldn't tell me why water molecules stick together. Why is a question that quickly leads to apparently infinite recursion.

Water molecule 'stick' together because they are asymmetrical, which cause them to be polar: the positive regions in one water will attract the negatively charged regions in other waters. This leads to the formation of hydrogen bonds. In a hydrogen bond a hydrogen atom is shared by two other atoms. The donor is the atom to which the hydrogen is more tightly linked. The acceptor (having a partial negative charge) is the atom which attracts the hydrogen atom. There is also a more complete quantum chemical explanation, which takes to long to explain. Google it. Stop pulling shit out of your ass.

-PCB

Re:Hmm.. interesting

[MrGrendel]

You've never studied Buddhism, have you? What you describe as Buddhism is a movement called Pure-Land Buddhism and is in no way representitive of Buddhism in general. It's popular in some places but conflicts with classical Buddhist thought. Traditional Buddhists are not concerned with heaven, gods, spirits or anything even close to those concepts. They suspend judgement on whether or not those things exist because even if they did, they are completely irrelavent to what the Buddhist is trying to accomplish (reaching Nirvana). The supernatural is simply not something worth thinking about. There is a well-known suttra on this subject called Questions Which Tend no Toward Eddification. Westerners have a difficult time understanding the concept of Nirvana. They want to associate with heaven, negation of emotion, or some other simple concept. Understanding the concept requires an understanding of the logical dialectic that Buddhist philosophy is based on. Western philosophy and thought is based on an Aristotelian dialectic which is distinctly different than dialectics used in other philosophies. No dialectic can be shown to be more or less valid or correct than another. They all lead to self-contradictions if followed strictly.

What Buddhists are interested in is ending personal suffering, or rather becoming dissociated with the causes of suffering. That is the basis of Buddhist philosophy and is the entire purpose of the religion and system of beliefs. It is internal and scientific (yes, scientific). Many of the concepts and recent findings of modern psychology were known to Buddhists thousands of years ago because they thought about the mind and behavior in a scientific way. Evidence is required for all beliefs. The Dali Lama has even stated that elements of classical Buddhism should be abandoned if science disproves them. Buddhists are not threatened by science, they embrace it. BTW, Buddhists have been teaching that you rot when you die for a very long time. Buddhist reincarnation is not what you think it is.

Please learn something about a philosophy before you disparage it.

BS detection Guide

[Dr_Ish]

There is an excellent, though old, discussion of the hallmarks of cranks in Martin Gardner's book *Fads and Fallicies*, in the opening chapter. Most University libraries should have a copy of this work. The rest of the book describes case studies.

Occam's Razor is NOT A LAW

[irritating environme]

Occam's Razor, which seems to be a favorite of Mr. Sagan's, (I LOVED Contact, the book BTW) hasn't really borne itself out well in my experience. A good example: Newtonian physics was debunked by a far more complex and complicated theory, Einstein's relativity. Simple inverse-square equations (ie gravity) became much more complicated. Or consider quantum mechanics.

In the end, you could just accept the philosophical underpinnings of religion as a much less complicated means to understand the world than science and physics using Occam's Razor, but that would obviously leave you in the dark, and experimental evidence would certainly disagree...

Re:Hmm.. interesting

[Prune]

Nonsense. Your intuitive idea of what 'explanation' means seems to be the problem here. To explain something IS to describe it, in terms/ideas that are detailed and familiar enough to the one being explained to, so that the person can understand it. When you say you understand something that has been explained to you, this simply means that you brain has achieved a sufficient level of integration of that information with past knowledge and experiences, and can relate it to other concepts, etc. It is a quantitative, not qualitative difference. It is possible to understand things in different depths.
Your mind cannot *directly* know the world; everything you know is the subjective description of the world that your senses provide. Consider: the simple reason that people have trouble with getting intuition about the quantum world is because intuition deals with the perceived macroscopic world. It is the 'reality' that your mind knows that is a subjective approximation. On the fundamental level this 'understanding' does not apply, and only mathematical models remain. For example, the confusion that the idea of wave/particle duality (which I'm sure you'll say is not explained, only described) is the failure to realize that some entity, say an electron, is indeed neither a particle nor a wave, but something for which your brain, having been equipped by evolution to deal with a different level of the world, has no way to intuitively understand. In fact there are no particles and no waves, these are all in your head.