As the role of science and technology in everyday life grows more pervasive and complex, it has become ever more difficult for a scientifically "illiterate" public to make informed judgements. In this text, Michael Zimmerman takes on a wide range of falsifiers, disinformation specialists, and charlatans to provide readers with the scientific background necessary to evaluate environmental and other current issues that increasingly may be a matter of life and death. Zimmerman begins by showing just what science is - and how the criteria of skepticism and falsifiability distinguish it from pseudo-science and mysticism. He offers analyses of bad science - from lottery "systems" and creationism to graphologists and homeopaths, from food and product safety scams to outright scientific fraud. In each case he shows exactly what to watch for - how the most outrageously false claims often contain a grain of truth, and how valid scientific findings may be distorted or selectively quoted to serve the ends of government, business, or special interest groups.
- ISBN10 0801857740
- ISBN13 9780801857744
- Publish Date 16 September 1997 (first published 1 September 1995)
- Publish Status Out of Stock
- Out of Print 14 January 2002
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Johns Hopkins University Press
- Edition New edition
- Format Paperback
- Pages 220
- Language English