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Pseudoscience
An Amusing History of Crackpot Ideas and Why We Love Them
Brief Description
A rollicking visual and narrative history of popular ideas, phenomena, and widely held beliefs disproven by science. The Bermuda Triangle. Personality tests. Ghost hunting. Crop circles. Mayan Doomsday. What do all these have in common? None can quite live up to the rigour of actual facts...
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Pseudoscience
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A rollicking visual and narrative history of popular ideas, phenomena, and widely held beliefs disproved by science.
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Description
A rollicking visual and narrative history of popular ideas, phenomena, and widely held beliefs disproven by science.
The Bermuda Triangle. Personality tests. Ghost hunting. Crop circles. Mayan Doomsday. What do all these have in common? None can quite live up to the rigour of actual facts or science, and yet they all attract passionate supporters anyway.
Divided into broad sections covering the easily disproved, the wildly speculative, wishful thinking, and of course, hucksterism, Pseudoscience is a romp through much more than bad science. It's a light-hearted look into why we insist on believing in things such as Big Foot, astrology, and the existence of aliens. Did you know, for example, that you can tell a person's future by touching their butt? Rumpology. It's a thing, but not really. Or that Stanley Kubrick made a fake moon landing film for the US government? Except he didn't. Or that spontaneous human combustion is real? It ain't, but it can be explained scientifically.
From the authors of Quackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything, Pseudoscience is a wild mix of history, pop culture, and good old-fashioned science—one that not only entertains but also sheds a little light on why we all love to believe in a few things we know aren't true.
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9781523524259
Publisher: Workman Publishing
Format: Hardback
Date Published: 13 March 2025
Country: United States
Imprint: Workman Adult
Audience: General / adult, Tertiary education, Professional and scholarly
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 26.0mm
Width: 158.0mm
Height: 206.0mm
Weight: 660g
Pages: 320
About the Author
Lydia Kang, MD, is a practicing internal medicine physician and author of young adult fiction and adult fiction. Her YA novels include Control, Catalyst, and the upcoming The November Girl. Her adult fiction debut is entitled A Beautiful Poison. Her nonfiction has been published in JAMA, the Annals of Internal Medicine, and the Journal of General Internal Medicine.
This author is represented by the Hachette Speakers Bureau.Nate Pedersen is a librarian, historian, and freelance journalist with over 400 publications in print and online, including in the Guardian, the Believer, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Art of Manliness.Also by Lydia Kang
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