The Borderlands of Science: Where Sense Meets Nonsense

by Michael Shermer

In "The Borderlands of Science," Michael Shermer takes us to the place where real science, borderline science - and just plain nonsense - collide. Shermer argues that while science is the best lens through which to view the world, it is often difficult to decipher where valid science leaves off and borderland, or "fuzzy." science begins. To solve this dilemma, he looks at a range of topics that put this boundary line in high relief. For instance, he debunks the many "theories of everything" that try to reduce the complexity of the world to a single principle. He examines the work of Darwin and Freud, explaining why one is among the great scientists in history, while the other has become nothing more than a historical curiosity. And he reveals how scientists themselves can be led astray, as seen in the infamous Piltdown hoax - the set of ancient hominid bones discovered in England that after decades turned out to be nothing more than an enormous forgery.

From SETI and acupuncture to hypnosis and human cloning, this enlightening book will help readers stay grounded in common sense amid the flurry of supposedly scientific theories that inundate us every day.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Skepticism, Philosophy, Audiobook, History, Psychology

360 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Michael Brant Shermer (born September 8, 1954 in Glendale, California) is an American science writer, historian of science, founder of The Skeptics Society, and Editor in Chief of its magazine Skeptic, which is largely devoted to investigating and debunking pseudoscientific and supernatural claims. The Skeptics Society currently has over 55,000 members.

Shermer is also the producer and co-host of the 13-hour Fox Family television series Exploring the Unknown. Since April 2004, he has been a monthly columnist for Scientific American magazine with his Skeptic column. Once a fundamentalist Christian, Shermer now describes himself as an agnostic nontheist and an advocate for humanist philosophy.


more info:
http://us.macmillan.com/author/michae...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_...

Reviews

[Todd Martin · Rating 2 out of 5]

“The Borderlands of Science” examines historic scientific claims that began as radical concepts and how they evolve into either orthodox science or non-science over time as facts and knowledge improved our understanding. These include, Darwin’s theory of natural selection, Copernicus’ heliocentric universe, Freud’s psychological theories and others. Since science evolves over time, the main lesson of the book is that it’s important to be open to new ideas, but not so open-minded that your brains fall out.

While the premise is a good one, instead of choosing historical examples that best illustrate the concept Shermer instead appears to use the topic as a jumping off point to discuss issues of personal interest to himself. Steven J. Gould’s theory of punctuated equilibrium is one such example. Perhaps due to a friendship with Gould, Shermer lends it a significance far out of keeping with it’s importance to the field (at one point comparing it to E.O. Wilson’s theory of sociobiology – which spawned a new field of research). He also acts as an apologist for the mystical beliefs of Alfred Russel Wallace (who arrived at the theory of natural selection independently from Darwin). Wallace took pride in kooky beliefs like phrenology and spiritualism and Shermer equates his attempts to assign natural explanations to these phenomenon with scientific thinking (whereas a genuine scientist would question whether the phenomenon was real to begin with). In addition to being peripheral to the book’s premise, these sections are drawn out and dull and in need of a heavy handed editor.

Another peculiar characteristic of the book is that Shermer occasionally repeats himself … verbatim … with identical phrases reappearing at odd intervals throughout the text. Really, there is no reason to repeat the fact that John Herschel objected to the random elements in natural selection, calling it the “law of the higgledy-piggledy”. One “higgledy-piggledy” per book is more than enough. This is another example of where Shermer would have benefitted from an editor.

[Pspealman · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is, ultimately, frustrating.

The key issue is that Mr. Shermer has a very difficult time in stating his argument, framing his argument, and using the text in either support or clarification of his argument.

In a mismatch of subjects drawn from science and pseudo-science Shermer seems to find a unifying theme that connects it all together. But the theme is never given the light of day, only teased and hinted at in between encapsulations of bad science and worse scientists.

To string together what are, to the reader at least, unconnected events, theories, and beliefs takes explanation. And this, amazingly, is where Shermer seems to pass over in silence.

If you open the text with questions of philosophical import (knowledge, belief, etc), move on to case studies of beliefs that inhabit this "Borderland of Science", and then to introduce Popper, paradigms, and the evolution of our constructed knowledge of the world - then the last thing you want to do is interrupt this train of thought with four chapters of character study on Wallace, Darwin, Sagan, and Freud. To change gears again at the last section so you can recap the history of the characters you just reviewed is so redundant as to be insulting.

Which is a real shame - on feels that the book lacks a central idea and so unmoored drifts on the fancies of a well read mind. Great for a grad thesis bad for a book.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

There were many times when this book was a five star read in my opinion. The reason I dropped it to a four star was because it followed the title of the book at first, but then it seemed to take a bit of a unexpected turn. Turned into more like a history/reference novel later on.

Now I'm not saying that I didn't like the strong history section, because I did, it's just that I didn't expect it from this book. Michael Shermer spends a good deal of time back tracking Darwin & Wallace and some of their stories and background. The section on Wallace was very fascinating to me, while I know a fair amount about Darwin, I am not very educated with Wallace and his role with the evolution theory.

I really like Shermer as an author, but this book just didn't make the 'outstanding' category for me. I would still recommend it because it is a great science book.

[Valerie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I did not actually finish this book. Pseudoscience and beliefs vs. facts figure so prominantly in the news that I could not bring myself to read a book about debunking science.

For the record: The scientific method is a valid critical thinking tool for evaluating statements and claims, and should be used in all possible situations. Which is the thesis of the book, I just didn't feel like reading a book that justified something that does not need justification.

Putting my soapbox away now.

[Gendou · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a collection of essays on topics near the fringe of science. In the beginning of the book, Shermer promised to talk about inflation, but never got around to it, which I found strange. The book was very even-handed in confronting issues of pseudoscience, non-science, and even fraud. But the lack of passion made it a bit boring. I was displeased with the segment on Carl Sagan, because I feel like Shermer tried to underplay the legitimacy of SETI as a scientific undertaking, and also got mired down in discussing Sagan's personal challenges.

A strange theme throughout the book is a theory that birth order and family dynamics shape people's personality, and thereby their aptitude in science. No evidence was presented for this being a legitimate way to predict personality outcomes, and it seemed like it should be the subject of one of the chapters, rather than a used methodology!

[Erik Graff · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'd expected something like Martin Gardner's books on fringe beliefs, Shermer referencing him and being a main player with the Skeptic magazine. I was a bit surprised to find instead a number of what appear to be essays, several on Darwin and Wallace, the latter having been a subject of previous research; one on Piltdown Man; another on Carl Sagan; yet another on 'the Copernican revolution' with two themes repeated often, one on the distinction between science and pseudo-sciences (he draws finer distinctions), another on the nature of innovative 'genius'. Some was thought provoking, a great deal was a rehash of familiar material.

I wonder how Shermer is handling the changed position of the US government as regards UFOs? Here, without much discussion, he simply pooh-poohs the matter as well as psychoanalysis, parapsychology, etc.

[Liquidlasagna · Rating 1 out of 5]

Amazone

Shermer Ruins the Book by Talking Too Much


I expected more of Shermer in this outing, given his excellent work in Why People Believe Weird Things. But then, in that book, Shermer took on and successfully skewered the easy targets, such as UFO nuts, believers in astrology and other New Age fantasies, revisionist Holocaust deniers and whatnot.

However, his latest effort basically amounts to little more than a barely intelligible rant than thoughtful scholarship.

Shermer begins with a bold objective, trying to lay down demarcation lines between generally accepted science (as is generally accepted by scientists themselves), iffy propositions which he calls borderlands science, and a large group of topics that he labels non-science and pseudo science.

I must say without hesitation that he fails miserably in his objective, partly due to his poor choice of content, but mostly because of his even poorer writing style.

Although the book starts out well, the writing steadily devolves, and by the fifth chapter, the reader must set his or her shoulders and hunker down for some very painful reading.

Like most PhD holders, Shermer has acquired an impressive amount of scholarly trivia over the course of his education, yet somehow did not the master the mechanics of good writing.

This actually is not hard to believe, as too many people finishing PhD programs in engineering, science and to the dishonor of all liberal arts traditions, English and history programs can not string together a few decent words of prose. Honestly, many of these programs think that they can make up for a lack of erudite soul with an overdose of abstract quantitation and esoteric facts.

And boy oh boy does this approach show in Mr. Shermer's stilted and constipated text.

Moreover, as someone who regards himself as a champion of the hypothesis test and the scientific method, he really should know when to appropriately use such methods, and when not to use them.

In reading his text, I got the feeling that in his graduate training he only attended the lectures in his Statistical Methods for the Social Sciences having to do with hypothesis testing, and studiously skipped all the other lectures, particularly those having to do with measurement, validity, operational definition and level of trust in results.

I say this because in his chapter on Psuedoscience and Race, he utterly fails to lay down an operational definition, and merely assumes that everyone shares the same common definition of race and knows what he is referring to.

He also fails to consider the history of race and the common knowledge that race is a social construct, not a biological phenomenon. Though he provides a context (U.S. race relations), he does not provide an operational definition. He also seems unaware of considerable population genetic and molecular genetic evidence which would make it impossible for most in America to claim, at least from a genetic standpoint, to be truly white or truly black.

Thus, from this one would have to assume, especially when reading Mr. Shermer's screed, that he defines race based on physical appearance pretty much like everybody else. However, scientists would take a different point of view, much as many a bigoted proponent of eugenics have on many occasions.

A second bone of contention that I have with Mr. Shermer's overly scientific and inappropriately quantitative approach to everything is his use in Part II Borderlands People, of quantitative methods to evaluate purely subjective things.

Some variables we measure are concrete and have meaning that is fixed, such as weight, temperature and volume, athough we can use metric or English units to evaluate them.

However, as I recall from one statistics text (the actual text is Richard M. Jaeger's Statistics A Spectator Sport), things like intelligence or neuroticism are totally subjective because their meaning and their measurement can change depending on who is evaluating and measuring them.

For such things, there can be no common agreement as to definition or even measurement.

Which I believe Shermer should have learned, thus invalidating the invocation of Sulloway's work in his exposition.

A good educational regimen in statistics (which I believe should begin with Moore's Statistics: Concepts and Controversies) would emphasize the importance of looking behind the numbers, using the appropriate measurement methods, and taking into account information other than that in the test when drawing conclusions. None of this was done within this text.

Still, I did learn a few things, being quite surprised to learn that there was actually a black champion cyclist, and Mr. Shermer did make a number of correct points. I also give him credit for (grudgingly) admitting, in his last chapter, that scientists are people too, and are motivated by the same concerns and issues like everyone else.

Yet, this does not make up for the overall bad writing and worse scholarship.
I expect, no, I insist on better from a self-respecting skeptic.

---

A World of Glasshouses

I'm a scientist, an astronomer specifically, and I'm not really the target audience here I suspect (even though in the line of work I have had to respond to a number of Borderlands claims).

Objectively this is a 3-star book, but the sleight-of-hand marketing biases me against it.

This is a semi-scholarly work written by a science historian.

Most of the essays revolve around Darwin, Wallace, and evolution. With these essays, and a handful of others, Shermer takes a historical approach to the borderlands of science to look at the process of how scientific theories develop to acceptance.

He looks at very few cases of the current borderlands, and of those he does he makes generally weak arguments (and not scientific ones) with correspondingly weak conclusions.

An early chapter on remote viewing is the exception.

The wordcount here is limited, but I wanted to point out some specific problem points.

In the chapter asking if Sagan was "a great scientist," one questioning his rejection from the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), Shermer compares his publications to "the creme de le creme" of scientists: Gould, E. O. Wilson, Jared Diamond, and Mayr.

The comparisons involve number of honorary degrees, popular articles, advisory groups, books, etc. There is NEVER a comparison of his scientific publication rate or citation rate versus NAS ASTRONOMERS, a primary criterion for the NAS membership who understands that publication practices vary from field to field.

Shermer sets up a straw man and knocks it down, the same thing he accuses pseudoscientists of doing.

He never comes close to making an argument about whether or not Sagan was a good scientist, merely that he was a well-known one who was highly regarded for his popularization.

I liked the idea of the chapter on the Amadeus Myth, which is a topic worthy of comment, but not the execution. We like to make myths of our heroes.

But here is another straw man, where Shermer's "genius" is equated to practicing math tricks and never very well characterized. Prodigies are not discussed.

Cosmology is noted as suffering from a bias against historical science.

This is far from true, I assure you.

Origins programs in astronomy get funding far ABOVE their non-historical competitors.

A whole chapter is spent discussing whether or not punctuated equilibrium represents a paradigm shift of evolution. This is the semantic playing field of a science historian, and of little interest to actual scientists.

Shermer indeed would seem to have such a bias against what he calls nonscience topics that he gives them almost no mention.

While he lumps, for instance, Bigfoot in with some poor company, he later quotes anthropologist Krantz in another chapter on another subject; Krantz is one of a number of credible scientists who take the topic seriously. The same cannot be said for his other "nonscience" topics, yet all get rated equally at 0.1 with no discussion.

Indeed, despite Shermer's interesting discussion about a spectrum of "science," his spectrum seems to correspond to his idea of the ideas' correctness, NOT their scientific validity.

What is validity (to play Shermer's word games)? All topics can be validly studied using the tools of science.

Some are routinely, and some are not. He should have used a different term. I found myself losing trust in Shermer.

When Shermer finds that SETI pioneers are primarily first-born rather than later siblings as in most other scientific revolutions, he finds a way to argue it away in terms of their religion.

I did not see this sort of multiple parameter analysis in the comparison sample, so should I believe it?

Or did he just invoke the same kind of wishful thinking he criticizes in others?

I had many more problem points that kept my "doubt-o-meter" ringing at regular intervals.

What my criticisms mostly boil down to is that Shermer writes and acts as a science historian much better than he does as a scientist.

He gives hints all too often that he doesn't think like a scientist, and this made me distrustful while reading.

This is a shame. I used to subscribe to the Skeptical Inquirer, but let that lapse since that magazine too often took lazy pot shots at the same easy targets again and again.

Shermer, and Shermer's magazine the Skeptic, for the most part shoot at more interesting targets, but I'm afraid not as well as they should.

Michael Brotherton

---

A so-so attempt at drawing the lines
4/10

Michael Shermer is a one-man dynamo of what might be called the Radical Skepticism movement.

He has a talk show, an organization, a magazine and writes books, all dedicated to separating the wheat from the chaff in human belief. Or so he claims.

This book, like his magazine and his show, shows Shermer at his best (witty, reasonably well read and clever) and at his worst (narrow minded, inflexible and ignorant of philosophical stances beyond his own). Like the Positivists of the early part of the last century, Shermer believes he has an infallible metric that enables him to distinguish meaning from meninglessness, and he applies it ruthlessly.

He's at his best when picking the easy targets, like research into ESP, remote viewing and so forth. But he uses these examples as a springboard to justify more questionable criticisms of areas like SETI, which, while still very much in the speculative column, aren't by any reasonable researcher's definition bad science.

Unfortunately Shermer is unwilling or unable to admit there are vast gaps in his knowledge and that not all truths are easily sorted into one bin or another.

He seems unable to understand that sicentific truth is a product of the paradigm of a time.

Thus (for example) he rejects Freud completely, without understanding how Freud's theories were a product of his era, or how they helped change the way in which we talk about the mind. (After all, we know now that Newton's laws are only simplified approximations of the actual processes, but we don't decry him as [untruthful]!) Shermer lumps together the purely fantastic with the merely questionable or speculative; all things either pass Shermer's standard or they don't, period.

Skepticism is an important trait of the good researcher, but for Shermer it's a religion in itself, perhaps because his ego is so tied up in what he sees and the absolute truth of his assertions.

As a result, what begins as an interesting review of well-known [untruths] and delusions ends up being merely a demonstration of the limits of Shermer's knowledge.

Michael

[Kenghis Khan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Here's the problem with this book. The book bills itself as an analysis of pseudo-science. Indeed, it starts off as an intriguing critique of pseudo-science and scientific cranks and the like. This is all entertaining enough. And the book has some strong sections on, for example, our obsession with race in sports or the "Amadeus" myth.

But it doesn't keep this momentum. Rather, the book is quite schizophrenic, occasionally descending into long, tedious passages on the history of science. For example, the author's description of why Copernicus was so revolutionary was just circuitous. And it was not clear what the author's meanderings on "When did Wallace discover natural selection?" does to analyze the borderlands of science. Although Wallace's spiritualism makes for a curious read, and the psychological profiles and self-aggrandizements of geniuses like Freud and Sagan are interesting, they seem rather out of place in the book.

Indeed, despite claiming to be an analysis of pseudo-science, the book is too bogged down by the author trying to "show off" all that he knows about the history of science.

[John Michael Strubhart · Rating 5 out of 5]

I fucking love science! but science is not perfect. Sure, science is the best method we have for determining whether a claim about something in the universe conforms with objective reality or not, but how does one determine if an investigation is scientific? Astrophysics is science - no question, but are SETI programs? How about string theory? Sure, evolution is scientific, but is evolutionary psychology? How does science get the deed done? What makes a scientist? What makes a scientist prone to doing what is clearly science or prone to delving into pseudoscience? Can scientists be gullible? (Spoiler - yes) When science steps in the dogpile, who cleans it up - scientists or nonscientists? Shermer did his graduate work in the history of science, so he is well informed to tackle the subject. This book is excellently researched, meticulously sourced and a joy to read. I learned a lot! So can you! But only if you read it.

[Daphne · Rating 2 out of 5]

Putting this one down for right now. I skimmed the last part because I started getting bored. I've really enjoyed Shermer's other work, but this one isn't doing it for me. I'll pick it back up at a later date to see if the break in the relationship was him or me.

[Steven · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some interesting digressions but mostly repetitive and obvious.

[Tom Schulte · Rating 4 out of 5]

I initially found this a bit off-putting. The first section with an overview of the sadly deluded made me feel like a chuckling gawker, as I felt in reading No One May Ever Have the Same Knowledge Again: Letters to Mt. Wilson Observatory, 1915 which is quoted here. However, the last half more than made up for it. There were covered three topics really work remembering and considering:

1: Thomas S. Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions gave us the valuable concept of the paradigm shift. However, the shifting is often more complicated than that implies. There are often multiple paradigms held, emerging, and submerging.

2: Being open and receptive to new ideas -- more difficult with advancing age -- is critical to maintaining intellectual growth

3: The Piltdown Man paleo-anthropological hoax is a fascinating example of the failure and success of the institutionalized scientific method.

[Luis Munoz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shermer sabe como enganchar a su público: lo hace en sus charlas TED, en su columna mensual de Scientific American y sobre todo en su libro anterior, Porqué Creemos En Cosas Raras. Sin embargo, en Las Fronteras de la Ciencia aparece un Michael Shermer antojadizo, liviano, y ligeramente aburrido. Una introducción de 50 páginas donde se cuenta una historia anecdótica que se pudo haber resumido en tres párrafos ya adelanta lo que puede pasar. Creo que el problema es el título, pues Las Fronteras es un libro de ciencia, de filosofía de la ciencia y de cómo los científicos son seres humanos con creencias y pasiones. Hay capítulos que son fascinantes, como los relacionados a Alfred Wallace (el co-descubridor de la Teoría de la Evolución junto a Darwin), los deportes y la raza y sobre todo el capítulo del Hueso de Piltdown. Sin embargo, intenta que todo converja a sustentar la teoría de que las ideas científicas pueden parecer pseudociencia o mera charlatanería y trata de identificar, utilizando un análisis de datos, el perfil del científico herético que no se pierde en el camino. Difícil tarea, pero que uno siente que entorpece y no logra su cometido.
Se espera una historia de las ideas y como estas se han ido cimentando en la conciencia pública, dejando de lado su naturaleza fantástica, pero el libro es una colección de ideas interesantes en si misma, pero que son llevados al análisis según ciertos parámetros de datos sobre los perfiles de las personas... y todo parece tornarse irrelevante.
Es un libro recomendable, sobre todo si uno no se toma en serio el título.

[Francisco Javier · Rating 2 out of 5]

Un libro con un comienzo fenomenal en la que establece de manera concreta y clara cómo debe ser un saber obtenido de forma correcta por el método científico. Además de hacer una seria reflexión, el autor salpica la explicación con amenos y divertidos ejemplos. Sin embargo, en la segunda parte el libro deriva por otros derroteros que casi parecen cogidos con pinzas en su relación con la primera parte. Si bien en esta se establece qué es verdaderamente ciencia y se reflexiona sobre las disciplinas que están en su frontera por ser pseudociencias que no aplican el método científico o por ser teorías novedosas que todavía necesitan el respaldo de pruebas obtenidas con ese método, en este segunda parte se hablarle impacto de nuevas teorías sobre todo del evolucionismo y la figura de Wallace (que parece la verdadera intención del autor) dejando el interesante inicio sin desarrollar y como un simple prefacio.

[Desollado · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was a little suspicious, since I didn't liked "Why people believe in weird things" too much. It seemed like a very good subject very poorly treated. In this case this book is more well written and with many more substance to hold its points. It's a particular finesse that the racial subjects are treated using the subject of sports to relief the reader of the tension of biased intelligence debates. I would have liked to read more on borderline theories though, since it focuses too many chapters in evolution related subjects.

[DW Rowlands · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not sure when I acquired my copy of this book -- likely when I was in high school -- but it remained on my shelf for quite a long time before I finally got around to reading it, quite possibly two decades. I suppose it would've felt less outdated if I'd read it when I acquired it, but reading it now, it just felt dated and...uninteresting? I struggle to come up with a coherent summary of the point of the book, at least one that makes it seem relevant now. But it's certainly the sort of thing I'd've wanted to read back when I acquired it.

[Pap Lőrinc · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good(ish) history of evolution (Darwin and Wallace), the scientific method (how to be flexible enough to accept new ideas, but skeptical enough to filter out bs), the genius myth (the difference is rather quantitative, not qualitative).

It's not very well written (it's mostly history, with lots of uninteresting details), changes styles in every chapter, it's like a collection of writings on various, unrelated subjects. Interesting read, though.

[Fernando · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story about Alfred Wallace captivated me, he was along Charles Darwin the first who postulated The theory of evolution. But later in his life he started to question Evolution of humans due to an inexplicable larger brain that was beyond survival needs. In some way he started to argue that it was an unknown spiritual-force "consciousness" that helped sapiens up to develop.

[Samuel R. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really did like this book... Only reason I gave it the review I did was because while it was interesting, I felt the author got lost a few times in the process of going into some of the minutia.

Overall it is an enjoyable read.

[Raymond van Es · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice book on science from a skeptical perspective. My only problem is that there are a lot of anecdotes and not enough philosophy of escience in this book.

[Valderes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Um livro que todo cientista deveria ler.

[Günay Güner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kitap çok iyi, ama Zeynep Reyhan Koç çok kötü bir çeviri yapmış.

[Kirsten Tautfest · Rating 2 out of 5]

I expected better from Shermer, especially when he started trying to psychoanalyze historic figures.

[Natalie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kinda crowded with facts but generally Interesting. It's good to have a refresher on scientists' contributions.

[Sariene Jones · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm a fan of Michael Shermer, and I hate to rate a book of his so poorly, but I see no way around it, as this book is badly put together. I could barely keep my attention from wandering away through large parts of it.

It started off pretty strong, but quickly strayed off topic. Most of the middle of the book felt disorganized, self-indulgent, and only tangentially related to the supposed subject matter. It ended up a lot heavier on history and lighter on analysis than I expected from the title, and a lot of the topics he included have been covered a lot better elsewhere. He didn't really bring anything new to the discussion.

I found myself wondering midway through the book if I'd somehow switched over to reading a Wallace biography, since in this book Shermer seems obsessed with putting a pretty face on some of the nonsense he embraced, and wasted hours of my time trying in vain to do so. It felt like he was sidestepping the premise of the book in order to make apologies for someone he personally admires.

He also spends an inordinate amount of time analyzing historical figures in terms of birth-order psychology. However, despite the book ostensibly being about how to tell the difference between science and pseudoscience, I didn't feel like he adequately established the scientific validity of that psychological theory before running with it for a very boring section of the book.

There's also the issue of repetitiveness. Several times I had to pause and shake off deja vu, since striking and identical sentences showed up more than once throughout the book.

Now it's not that the book didn't have really good sections: it did. The section on the "beautiful people" myth especially comes to mind. In fact, I think it would have been better if that section had been removed and expanded into its own book: It would have been a more interesting read.

I think most of the problems with this book would probably have been solved with a good editor, someone to hand the manuscript back to Shermer and tell him "no, try again." But for whatever reason, that didn't happen, and what we're left with is disappointing. This is far from Shermer's best book, and nowhere near the best work I've read on the subject matter.

[Fernando del Alamo · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Las fronteras de la ciencia, Entre la ortodoxia y la herejía" es el título en castellano. Es un libro más de tipo histórico que no definidor de lo que es ciencia y lo que no. Por tanto, creo que el título es un 60% o 70% de lo que es el libro, pero no más.

La parte histórica de la que hablo es bastante buena y bien documentada, sobre todo, la parte en la que se extiende hablando mucho del pensamiento de Alfred Russell Wallace. El contemporáneo de Darwin era un auténtico hereje en lo que a ciencia se refiere, pero su herejía era totalmente "científica", con ansias de saber.

No obstante, decir "me ha encantado" no lo voy a hacer, pero sí recomendar como un buen libro de divulgación de ciencia.

[Son Tung · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first four chapters was a promising hope for a thrilling ride in borderland of science: science - pseudo-science - non science. Shermer gave an overview on philosophy, history of science and some specific cases where sense met non-sense. Hypnosis is a good example, we just don't know how this spooky process goes.

Later on, it was a turn-off. Lengthy, superfluous description followed by explaining various characters of many great scientists and historical anecdotes (Stephen Jay Gould and his punctuated equilibrium vs Darwinnians; Wallace, Darwin came up with Evolution Theory indepently; discussion of geniuses ...)

Not fit for learn new radical or insightful ideas. Still, i will read his other books since this is obviously not his best work.

[Alissa Thorne · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was a big disappointment. From the title and the introduction, I got the impression that this book would make a skeptical analysis of phenomena for which the scientific evidence is inconclusive. Instead, it explored the politics, philosophies, personalities, and ideologies involved in various conflicting perspectives. Some of the topics were interesting--the chapters on birth order and heretical personality types; others were utterly tedious--I really could care less about the drama and politics in the scientific community. Most of all though, it seemed a platform for Shermer to rant about things that he disagrees with. It was quite boorish and tiresome.

[Leonardo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wordy, uneven, repetitive; presumptuous at times. Even though the author is a professional editor, this book would hugely benefit from more professional editing. And the title is misleading: the "borderlands of science" theme seems only an excuse for harangues on mostly irrelevant biographical details and rants. There are some insights and interesting stories thinly spread, though, which made this not a total waste of time.

[Frederick · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a source of valuable and interesting information. It is also a piece of propaganda for atheistic determinism in the guise of the 'noble pursuit' of science. Anyone who has seen Michael Shermer in debate knows he has one or two notes which he plays loud and long. Still, it does contain some useful science, philosophy of science, and history so it might be worth it to you to hold your nose and dive in when you have the time.