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Science and Pseudoscience: Magnetic Healing, Psychic Phenomena, and Other Heterodoxies. By Henry H. Bauer. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2001. Pp. xiii + 275. Index, references. $29.95 cloth. When one attempts to distinguish science from pseudoscience, evaluative concepts such as "scientific method" and "scientific theory" are often used. But how can one tell what constitutes a scientific method? Henry H. Bayer is attempting to clarify that there is no certain way of distinguishing science from pseudoscience. He shows that throughout history things now considered science have been believed to be pseudoscience and vice versa. He takes under investigation the anomalistics—the most questioned area in pseudoscience. Bauer starts his discussion by posing questions of definition: what is knowledge? what is science? how is agreement reached in science? is the placebo phenomenon scientific? where is the proof? In the second chapter Bauer offers a look at anomalistics and sciences through comparison. It becomes obvious that even while contrasting the social and the natural sciences, there are many differences appearing in methods of evaluation, quality control, evidence, and testimony. Social science seems to lie somewhere in the middle between natural science and anomalistics. For example, in the natural sciences evidence must be objective (anecdote and eyewitnesses do not count), while in anomalistics much of evidence is personal testimony from untrained observers, and in the social sciences, testimony of trained "participant observers" is admissible (31). In the third chapter, exploring the history of particular knowledge debates, the author argues that most often "things are taken personally." Those who actually fight are people, not ideas. There are experts in every area of science, but most anomalists are non-experts, just because there is no defined area of study. Certain laws in science are believed to be totally true and it is heretical to claim something happening beyond those laws, even though "facts can plausibly be used in support of diametrically opposite views" (59). Here Bauer discusses presumptions, arenas of discussion, tactics, and evidence. He shows that knowing more about probability and statistics helps to eliminate blind belief, that there are typical psychological, linguistic, and logical fallacies, and that ignorance often plays a crucial role in anomalies. The next three chapters are dedicated to concrete cases of official anomalies. At first, the author examines pseudosciences within science. N rays, polywater, high-temperature superconductivity—these anomalies appeared in science and were first honored and believed to make some new scientific revolutions. Later they were excluded from scientific fields and their "fathers" dishonored and forgotten. In the next chapter, the subjects standing somewhere in between science and pseudoscience are taken under observation. It is difficult to tell in which area belong, for example, bioelectromagnetics, archeoastronomy, and other borderland subjects in all kinds of areas. "Before there's a reproducible, well-characterized phenomenon, theorizing is really a matter of speculating" (134). The sixth chapter is dedicated to so-called "scientific heresies," including wellness quackery, Velikovskiana, "orgone" by Wilhelm Reich, Loch Ness Monsters, and extrasensory perceptions. The final chapter sums up the discussion about scientific anomalies and shows that anomalies, thought unprovable, still have some value to society. The approach of the work is very "scientific," although this word can be used only with restriction after reading the book. Renata Soukand |
