Volume 51, Number 5 · March 25, 2004
One in a Million
By Freeman Dyson
Debunked! ESP, Telekinesis, Other Pseudoscience
by Georges Charpak and Henri Broch, translated from the French by Bart K. Holland
Johns Hopkins University Press, 176 pp., $25.00
Debunked! is short and highly readable. It tells good stories about human foolishness masquerading as science. It offers useful assistance to citizens trying to tell the difference between sense and nonsense. When it was published in France,[*] the title was Devenez sorciers, devenez savants, which means literally, 'Become magicians, become experts,' or more freely translated, 'Learn to do magic and learn to see through it.' The English title misses the point. The book is saying that the best way to avoid being deceived by magic tricks is to learn to do the tricks yourself.
Review, 3930 words
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