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One Way to Immunize Yourself Against Pseudoscience and Other Nonsense

Classic SF was chock-full of dubious ideas; Martin Gardner supplied
the antidote.

https://reactormag.com/one-way-to-immunize-yourself-against-pseudoscience-and-other-nonsense/
--
My reviews can be found at http://jamesdavisnicoll.com/
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On 2/18/2026 10:13 AM, James Nicoll wrote:

One Way to Immunize Yourself Against Pseudoscience and Other Nonsense

Classic SF was chock-full of dubious ideas; Martin Gardner supplied
the antidote.

https://reactormag.com/one-way-to-immunize-yourself-against-pseudoscience-and-other-nonsense/

I also refer you to Carl Sagan's 'Baloney Detection Kit'. https://www.themarginalian.org/2014/01/03/baloney-detection-kit-carl-sagan/

That's from 'The Demon-Haunted World' which also contains this
depressingly predictive passage:

rCLI have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's
time -- when the United States is a service and information economy;
when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very
few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the
issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas
or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our
crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties
in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's
true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...

The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of
substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second
sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition,
but especially a kind of celebration of ignorancerCY

pt

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In article <10n4kuj$mc3$1@panix2.panix.com>,
jdnicoll@panix.com (James Nicoll) wrote:

One Way to Immunize Yourself Against Pseudoscience and Other Nonsense

Classic SF was chock-full of dubious ideas; Martin Gardner supplied
the antidote.

https://reactormag.com/one-way-to-immunize-yourself-against-pseudoscience-and-
other-nonsense/

We speak of "willing suspension of disbelief" when reading science
fiction and fantasy. Unfortunately, IMHO, too many people don't have any disbelief to engage, let alone suspend, in the first place.
--
"We have advanced to new and surprising levels of bafflement."
Imperial Auditor Miles Vorkosigan describes progress in _Komarr_. i-----------------------------------------------------
Robert Woodward robertaw@drizzle.com
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From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.written



On 2/18/26 07:13, James Nicoll wrote:

One Way to Immunize Yourself Against Pseudoscience and Other Nonsense

Classic SF was chock-full of dubious ideas; Martin Gardner supplied
the antidote.

https://reactormag.com/one-way-to-immunize-yourself-against-pseudoscience-and-other-nonsense/

It certainly was full of antiquated nonsense. In one pulp magazine Planet Stories
an interstellar starshiop was powered by an idea floated by Cyrano de
Bergerac as
a way to travel to the Moon. CdB was a artilleryman as well as a deadly dualist so
not sure if he was serious but the story treated it as a given in the
universe of the
story.

bliss
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In article <robertaw-2888D1.10030618022026@news.individual.net>,
Robert Woodward <robertaw@drizzle.com> wrote:

In article <10n4kuj$mc3$1@panix2.panix.com>,
jdnicoll@panix.com (James Nicoll) wrote:

One Way to Immunize Yourself Against Pseudoscience and Other Nonsense

Classic SF was chock-full of dubious ideas; Martin Gardner supplied
the antidote.

https://reactormag.com/one-way-to-immunize-yourself-against-pseudoscience-and-
other-nonsense/

We speak of "willing suspension of disbelief" when reading science
fiction and fantasy. Unfortunately, IMHO, too many people don't have any >disbelief to engage, let alone suspend, in the first place.

Well, I am certainly not going to let belief get in the way of enjoying
a story.
--
columbiaclosings.com
What's not in Columbia anymore..
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From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.written

Ted Nolan <tednolan> <tednolan> wrote:

Robert Woodward <robertaw@drizzle.com> wrote:

jdnicoll@panix.com (James Nicoll) wrote:

One Way to Immunize Yourself Against Pseudoscience and Other Nonsense

Classic SF was chock-full of dubious ideas; Martin Gardner supplied
the antidote.

https://reactormag.com/one-way-to-immunize-yourself-against-pseudoscience-and-
other-nonsense/

We speak of "willing suspension of disbelief" when reading science
fiction and fantasy. Unfortunately, IMHO, too many people don't have any >>disbelief to engage, let alone suspend, in the first place.

Well, I am certainly not going to let belief get in the way of enjoying
a story.

I miss the Weekly World News. I wonder what Batboy is doing today.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."
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From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.written

James Nicoll wrote:

One Way to Immunize Yourself Against Pseudoscience and Other Nonsense

Classic SF was chock-full of dubious ideas; Martin Gardner supplied
the antidote.

https://reactormag.com/one-way-to-immunize-yourself-against-pseudoscience-and-other-nonsense/

Another book in the same vein is John Sladek's "The New Apocrypha",
which came out, IIRC, in the earl 1970s.

William Hyde
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From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.written

On Wed, 18 Feb 2026 10:13:23 -0500 (EST), James Nicoll wrote:

One Way to Immunize Yourself Against Pseudoscience and Other
Nonsense

Learn to ask questions like a scientist.

E.g. astrologers believe the motions of the planets have an influence
on human character and affairs; each planet emits its own particular influences.

Of course, for consistency, they have to ascribe new categories of
influences to more newly-discovered planets, that were unknown to the
ancients. Otherwise their rCLsciencerCY would look even more arbitrary
than it already is ...

The scientific question is: does this work both ways? Can you use
particular aspects of human character or human affairs, not as yet
accounted for by the influence of any known planets, to predict the
existence of new, as-yet-undiscovered ones?

Because science is all about making connections, and the interesting
thing about connections is they connect both ways.

I did try asking this of an astrologer on Bluesky a few weeks ago.
Their response was, shall we say, a little on the passive-aggressive
side ...
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On Wed, 18 Feb 2026 10:13:23 -0500, James Nicoll wrote:

One Way to Immunize Yourself Against Pseudoscience and Other Nonsense

Classic SF was chock-full of dubious ideas; Martin Gardner supplied the antidote.

https://reactormag.com/one-way-to-immunize-yourself-against-

pseudoscience-and-other-nonsense/

There were indeed books akin to Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science.

Martin Gardner himself wrote a sequel, although the sequel was a
collection of his skeptical essays: Science: Good, Bad, and Bogus.

Patrick Moore, the famous British populariser of astronomy, wrote Can You Speak Venusian?, another book in this genre.

John Savard
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On Wed, 18 Feb 2026 21:29:17 +0000, Lawrence DrCOOliveiro wrote:

The scientific question is: does this work both ways? Can you use
particular aspects of human character or human affairs, not as yet
accounted for by the influence of any known planets, to predict the
existence of new, as-yet-undiscovered ones?

Some astrologers have actually tried to do just this. Of course, their
efforts were not met with the kind of success that would be needed for astrology to prove itself valid and worthy of respect.

I refer you to Charles Jayne's book, The Unknown Planets.

John Savard
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On Sun, 22 Feb 2026 03:38:49 +0000, quadi wrote:

On Wed, 18 Feb 2026 21:29:17 +0000, Lawrence DrCOOliveiro wrote:

The scientific question is: does this work both ways? Can you use
particular aspects of human character or human affairs, not as yet
accounted for by the influence of any known planets, to predict the
existence of new, as-yet-undiscovered ones?

Some astrologers have actually tried to do just this. Of course, their efforts were not met with the kind of success that would be needed for astrology to prove itself valid and worthy of respect.

I refer you to Charles Jayne's book, The Unknown Planets.

I hasten to add that because most astrologers are lazy, preferring to
follow the rules set down by Claudius Ptolemaeus without question to doing
any empirical research, most hypothetical planets had their orbital
elements obtained either by a mistaken observation by a real astronomer,
or through a psychic vision.

However, some astrologers have been energetic enough to conduct
statistical studies - usually just to "prove" astrology is valid, but
there have been attempts to detect unknown planets in this way.

These attempts are best recorded in the book Recent Advances in Natal Astrology: A Critical Review 1900-1976 by Geoffrey Dean and Arthur Mather.

John Savard
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