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Title: Did Adam and Eve Have Navels?: Debunking Pseudoscience by Martin Gardner ISBN: 0-393-32238-6 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: October, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.95

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Average Customer Rating: 3.77 (13 reviews)

Rating: 5
Summary: Debunking Pseudoscience and bad reviews
Comment: Martin Gardner, the master debunker from the "Skeptical Inquirer", has done it again in this collection of essays that assail some of the most common and erroneous notions of the general public.

The validity of psuedosciences from UFOs and New Age "remedies" to radical ideas of well-known scientists are all challenged (and dismissed) with equal lucidity.

Should be required reading by anyone troubled by its title question: "Did Adam and Eve Have Navels?"

Rating: 3
Summary: Gardner keeps fighting against irrationality
Comment: The book is a collection of articles published previously by Gardner in different magazines. The length of each article and the press-like style makes it an easy reading for anyone. Definitely it is not the Gardner of "The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener" but it constitutes a good illustration of how far we still are from achieving a society that thinks rationaly and scientifically even in the layer of highly educated people.

Gardner recognises that in the variety of topics and outrageus ideas covered in the book not all are of the same category. I would like to see Gardner describe his opinion on which are the criteria that should be met by highly speculative theories in different fields of knowledge that would allow them to be considered scientific speculation and not pseudo-science. How can we provide an open environment that will not kill creativity and at the same time maintain a rigorous scientific approach?

For european readers, either from catholic or lutheran backgrounds, it continues to be surprising to observe how widely spread the creationist mentality is still present in North America.

The references that Gardner makes to many of his readings constitutes a great source of information for further investigation.

If you liked Gardner in "The Whys'" you will not find much value in reading this book. However you may want to give it as a gift in your campaign against irrationality, superstition and manipulation.

Rating: 5
Summary: Martin Gardner is a National Treasure
Comment: At the age of 89, Martin Gardner is still debunking pseudoscience. The essays I found most enjoyable and enlightening are the two on Freudianism and the one on Alan Sokal's Hilarious Hoax. Perpretrated on the scientific ignoramuses of an indecipherable academic journal, physicist Sokal's hoax claimed, among many other absurdities, that "the axiom that two sets are identical if they have the same elements is a product of 'nineteenth-century liberalism.'"

Although it's hard to agree with Gardner on everything--I, most certainly, do not--I find it hard to imagine a thinking person who would not respect him and his work. He seems to have something interesting to say about almost everything. He may be a member of a vanishing breed, but I sincerely hope not.

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