Hoaxes, Myths, and Manias: Why We Need Critical Thinking

By Stefan Isaksson

Hoaxes, Myths, and Manias: Why We Need Critical Thinking
Robert E. Bartholomew & Benjamin Radford
Prometheus Press
229 pages
ISBN: 1591020484

When I learned that Prometheus Press had published a book about critical thinking written by two well-known skeptics, I didn’t have a very difficult time imagining what the book would be like, how the authors’ attitude towards alleged paranormal phenomena would manifest itself, and even guess what their conclusions would look like.

My guesses were these: they would present several different paranormal and hard-to-explain cases, both famous and not so famous ones; they’d be extremely skeptical to everything in their path while furiously debunking everything they could lay their hands on; and reach the conclusion that true science is the only way to go and that pseudo science is a poison that must be eliminated at any cost.

Not very surprisingly, I was right. Does that mean the book is boring and predictable? No, absolutely not. It’s book that’s truly worth reading, and that goes for skeptics and believers alike. But how is that?

Well, because the book is really a somewhat easy-to-understand introduction to the idea of critical thinking. What is critical thinking, how do you do it, and perhaps most important of all, WHY do you do it? Everyone is born with the ability to think, but this ability can be exercised and improved. And the better one is to use this magnificent brain of ours, the better the chances are of succeeding in life. Also, if you happen to be one of the “believers”, then Hoaxes, Myths, and Manias is still an interesting book to buy, since you’ll easily learn how the “enemy”, i.e. the skeptic movement, thinks and acts.

But, the book does have one huge weakness. The authors aren’t afraid to generalize. And this generalization results in their conclusions to very complex phenomena being based on very sparse evidence. For instance, the entire UFO phenomena, more or less, is discarded by quickly explaining how the famous Roswell incident in 1947 had nothing whatsoever to do with extraterrestrials and how the airship sightings in early 20th century America simply were fakes. So since Roswell and the airships had natural explanations – UFO phenomena is no mystery at all.

This arrogance is extremely unfortunate, because the authors write in a very, VERY fascinating way about how reality is very much a social construction, and how cultural conditions to a very large extent affect how and what we see as normal and not normal.

And in this era, characterized as it is by social anxiety and cultural antagonism, more people ought to know about that.