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tomunro's review
4.0
I picked this up in a charity shop. I am wary - in this current anti=expert climate - of engaging too much with books that trumpet what Science got wrong.
This is however an entertaining read particularly around the matter pf what became the fifth domestic appliance to be electrified after the fan, kettle, sewing machine and pop-up toaster.
In other chapters the book lays bare the stubbornness of stupidity in the way that people continued to believe in something long after it had been proven to be a sham created by frauds for personal advancement. For example subliminal advertising (which I did not know) was a total scam based on fabricated results from a cinema that could not have held the numbers cited in the "research" yet studies today show that 80 of Americans in 2006 still believed in the power of subliminal advertising.
There is a theme of isolated individuals being exposed too late by the scientific community after their lies have run away with the world. Pyschological studies have seen this too - even when shown that a premise Y has been unjustifiably derived from a false and disproven premise X, people are still determined to believe in premise Y - in disappointingly large proportions..
This obduracy of belief in the face of evidence - the "Emperor's new clothes" syndrome if you will, is the most insidious poison in the well of knowledge. We see it with anti-vaxxers, with consipracy theorists, with flat-earthers and with the stubborn adherence to untenable political positions.
This is an entertaining book that has taught me to disbelieve some things (Subliminal advertising) that I had previously - in good faith - accepted.
What is scary is how stubbornly mad ideas can be picked up and run with long after their idiocy or dangers have been amply demonstrated.
This is however an entertaining read particularly around the matter pf what became the fifth domestic appliance to be electrified after the fan, kettle, sewing machine and pop-up toaster.
In other chapters the book lays bare the stubbornness of stupidity in the way that people continued to believe in something long after it had been proven to be a sham created by frauds for personal advancement. For example subliminal advertising (which I did not know) was a total scam based on fabricated results from a cinema that could not have held the numbers cited in the "research" yet studies today show that 80 of Americans in 2006 still believed in the power of subliminal advertising.
There is a theme of isolated individuals being exposed too late by the scientific community after their lies have run away with the world. Pyschological studies have seen this too - even when shown that a premise Y has been unjustifiably derived from a false and disproven premise X, people are still determined to believe in premise Y - in disappointingly large proportions..
This obduracy of belief in the face of evidence - the "Emperor's new clothes" syndrome if you will, is the most insidious poison in the well of knowledge. We see it with anti-vaxxers, with consipracy theorists, with flat-earthers and with the stubborn adherence to untenable political positions.
This is an entertaining book that has taught me to disbelieve some things (Subliminal advertising) that I had previously - in good faith - accepted.
What is scary is how stubbornly mad ideas can be picked up and run with long after their idiocy or dangers have been amply demonstrated.
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