Debunked! : ESP, telekinesis, and other pseudoscience
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Debunked! : ESP, telekinesis, and other pseudoscience
Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004
- Other Title
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Devenez sorciers, devenez savants
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Note
Includes bibliographical references
Originally published "Odile Jacob c2002"
Contents of Works
- The first steps in the initiation
- Amazing coincidences
- Let's play detective
- The right to dreams and clarity
- A new millennium dawn
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Can you walk over red-hot charcoal without burning your feet? Appear to stop the beating of your heart? Bend spoons using the power of your mind? In Debunked! Nobel Prize winner Georges Charpak and physics professor Henri Broch team up to show you the tricks of the trade and sleight of hand that keep astrologers, TV psychics, and spoon benders in business. Using only the simplest of science, the authors explore the effectiveness of horoscopes-the blander the better-and why, with a television audience in the millions, any strange, unlikely prediction is almost certain to come true. If such insider information does not impress your colleagues, why not pierce your tongue with a skewer or demonstrate your eerie powers by using telepathy and the telephone to get a distant friend to intuit the number and suit of a card picked at random. Charpak and Broch show you how. Not merely an expose of magic tricks, this book demonstrates how pseudoscientists use science, statistics, and psychology to bamboozle an audience-sometimes for fun, sometimes for profit. During the most scientifically advanced period in human history, belief in the paranormal and the supernatural is alarmingly common.
Entertaining and enlightening, Debunked! is the antidote, vigorously asserting the virtues of doubt, skepticism, curiosity, and scientific knowledge. This lucid translation makes the arguments clear, understandable, and a pleasure to read.
Table of Contents
Translator's Preface
Prologue: Sorcerers and Scientists
Chapter 1. The First Steps in the Initiation
Chapter 2. Amazing Coincidences
Chapter 3. Let's Play Detective
Chapter 4. The Right to Dreams and Clarity
Chapter 5. A New Millennium Dawns
Appendix: How to Calculate Probabilities
by "Nielsen BookData"
