Pseudoscience An Amusing History of Crackpot Ideas and Why We Love Them

by Kang, Lydia; Pedersen, Nate

• ISBN13: 9781523524259
• ISBN10: 1523524251
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2025-02-18
• Publisher: Workman Publishing Company

Summary

From the authors of Quackery, a visual and narrative history of popular ideas, phenomena, and widely held beliefs disproven by science. 

From the easily disproved to the wildly speculative, to  straight-up hucksterism, Pseudoscience is a romp through much more than bad science—it’s a light-hearted look into why we insist on believing in things such as Big Foot, astrology, and the existence of aliens. Did you know, for example, that you can tell a person’s future by touching their butt? Rumpology. It’s a thing, but not really. Or that Stanley Kubrick made a fake moon landing film for the US government? Except he didn’t. Or that spontaneous human combustion is real? It ain’t, but it can be explained scientifically.   

Pseudoscience is a wild mix of history, pop culture, and good old fashioned science–that not just entertains, but sheds a little light on why we all love to believe in things we know aren't true. 

Author Biography

Lydia Kang, MD, is a practicing internal medicine physician and author of young adult fiction and adult fiction. Her YA novels include Control, Catalyst, and the upcoming The November Girl. Her adult fiction debut is entitled A Beautiful Poison. Her nonfiction has been published in JAMA, the Annals of Internal Medicine, and the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

This author is represented by the Hachette Speakers Bureau.

Nate Pedersen is a librarian, historian, and freelance journalist with over 400 publications in print and online, including in the Guardian, the Believer, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Art of Manliness.

Table of Contents

Introduction
 
Pure Nonscience
Flat Earth
Spontaneous Human Combustion
Gasoline Pills
Perpetual Motion Machines
World Ice Theory
Body Divination
Phrenology
 
Aliens! Ghosts! Bigfoot! Atlantis!
UFOolgy
Bermuda Triangle
Crop Circles
Ghosts and Ghost Hunting
Cryptozoology
2012 Phenomenon
 
Wishful Thinking
Cryonics
Astrology
Ley Lines
Personality Psychology
Auguries
Polygraph
The Superstitions Hall of Fame
 
Grifters, Nihilism, and Denialism
Levitation
Fake Moon Landings
Climate Change Denial
Lawsonomy
Dowsing
 
Sources
Index
Acknowledgments
Photo Credits