Dr. Steven Novella - The Skeptics Guide to the Future

In this age of real and fake information, your ability to reason, to think in scientifically skeptical fashion, is the most important skill you can have. Read The Skeptics Guide to the Universe; get better at reasoning. And if this claim about the importance of reason is wrong, The Skeptics Guide will help you figure that out, too.

Bill Nye

Steven Novella (Clinical Neurology/Yale Univ. School of Medicine), a founding fellow of the Institute for Science in Medicine and host and producer of the titular science and critical thinking podcast, pulls no punches in his attack on the misinformation, myths, and biases that surround us. Aided here by several writing associates, the author demonstrates his vast experience explaining the mechanisms of deception and the tactics used by pseudoscientists. Presented as one giant inoculation against bad science, deception, and faulty thinking, the book succeeds superbly.

Kirkus (starred review)

Empowering and illuminating, this thinkers paradise is an antidote to spreading anti-scientific sentiments. Readers will return to its ideas again and again.

Publishers Weekly (starred review)

A fantastic compendium of skeptical thinking and the perfect primer for anyone who wants to separate fact from fiction.

Richard Wiseman, professor of the Public Understanding of Psychology at University of Hertfordshire and bestselling author of 59 Seconds

In his 1995 book The Demon-Haunted World, the great Carl Sagan prophesied a descent into superstition and ignorance. Well, that world has arrived. Fortunately, Steve Novella and his coauthors are here to help us navigate it with critical thinking and scientifically appropriate skepticism, along the way exposing the anti-science and pseudoscience so prevalent in our public discourse today, from confirmation bias to conspiracy theories, N-Rays to Nessie, the Face on Mars to Flat-Eartherism.

Michael Mann, distinguished professor, Penn State University, and coauthor of The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy

A terrific book for anyone who wants a better understanding about the world around them and an essential guide to navigating modern life. The Skeptics Guide to the Universe will help readers recognize pitfalls in reasoning, combat bad arguments and avoid superstitious thinking.

Simon Singh, skeptic and author of Fermats Enigma

This important addition to the literature of skepticism deserves shelf space beside the works of such notables as Michael Shermer, James Randi, Robert A. Baker, and Martin Gardner.

Booklist

Steve and the gang have done it again. The Skeptics Guide to the Universe is the best and most popular podcast on science and skepticism out there (I am honored to have been their first guest!). And now this book is the best, soon to be the most popular, guide to whats really real, so far as we can tell.

Massimo Pigliucci, K. D. Irani Professor of Philosophy at the City College of New York and author of Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk

Theres nothing more riveting, nor more frightening, than the economysize ability of the citizenry to embrace unscientific explanations for puzzling events. We hardly blink when ordinary folk are seduced by easy-to-graspif wrongexplanations for autism or mysterious lights in the night sky. But we should be alarmed. The science may be pseudo, but the grievous consequences are real. Steve Novella and colleagues offer a fascinating collection of the many contemporary phenomena now ascribed to mysterious or even conspiratorial causes. They also point out the logical errors that are repeatedly made by those who claim that the truth is out thereand frequently too far out there! For those who want to know, not merely believe, this book is an essential read. Its also a great one.

Seth Shostak, senior astronomer, SETI Institute

A lighthearted, wide-ranging romp through pseudoscience, quackery, and nonsense of all kinds. Fun and fascinating, with an undercurrent of darker urgencygiven the upsurge in bald-faced lies and bizarro claims all around us, this book may be your best defense.

Steven Strogatz, professor of mathematics, Cornell University, and author of The Joy of x

There are so many ways to be wrong, what we all need is a guidebook to being right. And here it is: The Skeptics Guide to the Universe is an invaluable manual to avoiding all of the ways we can fool ourselves and be fooled by others. Its depressing to think of how many ways there are, but at least now we have no excuse for not being prepared.

Sean Carroll, author of The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself

A lively, engaging, and very timely guide to navigating a world rife with misinformation and pseudoscience. This book will give you the tools to ferret out nonsense and confront your own biasesand hopefully change a few minds along the way.

Jennifer Ouellette, author of Me, Myself, and Why and The Calculus Diaries

The Skeptics Guide to the Universe reads like a dream; casual, occasionally irreverent, full of great anecdotes and humor but ultimately a well-researched and authoritative account of the vagaries of human folly and foolishness.

Bruce Hood, author of SuperSense, The Self Illusion, and Possessed