Science Friction: Where the Known Meets the Unknown

Psychologist and science historian Shermer has put together fourteen articles and personal essays that he has written over the past decade in order to examine how science operates under pressure, during controversies and on the precipice of the unknown. He dons several personas throughout the book—as a scientist, he pretends to be a psychic for a day and fools everyone; as a young, impressionable athlete, he discovers that good-luck rituals may, or may not, improve his performance; as a historian, he decides to analyze the data to see who was truly responsible for the Bounty mutiny; and as the skeptic, he realizes that it is time to turn the skeptical lens onto science itself.

Throughout each of the essays, Shermer asks: What do we know and what do we not know? How does science respond to controversy, attack and uncertainty? When does theory become accepted fact? As always, he delivers a thought-provoking, fascinating and entertaining view of life in the scientific age.

Speaker Details

Michael Shermer is the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine, the Director of the Skeptics Society, a monthly columnist for Scientific American, and the host of the Skeptics Lecture Series at Caltech.Shermer is the author of Science Friction: Where the Known Meets the Unknown, The Science of Good and Evil: Why People Cheat, Share, Gossip, and Follow the Golden Rule, How We Believe: The Search for God in an Age of Science, Why People Believe Weird Things, Teach Your Child Science, and The Borderlands of Science: Where Sense Meets Nonsense. He is the co-author of Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It?; Teach Your Child Math and Mathemagics; and In Darwin’s Shadow: The Life and Science of Alfred Russel Wallace: A Biographical Study on the Psychology of History. He has appeared on such shows as 20/20, Dateline, The Charlie Rose, Oprah, and Unsolved Mysteries, as well as on documentaries aired on A & E, Discovery, and The Learning Channel.

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Michael Shermer

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