Skeptic

By Frederic Golden

SCIENCE: GOOD, BAD AND BOGUS by Martin Gardner; Prometheus 408 pages; $18.95

The late C.P. Snow defined the Two Cultures; Martin Gardner bridges them. His classics, Relativity for the Million and The Ambidextrous Universe, make physics lucid to the layman; The Annotated Alice has become the standard guide to Wonderland. In addition he has published exegeses on poetry as diverse as The Ancient Mariner and Casey at the Bat. Yet no matter how wide he ranges, one subject has preoccupied the polymath since he began writing 35 years ago: the dangers and delights of pseudo science.

In the '50s, Gardner, now 66, fired a powerful salvo, Fads and Fallacies. The author took aim at the orgone-box sex theories of Wilhelm Reich, spoofed the father of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard, and

Polymath with a preoccupation, debunked the E.S.P. experiments of J.B. Rhine, who ingenuously wondered why his subjects did better when he paid them.

Gardner's prose was sharp, his logic devastating and his humor irrefutable. But for every slain theory, ten new ones seemed to grow, and today a burgeoning interest in the paranormal has provided new targets for the patented Gardner weapons of ridicule and reason. Science: Good, Bad and Bogus discusses the fresh fascination with Roman Lull, a 13th century Spanish theologian who devised a roulette-like numerical system for revealing the secrets of the universe. Seven centuries later, Gardner reports, victims are still playing numbers games--with results that only benefit the charlatans who run them. Other chapters examine UFOs, especially the Hollywood variety, take a deadpan look at some of the tainted fathers of such contemporary fads as biorhythms and faith healing, and show why so many of the latest claims of E.S.P. are invalid or fraudulent.

Although he is amused by the bizarre.

Gardner saves his liveliest derision for gullible scientists and science writers --particularly those who lauded Israeli Magician Uri Geller and his "unearthly ability" to bend spoons with the power of his mind. In a dazzling chapter, Gardner, an amateur prestidigitator, demonstrates a dozen methods for deceiving the credulous, including sleight of hand, palmed magnets and misdirection. Yet even these instructions are offered more in fun than in malice. For early on, the skeptic's skeptic acknowledges that the most obvious evidence of fraud will not budge the True Believer. Instead, Gardner writes for those who agree with the 1920s observation of H.L. Mencken that one horselaugh was worth 10,000 syllogisms. As Science: Good, Bad and Bogus proves, it still is. --By Frederic Golden

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