In this day and age, there is a need for information to help people understand the difference between science and pseudoscience. “Science and Unreason” by Daisie Radner and Michael Radner is a book which attempts to address this need. Published in 1982 by Wadsworth Publishing Company, it is a short, concise look at some of the tell-tale signs of what types of beliefs and propositions are pseudoscience.

At just over 100 pages, this work can only be considered a basic look at the subject, and given that it was written more than 30 years ago, do not expect to find the more recent trends addressed. Even for its time, the authors clearly make a decision to make their arguments more generic, rather than go into a detailed refutation of any particular pseudoscientific proposition. They create a kind of toolkit of identifiers of pseudoscience, but I think it would have been better if they had gone back and done some in depth analysis of some areas of pseudoscience and shown in detail how the identifiers flag the issues with those beliefs.

They did go into a bit more depth with continental drift and sociobiology as borderline cases, but here again they could have shown how the former transitioned from pseudoscience to science once plate tectonics was proposed as a mechanism. It is also unfortunate that the book predates any of the discussion of the debate on man’s impact on climate change, but that just demonstrates the need for newer and more extensive works like this one. ( )