The UFOs That Never Were
by Jenny Randles, Andy Roberts and David Clarke
London House, £16.99, ISBN 1902809351

This book is a surprise. The authors are well-known British UFOlogists, with over 75 years’ experience of the subject between them. All believe there is something to be learned from studying UFOs. The surprise is that the book is devoted to explaining UFO “sightings” by natural means. The book has an introduction and nine chapters, each devoted to a major British UFO “sighting”. There are also eighteen “boxed features” – short chapters dealing with other UFO events. These include the Roswell “crashed saucer” and the “alien autopsy” film. Other cases are mentioned briefly in passing.
Generally, the authors do a good job of explaining the “UFO sightings”. In one case a “UFO” was a lighthouse, in another case the sun shining on rocks, in another burning fuel dumped from a crippled plane. Some UFOlogists are praised for good research. Others are slammed for shoddy fantasising.
The book is worth reading because of the quality of the thought and research, which resembles good skepticism. It does raise the question, though, what is going on? There are hints. Roberts, in his dedication, refers to “the madness which grips UFOlogy”. The authors describe the passionate beliefs of UFO buffs that an alien invasion is in progress, and their nearparanoid suspicions of anyone researching the area without this commitment. Instead, the book argues for a commitment to truth regardless of what that truth is.
From a skeptical viewpoint, this is very good news. It looks as if the UFO community has grown its own rational wing. This might bring some reason to a field rife with florid claims and wild suspicions.

Alas, Poor Darwin: Escaping Evolutionary Psychology
by Hilary Rose and Steven Rose (Editors)
Jonathan Cape, £17.99, ISBN 0224060309

Here’s another volley in the so-called “Darwin Wars”, an attack on Neo- or Ultra-Darwinists.

Chapters by such as Stephen Jay Gould and Annette Karmiloff-Smith (“Why Babies’ Brains are not Swiss Army Knives”) will repay closer study, but the collection is marred by the misrepresentations typical of these skirmishes.

Hilary Rose accuses Gross and Levitt, in their “academically weak” book, Higher Superstition, of arrogantly proposing “that their colleagues who teach English and who evidently lack respect for science should be fired. Their certainty that they could then lash up an entirely satisfactory English course takes the biscuit!” (p.127).

Here’s what they actually said: “If, taking a fanciful hypothesis, the humanities department of MIT … were to walk out in a huff, the scientific faculty could … patch together a humanities curriculum … It would have obvious gaps and rough spots … and it might with some regularity prove inane; but on the whole it would be, we imagine, no worse than operative.” (op. cit., p. 243)

Where’s that biscuit?

The contributors stayed at one of Charles Jencks’ opulent residences, which may be why that architectural critic’s “stylishly ironic essay” appears. Here’s his insight about sociobiologist E. O. Wilson: “so far as I was concerned, he was at the same time a closet postmodernist, because he also gives very passionate sermons on biodiversity” (p.37).

Then there’s this gem about Bill Clinton, who got “sex (S) because he had … power (P), and as a consequence he lost … money (M), all of which can be mathematicised as P – S = –M. Or, moving the integers across: +S and +M = –P” (p.32).

There are important arguments here, of great interest to advocates of natural selection, but readers should be cautious, i.e., skeptical.

Paul Taylor

Dancing Naked in the Mind Field
by Kary Mullis
Bloomsbury Publishing, £7.99, 0747545537

Someone once observed that the real title of every book ever written is How To Be More Like Me, and Kary Mullis’s book is a good example. It is a free-ranging (or, if you prefer, shapeless) series of reflections on a disparate range of topics, somewhat in the style of Richard Feynman, whose entertaining memoirs were similarly untainted by modesty or self-doubt.
Awarded the 1993 Nobel Prize for Chemistry, Mullis has become most celebrated for his claim that HIV is not the cause of AIDS. Other things of which Mullis is skeptical include: “fancy” nutritional theories (“Some people eat too much; some people eat too little. Nothing else about diet really matters”), the case against OJ Simpson (“I just hope that I don’t ever get arrested back there”) and human impact on climate change (“We can stop worrying about whether we can control it because we don’t have anything to do with it”). Things which he is less skeptical include: astrology (three different strangers have independently and correctly identified him as a Capricorn), astral projection (his life was once saved by a passing astral traveler – whom he later married) and alien abductions (his own being heralded by an encounter with a luminescent talking raccoon).
By his own account, Mullis has taken more than his fair share of legal and illegal mind-altering substances but he seems unimpressed – or perhaps skeptical – about their likely role in some of these events.
I found the book irritatingly self-congratulatory and superficial but, then again, nobody is ever going to propose me for the Nobel Prize and the book jacket does carry effusive tributes from reviewers: “a Renaissance Man for the new millennium…”, “his magical mind . . .” etc., so perhaps I just need to join Kary in dropping some acid, hitting the surf and generally learning to chill out.

The Man Who Found the Missing Link: The Extraordinary Life of Eugene Dubois
by Pat Shipman
Weidenfeld and Nicholson, £25.00, 0297842900

This is not a biography in the classical sense nor a novel in the ordinary sense. We will have to call it a fictional biography, where the thoughts of the protagonist and his contemporaries are freely sketched, and other material to which the author could not have had access is interpolated.
Although Shipman utilized the Dubois Archives, which contained letters, manuscripts, diaries, and so on, all of which are credited in the endnotes, she states that after Dubois’ death his daughter spent days burning materials that she did not want to be archived. What did these contain? Shipman once or twice hints at homosexuality as a young man, although she never actually comes out and makes the statement. In describing his later life, however, she portrays him as having liaisons with housemaids and others.
Some criticism could be levelled at the author’s style: “They both could see the idea dancing at the edge of their consciousness like a shy woodland creature that hesitated at the edge of a clearing.” She is not above filling space with a three-inch list of the attendees at a conference. Her list of acknowledgements includes her cat and her horse. She refers to Piltdown Man, Eoanthropus dawsoni, as if it were a real discovery and not a proven fraud. As painted, Dubois was a man who carried a basketful of demons throughout his life. He was vain, jealous, always suspicious of the motives of his friends and coworkers, and had all the race prejudices common to the era (born 1858, died 1940). Early in his professional career he was exposed to a boss who took sole credit for his work, and he learned enough from that experience to use it later when he was top dog. The author categorises him as “irascible, paranoid, brilliant and stubborn”.
After the initially bad reception of his claims to have discovered Pithecanthropus erectus, his name for the missing link, he became a recluse for many years and refused to allow other scholars to study the fossils he had collected. His relations with assistants were always stormy and he seldom gave credit for work well done and never allowed himself to be corrected if in error. This book is a good read but has no specific interest for skeptics. If the subject matter intrigues you, I would recommend borrowing it from the library.

Love and Eugenics in the Late Nineteenth Century: Rational Reproduction and the New Woman
by Angelique Richardson
Oxford University Press, 2002, £45, ISBN 0198187009

Nowadays Nowadays eugenics is a dirty word, calling to mind Nazi experiments and compulsory sterilisation. But a hundred years ago it was a hotly debated topic.
There was great concern over perceived racial degeneration in Britain, particularly the prevalence of hereditary diseases and the ill-health and poor physique of large slum families. Eugenicists argued that selective breeding was the answer to both problems. If only the healthiest people bred, the race would improve.
Some commentators argued that any woman wishing to marry should choose the husband most likely to give her healthy children, disregarding such complicating factors as love and sexual attraction. Having as many healthy babies as possible was seen as a woman’s duty and destiny. Fin de siècle feminist writers such as Mona Caird, George Egerton and Sarah Grand took up this debate, exploring the eugenics question in short stories, novels and journalism.
Richardson’s book examines these women’s work, exploring ways in which the eugenics debate informed wider debates on the role of women and the nature of marriage. Some of the issues have uncomfortable resonances with today’s arguments about genetic screening and ‘designer babies’. Are we as different from the Victorians as we would like to think?

Everything You Know is Wrong: The Disinformation Guide to Secrets and Life
by Russ Kick (Editor)
The Disinformation Company Ltd, £17.99, ISBN 0971394202

This is a compilation of various articles on various subjects by various authors, so the first thing I looked for was the Index. There isn’t one. So I browsed around, looking for subjects I knew something about.
Kick, reviewing a book on botanical influences on illness, writes: “I keep hearing the refrain, mainly from people who like to call themselves ‘skeptics’, that there is not one bit of medical evidence supporting natural, alternative medical therapies.
This is absolutely and unequivocally wrong. Anyone who says it is either 1) lying, or 2) doesn’t know his or her ass from a hole in the ground.” Kick is also impressed by Peter R. Breggin, MD, and includes one of his articles, as well as writing a highly favourable review of one of his books. What you will not find here is Quackwatch’s assessment of Breggin as “a harmful nuisance whose views can … frighten people away from helpful treatment”. Nor will you find the words of the Milwaukee judge who found Breggin’s observations in court “totally without credibility. I can almost declare him … a fraud or at least approaching that”.
Micky Z, who gives us A Closer Look at the Meatbased Diet, tells us confidently that “contrary to popular opinion … human beings were not designed to consume animals”; that eating one egg a day raises your cholesterol level by 12%; that 40% of cancers are related to diet; that “if the beef for your burger came from the rainforest, roughly 660 pounds of living matter is destroyed”; and that Big Mac “contributes to global warming”. And there is the usual rant against nuclear power by a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
There are a few pieces in this uncritical mixture that might give you pause for useful thought (the Olympic industry; the war against drugs; untouchables; the menace of watchdog committees). But unfortunately, too many of the reference sources turn out to be pamphlets and newsletters by the same few propaganda groups. All in all, it is a patchy collection. But if you decide to turn to it for information, you should be wary of what Russ Kick knows: quite a lot of it is wrong.

The Hidden Connections: A Science for Sustainable Living
by Fritjof Capra
Flamingo, £8.99, ISBN 000655158 0

Fritjof Capra is a physicist who has produced a series of popular books, starting with The Tao of Physics in 1975, and moving into biology and ecology. In this book, Capra is trying to outline a grand theory of life, the mind, society and the material world using complexity theory (or, as he often calls it, ‘nonlinear dynamics’).
The first third of the book is a summary of the science and social science needed for Capra’s vision. Although Capra keeps the explanations non-technical, it is fairly indigestible, using many new terms such as ‘autopoiesis’ and ‘neuropheonomenology’. Throughout, the key idea is that new understandings of the real world must involve complex networks with non-linear dynamic linkages.
In the latter part of the book, Capra tries to apply his ideas to the world at large. We learn that the bosses of giant corporations are deeply troubled, that global capitalism is creating much poverty and destroying the environment, that modern genetic engineering is extremely dangerous, and that environmentalists are trying hard to find alternatives. In his final chapter ‘Changing the Game’ he spells out what an environmentally sound world might look like. Capra’s vision is impressive, but the book has several problems. The arguments in the second part really do not follow from the science in the first: occasionally throwing in references to networks and nonlinear dynamics does not help much. Further, much of the science in the first part is speculative: it might turn out to be right, but it might lead nowhere. Finally, Capra is spelling out his own vision, and so alternative viewpoints and criticisms receive little attention.

A Devil’s Chaplain: Selected Writings
by Richard Dawkins
Weidenfeld and Nicholson, £16.99, ISBN 0297829734

Dawkins has done so much to promote the scientific and sceptical outlook that a new book from him should automatically be of interest to readers of this journal. This is a collection of short essays, reviews and articles that ranges beyond discussions of evolutionary theory to consider education, belief, religion, and Africa.

The consistent effort to make important and subtle ideas crystal-clear shines from every page, and elevates what might otherwise be mere didacticism to the level of literature. This is further enlivened by a wonderful bluntness and belligerence, as, for instance, when he discusses the vogue for claiming that religion and science are somehow partners in understanding the universe: “Convergence? Only when it suits. To an honest judge, the alleged convergence between religion and science is a shallow, empty, hollow, spin-doctored sham.”

There are writings on the meme, Dawkins’ putative cultural replicator, including an essay on religion entitled Viruses of the Mind, but we may not be ready for memes if we haven’t yet fully taken on board the original Darwinian message about our own biology: “We admit that we are like apes, but we seldom realize that we are apes … There is no natural category that includes chimpanzees, gorillas and orangs but excludes humans.”

Dawkins waspishly applies the evolutionary theory of ‘costly signaling’, put forward to explain the metabolically expensive displays of courting creatures, to the somewhat less charming case of extravagant religious beliefs: “Is it possible that some religious doctrines are favoured not in spite of being ridiculous but precisely because they are ridiculous? Any wimp in religion could believe that bread symbolically represents the body of Christ, but it takes a real, red-blooded Catholic to believe something as daft as the transubstantiation.”

Shape-shifting lizards, anyone?

Paul Taylor