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

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?

Chris Willis

Science and Pseudoscience in Clinical Psychology
by Scott O. Lilienfeld, Steven Jay Lynn, Jeffrey M. Lohr (Editors)
Guilford Press, 2003, £31.95, ISBN 1572308281

This is a US product, so “clinical psychology” covers all kinds of psychotherapy. It is a round-up of recent research on speculative conditions and controversial treatments, and even clinicians’ ability to learn from experience (they’re not very good at it).
Some of the research may be familiar, but it is good to have it all in one place. And it can’t be repeated too often that Americans don’t spontaneously claim to be 127 different people, or to have been abused by Satanists or abducted by aliens. These ideas arise in therapy after months, sometimes years, of hypnosis, suggestion and leading questions. One vulnerable client produced 4,500 alter egos; others claimed to share their skull with “Mr Spock, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, lobsters, chickens, gorillas, tigers, unicorns, God, the bride of Satan, and the rock star Madonna.”
So much for dodgy diagnoses; wait till we get to the New Age therapies. The list of unsupported assumptions behind these includes extraterrestrials, magic and past lives, but also dogmas beloved of North London media folk such as “abuse experienced in early childhood is the root cause of all psychological and emotional problems”, “catharsis brings cure” and “the treatment technique does all the ‘hard work’ . . . change occurs ‘naturally’ . . . ”
Now we come to controversial treatments for accepted conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder. Among others the authors compare EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing – you follow the therapist’s wagging finger with your eyes) and Critical Incident Stress Debriefing (group counselling soon after a traumatic event). Common sense suggests that EMDR is unlikely to be effective, and it isn’t – but neither is debriefing.
By this time the reader should be getting the message that common sense can’t be relied on, that all psychologists should be educated in research methods, and that all treatments should be examined. This is a fascinating read, a reminder that America is the land of snake oil salesmen and that reasonable theories believed by all right-thinking people may be snake oil too.

Lucy Fisher

Are Universes Thicker Than Blackberries?: Discourses on Godel, Magic Hexagrams, Little Red Riding Hood, and Other Mathematical and Pseudoscientific Topics
By Martin Gardner
W. W. Norton & Company, $25.95, ISBN 0-393-05742-9

Some of us cut our sceptics’ teeth on Martin Gardner’s Facts and Fallacies in the Name of Science. Originally published some fifty years ago, it was a review of pseudoscience in all its many varieties, glories and irrationalities.
Now, some 65 to 75 books later, we have another collection of amusing and insightful short essays by the same author. Like several earlier volumes it is a collection of articles Gardner published in the American The Skeptical Inquirer, of book reviews and other essays from hither and yon.
The subtitle provides a good view of the wide variety of topics taken up by the author. The 31 pieces are divided into sections on Science, Mathematics, Religion, Literature, and Moonshine. The author himself admits “the categories … are somewhat arbitrary.” (p. xi) To call the book a miscellaneous collection is not to belittle it. Where else could you learn about a religion, Oahspe, which lasted from 1882 until 1918, and was part of the extensive spiritualist movement? The title story, located in the science section, examines the multiverse idea. A new universe comes into existence every time a quantum uncertainty is solved. Schrödinger’s Cat both lives and dies, each in a new universe. Which means there exists a practical infinity of very similar worlds. Gardner makes it clear he cannot for a moment believe this cosmology, and marvels “at the low state to which today’s philosophy of science has fallen” (p. 9). At the other extreme, under Moonshine, the author disposes of the farce of “Facilitated Communication,” “Distant Healing,” “Therapeutic Touch,” “Primal Scream Therapy,” and other humbug. The book is a fun read that will fill a long evening.

Wolf Roder

Immortal Remains: The Evidence for Life After Death
By Stephen E Braude
Rowman & Littlefield, 2003, [no price indicated] ISBN 0-7425-1472-2

“Rascals! Would you live for ever?”, Frederick the Great reproached his dilatory guards. No doubt all readers of The Skeptic look forward cheerfully to post mortem oblivion, but in case some of you conserve some atavistic doubts as to whether that is your destiny, here is Stephen Braude offering an alternative scenario. It is not necessarily a convincing one. Even though he has chosen to present only a handful of the most challenging cases, each is ambiguous in its conclusions. Even when the apparition of a deceased accountant returns to his son and reveals the error which clouded his reputation, this could be explained by psi, or super-psi, or something which, however improbable, at least allows us to duck out of accepting survival as the only way it could have happened.
Braude is at least as skeptical as any of his readers is likely to be. He allows himself to be persuaded by the evidence only when he has analysed it in detail – often mind-numbing detail. Though he writes clearly and directly, his book is heavy going simply because he invites you to accompany him, step by careful step, through the complexities of cases where nothing need be what it seems to be and no-one’s word can be trusted.
I doubt if it could be done better. He knows about mediumship, he knows about reincarnation, he knows about possession and dissociation, and he knows that all these subject areas are minefields for the unwary. But he knows, too, that they may also be gold fields, rich in information about ourselves, the way our minds work. And – who knows ? – whether you and I will live for ever.

Hilary Evans

Galileo’s Finger: The Ten Great Ideas of Science
By Peter Atkins
Oxford University Press 2003, £20.00,
ISBN 0-19 860664-8

Richard Dawkins, quoted on the back cover, says Atkins should get a Nobel Prize for literature. The ten great ideas of the title are Evolution, DNA, Energy, Entropy, Atoms, Symmetry, Quanta, Cosmology, Spacetime, and Arithmetic. With no yetis, UFOs, Satanism, ESP or levitating monks, this is not reading intended for sceptics, but it is reading for intelligent adults. Well-illustrated and with maths limited to what you should remember from freshman college, it is written in a conversational tone with flashes of wit: “Aristotle, ever magnificently intellectually fertile and magnificently wrong as usual …”, or, on the various definitions of ‘species’, “According to this view, a species is an isolated island of vigorous reproductive activity, not unlike Mykonos in mid-summer.” And just one more example, please, to disprove one reviewer’s claim that the author has no sense of humour: “No mammal reproduces asexually, despite biblical assertions to the contrary.” The author shares my great admiration for Richard Feynman and quotes him as the heading for the chapter on quanta: “If anyone claims to know what the quantum theory is all about, they haven’t understood it.”

Don’t try to speed-read this book, but read and cherish one chapter at a time, in any order. Why “Galileo’s Finger”? You will have to read the prologue to find out. Hint: an actual finger of Galileo’s right hand is preserved in Venice and is illustrated in the frontispiece.

Frank Chambers

The Problem of the Soul: Two Visions of Mind and How to Reconcile Them
by Owen Flanagan
Basic Books, $16.95, ISBN 0465024610

This philosophical report on where the soul stands, in the light of scientific research, will not be an altogether happy read for those who would prefer to cling on to their souls, perhaps in the hope of some kind of eternal harp recital, or the company of subservient virgins.

For such people, including, apparently, 60% of scientists, the news is of course grim. As Flanagan says in his preface, “Supernatural concepts have no philosophical warrant… There are simply no good arguments – theological, philosophical, humanistic, or scientific – for beliefs in divine beings, miracles, or heavenly afterlives.” He explains and defends the position of physicalism, the view that all mental events are, ultimately, brain events. This idea has moved from being a hypothesis to being “a constitutive truth in mind science.”

Given that the brain is a natural object, a corollary would seem to be that what the brain does is subject to causal regularities. However, given the immense complexity of neural processes and personal history, we are nowhere near able to provide a comprehensive causal account of someone’s decision-making. So it may seem that one of the constitutive elements of the soul – free will – may be safe from scientific abolition.

Flanagan espouses neo-compatibilism, the view that rational choice is compatible with causation, and explains how we must disentangle explanation from prediction, how we shouldn’t get too excited by free-will arguments based on indeterminacy (who wants free will to be the result of random causation?) and how we may retain much that we value in our image of our own species. He offers a naturalistic account of the self, and concludes with a view of ethics as a kind of human ecology, an empirical field.

Skeptical readers may find this a useful source of arguments and ideas for making sense of a soul-free universe, and, given that the often chatty tone is somewhat less belligerent than Daniel Dennett’s, the book could also be a suggested read for believers.

Paul Taylor

Mortal Minds: The Biology of Near Death Experiences
by G.M. Woerlee
De Tijdstroom, 25 Euros, ISBN 90 5898 057 X

Gerry Woerlee is an anaesthesiologist with many years of clinical experience. He has written an ambitious book in which he tries to answer the following three questions: What is death? What do people experience as they die? Is there life after death? In attempting to answer these questions, he considers a range of issues and phenomena that will interest readers of The Skeptic. These include the concept of the soul and the properties claimed for it, alleged paranormal abilities, human auras, the out-of-body experience, and the near-death experience.
Along the way, Woerlee offers some novel explanations for many of the phenomena he discusses, many of which are open to empirical testing. To give but one example, he offers a new explanation of the experience of passing down a dark tunnel towards a bright light, commonly reported as part of the near-death experience. Woerlee argues that this experience is best explained in terms of the effects of oxygen starvation upon the functioning of the visual system, and in particular that it is a direct consequence of the differences in blood supply to central vs. peripheral areas of the retina. In other words, he considers the tunnel experience to be primarily an effect arising at the level of the retina rather than an effect due to abnormal functioning at the cortical level as argued by Blackmore (e.g., 1993). Clearly, the two theoretical positions make different predictions regarding the possibility of the tunnel experience occurring in individuals with different types of blindness. Blackmore’s theory would predict that typical tunnel experiences, could occur in individuals with damaged retinas whereas Woerlee’s would not. It would be of considerable interest to see which account (if either) is favoured by the currently available data on NDEs in the blind.
In case you were wondering, Woerlee concludes that true death occurs when the brainstem ceases to function; that the experiences of dying, for most people, are based upon the effects of oxygen starvation to the brain; and that, sadly, there is no life after death. Overall, this is an interesting and provocative book that will provide much food for thought on some of the most profound issues that we all must face.

Reference
Blackmore, S. (1993). Dying to Live: Science and the Near-death Experience. London: Grafton.

Christopher C. French

Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control
by Kathleen Taylor
Oxford University Press, £18.99, ISBN 0-19-280496-0

This is a book of three parts. In the first section, Taylor outlines the history and social psychology of brainwashing, presenting a clear description of research into cults, charismatic leaders, military mind control, and the like. So far, so good. Part two then attempts to understand brainwashing within the context of recent advances in neuroscience. Taylor presents a clear description of neurons, membranes and the like, and then attempts to explain how neuroscience may help to explain brainwashing.
Unfortunately, many of the arguments are far from convincing. Although it is obvious that dramatic alterations in self identity and episodic memory will be associated with changes in the cortex, it is not clear that this is the best level to understand brainwashing. For example, Taylor spends time examining vision, tracking this complex process from eye movements to the processing of visual information in a part of the brain known as the posterior parietal cortex. However, it is unclear how this helps us to understand why some people join new religious movements or the effects that such groups have on their behaviours.
In the final part, the author considers the implications of viewing brainwashing from a neuroscience perspective. Much of this section builds towards what the author refers to as FACET – that is, the need for Freedom, Agency, Complexity, Ends-not-means and Thinking. It is a rather confusing end message that fails to provide a strong sense of closure. In short, although this book does provide some interesting information about brainwashing, I suspect that the general thrust of the argument (i.e., that the phenomena can be understood from a neuro-science perspective) will fail to have a significant impact.

Richard Wiseman