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Available in four formats:
Also available in Croatian.
An annotated version of this article -- explaining some of the jokes and providing much additional bibliography -- appears as Chapter 1 of my book Beyond the Hoax.
Available in four formats:
Also available in
Croatian,
Finnish,
German,
Romanian and
Albanian.
Available in three formats:
Also available in
Croatian and
Azerbaijani.
One of the references cited in this article is my
"Informe sobre el plan de estudios de las carreras de
Matemática, Estadística y Computación"
to the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Nicaragua -- Managua
(1987, unpublished).
For whatever it might be worth 30-odd years later,
I am making it available
here.
The English edition was published in the UK in July 1998 by Profile Books under the title Intellectual Impostures; it can be ordered on-line from W.H. Smith or amazon.co.uk. It was published in the US in November 1998 by Picador USA, an imprint of St. Martin's Press, under the title Fashionable Nonsense; it can be ordered on-line from Barnes and Noble or amazon.com. Click here for the preface and first chapter in English.
And see here for the preface to the second English edition, which addresses some of the critiques of our book.
Lecturers who are considering the book for potential student use may obtain an academic inspection copy: please direct your requests here for UK, Europe and the British Commonwealth, and here for US and Canada.
Translations into
Catalan,
Dutch,
German,
Hungarian,
Italian,
Japanese,
Korean,
Persian,
Polish,
Portuguese (Brazil),
Portuguese (Portugal),
Spanish
and
Turkish
have been published.
Click here for the
preface
in Portuguese.
Translations into
Chinese (PRC),
Chinese (Taiwan)
and Russian
are in the works. I will post more information
as it becomes available.
For reviews of Impostures Intellectuelles / Fashionable Nonsense, click here.
Click here for the
Table of Contents and Preface.
(Note that this is from my manuscript, not from the published book,
so the page numbers are not exactly right.)
And here is a
2-minute video
summarizing what the book is about.
Last but not least, here is the
author photo
(at least one of us is cute!).
For reviews of Beyond the Hoax,
click here.
Translations into
Spanish
and Turkish
have been published.
A slightly modified version of this talk was given in Stockholm
on May 26-27, 2009 at the
Swedish Humanist Association
and at the
Swedish Academy of Sciences,
and is
available as a 39-minute video.
An expanded and updated version
of this talk was published in
Logos,
vol. 12, no. 2 (spring 2013)
and in
Scientia Salon,
March 26-28, 2014 (in three parts:
Part I,
Part II,
Part III).
Une version est disponible également en français:
"Qu'est-ce que la science? Quelle importance?".
See also
"Nick Brown smelled bull",
by Vinnie Rotondaro
(Narratively,
October 17, 2013).
Artículo también disponible en
español.
And see
"The British amateur who debunked the mathematics of happiness",
by Andrew Anthony
(The Observer [London],
January 19, 2014).
For follow-ups, see
our response to Fredrickson
and
our response to five other commenters.
See also the slides of my talk
"Physics envy in psychology: A cautionary tale"
at City College of New York, November 19, 2015.
And see our radio interview at France Inter,
mardi 7 juin 2016, 21h-22h.
And here are the original parodies (far more brilliant than my own!)
concerning
sociologist Michel Maffesoli
("Automobilités postmodernes : quand l’Autolib’ fait sensation à Paris")
and
philosopher Alain Badiou
("Ontology, Neutrality and the Strive for (non-)Being-Queer").
See also here
and here
for a more detailed critique of Pritchard's article --
and of Nature's apparent editorial line --
by the distinguished biologist
Jerry Coyne.
And see Coyne's article
"Seeing and believing"
for a more detailed analysis of the incompatibility
between religion and science.
And see also
Andrew Gelman's comment.
See also
here,
where Professor Boghossian has posted the original documents
concerning this case.
See also this article by Robert Grenier
for similar ideas from a
writer
with a very different background from mine.
Grenier also stresses an important psychological point:
"We must all earnestly engage in an effort to listen to others'
ideas, no matter how daft they may seem; to understand where such
ideas come from, no matter how hateful the source; to meet assertion
with reason and evidence, not counterassertion. And where our evidence
is lacking, we must patiently seek it out. ... [T]ruth is unavailing
if not presented with clear underlying fact, and if not conveyed
with respect."
This article was composed on the morning after Boris Johnson's
22 February speech -- outlining his "roadmap" for ending all
coronavirus restrictions -- and was submitted, in succession, to three
major British newspapers and to one major British news website.
No response from any of them. Perhaps no one in the mainstream
press wants, or even dares, to be a party-pooper. But someone
has to be the messenger of bad tidings -- preferably before
rather than after the fact.
It goes without saying that my reasoning could be mistaken;
indeed, I very much hope that it is. We shall see.
See also some readers' comments, and my replies, on
Andrew Gelman's blog.
I happen to believe that indulging people’s irrational beliefs -- like a parent puts up with a child’s follies -- does not add up to “respect”. In my rulebook, the best way to respect people you care about is to treat them as worthy conversation partners who can be persuaded by reason (or who may persuade you with better arguments and evidence). The way I see it, engaging people in an honest and open dialogue about the matters of ultimate concern is to pay them the highest grade of respect that there is.
See also the
panel discussion
at the Free Speech Union, London, 13 September 2023,
and my own review of the book.
Physics /
GSAS /
NYU-- last modified 14 May 2024
