As you probably know by now, here at Skeptic Ink we’ve just launched 13 Reasons to Doubt, our very first book comprising 13 essays by some of my fellow SINners and me.
Extraordinary claims and extraordinary evidence.
The mainstream and social media feed our minds a diet of fringe science and outright pseudoscience. They relentlessly stream paranormal, supernatural, and otherwise extraordinary claims. Where do all these come from? They’re spread by shysters and charlatans, by corporate propagandists with cynical eyes on the bottom line, by priests and preachers of all kinds, by axe-grinding cranks and ideologues, and frequently by well-meaning dupes.
This may be a scientific age, but all too often, science, well-grounded scholarship, evidence, and logic are ignored—or even denied.
Scientific skepticism offers a corrective: skeptics defend science and reason, while demanding the evidence for extraordinary claims.
In this volume, we offer you thirteen ways to scientific skepticism: thirteen reasons to doubt extraordinary claims. The authors discuss groupthink and cognitive biases, science denialism, weird archeology, claims about religion and free will, and many other topics. Within these pages, there is something for anyone who wants to avoid biases and fallacies, cut through the masses of misinformation, and push back against fakers and propagandists.
I think my essay, ‘Why Beliefs Matter‘, is the shortest one.
I am proud to take part in the book because I’m being published alongside skeptics and science popularizers who I admire — one thing is to blog on the same network and another thing on a whole new level is to write a book with them.
I owe special thanks as well to Ed Clint, Jonathan MS Pearce and Beth Ann Erickson who not only contributed with their wonderful essays, but they also did a great job editing the book.
Kudos to them and the rest of my fellow coauthors. Get your copy now (unless you’re waiting for the non-Kindle format).
