This book should be taught in science classes at all grades. The up coming eclipse comes to mind as I have encountered so much ignorance concerning it... I can remember a time when science was taught fairly thoroughly. I'm not sure what has happened over the past few decades, but so many people are believing so much nonsense a book lie this should be a wake up call! The author covers many topics and explains the science behind them, while discussing the pseudo science being tossed around by so many people who should know better. I think we need to bring back critical thinking to our schools. Too many people can't tell the difference between fact and fiction . It's just not taught. Everyone should read this book. It's science broken down into every day English that most people could read and understand. Well-written and well researched.

This book attempts to define pseudoscience, y’all’s about why it is important to be studied by scientists, the history of pseudoscience and skepticism in general, and efforts being made to debunk pseudoscience today.

Overall I greatly enjoyed this book. You can tell that it was very well researched and is a labor of love on the part of the author. It went into many things that I didn’t know about previously and I greatly enjoyed reading about them. The author broke down everything talked about so it was easy for the lay person to understand. I especially liked the deep dive into climate change denial that was included.

I highly recommend this book for fans of nonfiction and fans of books about science in particular.

I selected this book for reading and review because of its foreword by Richard Dawkins, a favorite of mine. My lone but very vigorous complaint about "Shadows of Science" is that Mr. Frazier (the author) first describes skepticism as a fundamental pillar of the scientific method, but later lists eight topics where skepticism may be dismissed as denialism which is a complete non sequitur. Either questioning is allowed, or it is frowned upon. The author cannot have it both ways!
Of the eight topics where, new evidence is to be totally ignored, the most questionable (in my mind) is climate change. Recently, over 1,600 experts offered the following skepticism (or denialism to Mr. Frazier):
There is no climate crisis or existential threat as expressed in catastrophic predictions by activists in the media and academia. As global temperatures gradually increase, human societies will need to make adjustments in the coming century, just as societies have adapted to earlier climate changes. By and large, humans cannot control the climate, which Roger Pielke describes as “the fanciful idea that emissions are a disaster control knob.”
Global temperatures are increasing incrementally, and have been for centuries, but the degree of human influence is uncertain or negligible. “The real question is not whether the globe has warmed recently,” writes Steve Koonin, “but rather to what extent this warming is being caused by humans.”
Rapidly replacing fossil fuels with renewables and electricity by mid-century would be economically risky and may have a negligible effect on global warming. Some say mitigation decrees—such as phasing out the combustion engine and banning gas stoves—are not likely to prevent climate change because humans play a minor role in global climate trends. Others say mitigation is necessary but won’t happen without capable replacement technologies. It’s unrealistic, they say, to force societies to rely on intermittent energy from wind and solar or wager the future on technologies that are still in experimental stages.
The global political push to kill the fossil fuel industry to get to “net zero” and “carbon neutrality” by 2050, as advocated by the United Nations and the Biden administration, will erase millions of jobs and raise energy costs, leading to a prolonged economic depression and political instability. The result would be that developing regions will pay the highest price, while the biggest polluters (China and India) and hostile nations (like Russia and Iran) will simply ignore the net-zero mandate. This could be a case where the cure could be worse than the disease.
Despite the common refrain in the media, there is no evidence that a gradually warming planet is affecting the frequency or intensity of hurricanes, storms, droughts, rainfall, or other weather events. The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has expressed low confidence such weather events can be linked to human activities.
Extreme weather events, such as wildfires and flooding, are not claiming more human lives than previously. The human death toll is largely caused by cold weather, which accounts for eight times as many deaths as hot weather, and overall weather-related mortality has fallen by about 99 percent in the past century. “People are safer from climate-related disasters than ever before,” statistician and author Bjørn Lomborg has said.
Climate science has been hijacked and politicized by activists, creating a culture of self-censorship that’s enforced by a code of silence that Mr. Koonin likens to the Mafia’s omerta. In her 2023 book, “Climate Uncertainty and Risk,” climatologist Judith Curry asks: “How many skeptical papers were not published by activist editorial boards? How many published papers have buried results in order to avoid highlighting findings that conflict with preferred narratives? I am aware of anecdotal examples of each of these actions, but the total number is unknowable.”
Slogans such as “follow the science” and “scientific consensus” are misleading and disingenuous. There is no consensus on many key questions, such as the urgency to cease and desist burning fossil fuels, or the accuracy of computer modeling predictions of future global temperatures. The apparent consensus of imminent disaster is manufactured through peer pressure, intimidation, and research funding priorities, based on the conviction that “noble lies,” “consensus entrepreneurship,” and “stealth advocacy” are necessary to save humanity from itself. “One day PhD dissertations will be written about our current moment of apocalyptic panic,” Mr. Pielke predicts.
The warming of the planet is a complicated phenomenon that will cause some disruptions but will also bring benefits, particularly in agricultural yields and increased vegetation. Some climate skeptics, including the CO2 Coalition, say CO2 is not a pollutant—it is “plant food.” According to NASA the Earth has already been "greening", turning areas near deserts into lush farmlands.