Fair, witty appraisal of cranks, quacks, and quackeries of science and pseudoscience: hollow earth, Velikovsky, orgone energy, Dianetics, flying saucers, Bridey Murphy, food and medical fads, and much more.

Reviews fads, hoaxes, and cults propagated under the guise of being scientifically founded and proven

No one misses the onslaught of claims about reforming modern medical care. How doctors should be paid, how hospitals should be paid or governed, how much patients should pay when sick in co-payments, how the quality of care could be improved, and how governments and other buyers could better control the costs of care ? all find expression in the explosion of medical care conference proceedings, op-eds, news bulletins, journal articles, and books. This collection of articles takes up a key set of what the author regards as particularly misleading fads and fashions ? developments that produce a startling degree of foolishness in contemporary discussions of how to organize, deliver, finance, pay for and regulate medical care services in modern industrial democracies. The policy fads addressed include the celebration of explicit rationing as a major cost control instrument, the belief in a ?basic package? of health insurance benefits to constrain costs, the faith that contemporary cross-national research can deliver a large number of transferable models, and the notion that broadening the definition of what is meant by health will constitute some sort of useful advance in practice.Contents: Fads in Medical Care Policy and Politics: The Rhetoric and Reality of ManagerialismHow Not to Think About ?Managed Care?Medical Care and Public Policy: The Benefits and Burdens of Asking Fundamental QuestionsMedicare and Political Analysis: Omissions, Understandings, and MisunderstandingsComparative Perspectives and Policy Learning in the World of Health CareHow Not to Think About Medicare Reform Readership: Graduate students in public policy, comparative politics, management, nursing, medicine, and social sciences; medical writers; medical professionals.

A prominent popular science writer presents simple instructions for 100 illustrated experiments. Memorable, easily understood experiments illuminate principles related to astronomy, chemistry, physiology, psychology, mathematics, topology, probability, acoustics, other areas.

Best known as the longtime writer of the Mathematical Games column for Scientific American—which introduced generations of readers to the joys of recreational mathematics—Martin Gardner has for decades pursued a parallel career as a devastatingly effective debunker of what he once famously dubbed "fads and fallacies in the name of science." It is mainly in this latter role that he is onstage in this collection of choice essays. When You Were a Tadpole and I Was a Fish takes aim at a gallery of amusing targets, ranging from Ann Coulter's qualifications as an evolutionary biologist to the logical fallacies of precognition and extrasensory perception, from Santa Claus to The Wizard of Oz, from mutilated chessboards to the little-known "one-poem poet" Langdon Smith (the original author of this volume's title line). The writings assembled here fall naturally into seven broad categories: Science, Bogus Science, Mathematics, Logic, Literature, Religion and Philosophy, and Politics. Under each heading, Gardner displays an awesome level of erudition combined with a wicked sense of humor.

A chronological listing of scientific discovery and technological invention.

A collection of science experiments exploring such topics as apples, blood, and feet smell.