Reading List

This is a list of resources I have found useful in writing posts. Like other lists on this site, it will grow.

Most titles in the Books section are linked to The Book Depository. If you click on a link and put in an order, I get a small commission. Since I fund this blog from my own pocket, I hope you will not be offended by this small concession to commercialization – it’s the only funding I am likely to get.

Books

Ariely, Dan 2012, The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty: How we lie to everyone – especially ourselves, Harper Collins, London

Bronowski, Jacob 1953, The Common Sense of Science, Harvard University Press, Cambridge

Bronowski, Jacob 1964, Science and Human Values, Faber and Faber Ltd, London

Carr, Nicholas 2011, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, W. W. Norton & Company, London

Carroll, Sean 2016, The Big Picture: on the origins of life, meaning, and the universe itself, Dutton, New York

Chabris, Christopher F. & Simons, Daniel J. 2010, The Invisible Gorilla : and other ways our intuition deceives us, Harper Collins, London

Chalmers, Alan 1978, What Is This Thing Called Science?, The Open University Press, Milton Keynes

Clark, Theo & Clark, Jef 2014, Humbug!: The skeptic’s field guide to spotting fallacies and deceptive arguments (2nd edn), Nifty Books

Damer, T. Edward 2013, Attacking Faulty Reasoning: A Practical Guide to Fallacy-Free Arguments, Wadsworth, Boston

Dawkins, Richard 1998, Unweaving the Rainbow, Penguin Books, London

Dawkins, Richard 2009, The Greatest Show on Earth : the evidence for evolution, Bantam, London

Ernst, Edzard 2008, Healing, hype or harm? : a critical analysis of complementary or alternative medicine, Societas, Exeter

Ferris, Timothy 2010, The Science of Liberty: Democracy, Reason, and the Laws of Nature, HarperCollins, New York.

Giere, Ronald N., Bickle, John & Mauldin, Robert F. 2006,  Understanding Scientific Reasoning, 5th edn,Thomson Wadsworth, Belmont, California

Godfrey-Smith, Peter 2003, Theory and Reality: an introduction to the philosophy of science, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago

Goldacre, Ben 2008, Bad Science, Fourth Estate, London

Gross, Paul R., Levitt, Norman & Lewis, Martin W. 1996, The Flight from Science and Reason, New York Academy of Sciences, New York.

Gula, Robert J 2007, Nonsense: red herrings, straw men and sacred cows: how we abuse logic in our everyday language, Axios Press, Mount Jackson

Haack, Susan 2007, Defending Science – within reason, Prometheus Books, New York

Kahneman, Daniel 2011, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Penguin, London

Kitcher, P. 2011, Science in a Democratic Society, Prometheus Books, New York

Klein, Naomi 2014, This Changes Everything, Allen Lane, London

McIntyre, Lee 2019, The Scientific Attitude: Defending Science from Denial, Fraud and Pseudoscience, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

McRaney, David 2011, You are Not so Smart, Gotham Books, New York

McRaney, David 2013, You are Now Less Dumb, Gotham Books, New York

Medawar, Peter 1984, Pluto’s Republic, Oxford University Press, Oxford

Mnookin, Seth 2011, The panic virus : fear, myth and the vaccination debate, Simon & Schuster, New York

Offit, Paul A. 2013, Do You Believe in Magic?: The Sense and Nonsense of Alternative Medicine, Harper Collins, New York

Oreskes, Naomi & Conway, Erik M. 2010, Merchants of Doubt, Bloomsbury Press, New York

Otto, Shawn 2016, The War on Science, Milkweed Editions, Minneapolis.

Pigliucci, Massimo 2010, Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago

Pollack, Henry N. 2005, Uncertain Science … Uncertain World, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

Sagan, Carl 1996, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, Ballantine Books, New York

Shapiro, Rose 2008, Suckers : how alternative medicine makes fools of us all, Harvill Secker, London

Shermer, Michael 2002, Why People Believe Weird Things, St. Martin’s Griffin, New York

Shermer, Michael 2006, Why Darwin Matters, Times Books, New York

Silver, Nate 2012, The Signal and the Noise: The art and science of prediction, Penguin books, London

Singh, Simon & Ernst, Edzard 2008, Trick or treatment? : alternative medicine on trial, Bantam, London

Specter, Michael 2009, Denialism, The Penguin Press, New York

Thouless, Robert H. 1953, Straight and Crooked Thinking, Pan Books, London.

Washington, Haydn & Cook, John 2011, Climate change denial : heads in the sand, Earthscan, London

Ziman, John 2000, Real Science: What it is, and what it means, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

Journal Articles

Bokulich, Alisa 2011, How Scientific Models Can Explain, Synthese, Vol. 180, No. 1, 33-45

Cleland, Carol E. 2001, Historical science, experimental science, and the scientific method, Geology, November 2001,Vol. 29; no. 11, p. 987-990

Ioannidis, John P. A. 2005, Why Most Published Research Findings Are False, PLoS Medicine, August 2005, Vol. 2, No. 8, 696-701

Kruger, Justin & Dunning, David 1999, Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 77, No. 6, 1121-1134

Lewandowsky, S., Ecker, U.K.H., Seifert, C.M. & Cook, J. 2012, Misinformation and Its Correction: Continued Influence and Successful Debiasing, Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 13(3) 106–131

Lewandowsky, S., Cook, J., Oberauer, K. & Marriott, M. 2013, Recursive fury: conspiracist ideation in the blogosphere in response to research on conspiracist ideation, Front. Psychol. 4:73. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00073

Lewandowsky S., Gignac G.E., Oberauer K. 2013, The Role of Conspiracist Ideation and Worldviews in Predicting Rejection of Science. PLoS ONE 8(10): e75637. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0075637

McCright, A.M., Dunlap, R.E. 2011, Cool dudes: The denial of climate change among conservative white males in the United States, Global Environ. Change, doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2011.06.003

Sherwood, Steven 2011, Science controversies past and present, Physics Today, October 2011, Vol. 64, No. 10, 39-44

Web pages and publications

Allain, Rhett 2013, What’s Wrong With the Scientific Method?, Dot Physics.

Beyerstein, Barry L. 1996, Distinguishing Science from Pseudoscience, The Centre for Curriculum and Professional Development, Victoria, B C.

Cartier, J., Rudolph, J. & Stewart, J. 2001, The Nature and Structure of Scientific Models, NCISLA

Coker, Rory 2001, Distinguishing Science and Pseudoscience, Quackwatch

Cook, John & Lewandowsky, Stephan 2011, The Debunking Handbook, St. Lucia, Australia: University of Queensland.

Derbyshire, John 2009, Trust Science, National Review Online

Goodstein, David 2000, How Science Works

House of Commons Science and Technology Committee 2011, Peer review in scientific publications, The Stationery Office Limited, London

Kuipers, Benjamin 2005, Why do we believe in electrons, but not in fairies?

McComas, William F. 1998, The principal elements of the nature of science: dispelling the myths, from The Nature of Science in Science Education, Kluwer Academic Publishers

National Academy of Sciences 2009, On Being a Scientist, 3rd edition

Novella, Steven 2011, How To Argue, The NESS.

Partridge, Ernest 2002, Is Science Just Another Dogma?, The Online Gadfly

Sokal, Alan 2008, What is science and why should we care?,  Third Annual Sense About Science lecture. (An updated version of this lecture can now be found in three parts at Scientia Salon: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)

Stokes, Patrick 2015, Science deniers reject authority and facts, The Sydney Morning Herald.

Willingham, Emily 2011, Real science vs. fake science: How can you tell them apart?, Double X Science

Videos

ArguingFromIgnorance 2014, Can We Trust Scientists?, YouTube (11:16)

Hadfield, Peter  2008, The Scientific Method Made Easy, Potholer54 on YouTube (9:54)

Hadfield, Peter  2011, Why the media screw up science Part 1: Sources, Potholer54 on YouTube (13:35)

Harris, Sam 2010, Science can answer moral questions, TED Talks (23:35)

Oreskes, Naomi 2014, Why we should trust scientists, TED Talks (19:14)

Pinker, Steven & Goldstein, Rebecca Newberger 2012, The long reach of reason, TED Talks (15:24)

Shermer, Michael 2008, Why people believe weird things, TED Talks (14:12)

Shermer, Michael 2010, The pattern behind self-deception, TED Talks (19:32)

Specter, Michael 2010, The danger of science denial, TED Talks (19:02)

‘Theramin Trees’ 2013, ‘Science’ of the gaps, YouTube (20:56)