Surviving Armageddon: Solutions for a Threatened Planet
By Bill McGuire
Oxford University Press, £14.99, ISBN 0-19-280571-1

Bill McGuire is a distinguished volcanologist with many scientific and popular publications. In A Guide to the End of the World: Everything You Never Wanted to Know (2002) in particular, he described the various geophysical disasters that threaten our species, and others. (Of course there are other devastating natural evils such as famine and disease.) Here, while reiterating the dangers, he explores what can be done to avoid, mitigate and survive them. These Global Geophysical Events (GGEs or Gee-gees as they are known with inappropriate levity), are few in type, rare in occurrence, but catastrophic in effect. There are five: giant tsunamis, major earthquakes, the impact of a large asteroid or comet, volcanic super-eruptions, and abrupt climate change. The effects depend on various factors, principally size and where they strike.
At the extreme, there is the potential to wipe out most living species, as has happened five times in the past. Climate change is distinct from the others in that it is occurring now, and seems to be due mainly to human activity. In principle, it can be stopped or even reversed. In all cases, however, there is a good deal that can, or could, be done to ensure early warning and lessen the effects.
We are at risk, we have much of the knowledge, but (largely) we lack the will. But it is a different ‘we’ in each case: the first is everyone, the second is scientists, the third is politicians and leaders of opinion. Some of the latter deny the facts, especially of climate change. Most reject measures that would be electorally unpopular, such as restricting air travel, or threaten economic growth and political power. McGuire describes himself as ‘an optimistic pessimist’. He fears the worst, but hopes for the best. His short (238 pp.) book is strongly recommended to anyone who wants the facts.

The March of Unreason: Science, Democracy, and the New Fundamentalism
by Dick Taverne
OUP, £18.99, ISBN 0-19-280485-5

The title is a sexy one for the sceptically-inclined: a brazen invitation to shake our heads at growing cultural insanity and enjoy some pleasurable indignation. Yes, Taverne has seen the enemy and the enemy is … oh dear, it seems to be me. This book turns out to be outside the usual remit of The Skeptic, as it is actually a political polemic claiming that we are all going to hell in a handcart because ‘anti-science eco-fundamentalists’ are … claiming that we are all going to hell in a handcart.
With an unusually high rhetoric-to-meat ratio this book reads like a debating speech (unsurprisingly, as the author was once a well-known politician and lawyer). I used to go in for debating societies myself so I know the tricks: the throwaway phrase gesturing at a hinterland of understanding that one doesn’t quite have, the self-deprecating “I’m no expert” making one sound like an honest broker, the apparently fair-minded concession of minor points.
Taverne unfortunately shoots himself in the foot by writing this way because the overall effect created is of glib untrustworthiness.
Political debate about environmental issues (which he unfairly bundles up with homeopathy and what-have-you) can get extremely nasty and people on both sides make things up, exaggerate, and devote much energy to constructing and demolishing straw men which they insist are true representations of their opponents. How do I know he isn’t doing the same? Two fifths of this book is taken up with a rant about agriculture, in particular GM, doubts about which he caricatures as ninnyish ‘anti-science’. Colin Tudge, a respected science writer with a biology background and specialist experience of the area, wrote the recent So Shall We Reap which expresses some very measured criticisms of conventional agriculture and the proposed spread of GM. I really don’t know if Tudge is right but his views are intellectually respectable; he is not a ninny and not ‘anti-science’. So why should I believe a mere politician (particularly one who foams at the mouth and skates over complicated points) in preference to him?

Martin Parkinson

How to Read Darwin (How to Read)
by Mark Ridley
Granta Books, £6.99 ISBN 1-86207-728-2

How to Read Darwin is one of a new series of slim guides from Granta, the first batch of which also deals with figures as diverse as Freud, Hitler, Nietzsche, de Sade and Wittgenstein. The intention appears to be to emulate the success of series such as Fontana’s Modern Masters and Oxford’s Past Masters, both of which published volumes on Darwin in 1982, the centenary year of his death. “How to Read”, though, claims to take an original approach, skipping biography and cutting to the ideas. Thus, apart from a brief chronology, we hear little about Darwin’s personal life. What we do get is a distillation of the ideas, liberally quoted, with a commentary. Six chapters cover “The Origin of Species” (as it is called throughout), three The Descent of Man and the final one The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals.
As to originality of approach, it is hardly novel to quote quantities of a writer’s own words, though it is novel to dispense with the potted biography. But the attempt to do justice to the complexities of Darwin’s thought is undermined by the marketing decision to limit the number of pages. The extracts, while interesting, seem arbitrary. This might not be an issue with a writer like Wittgenstein, who published relatively little, but we are not told why the selections here are deemed representative of the enormous quantity that Darwin wrote, and his range is barely hinted at.
Where the book does score highly is in setting Darwin’s mid-Victorian ideas in the context of modern discoveries, particularly in genetics, showing what is still of value and what has been superseded. In this regard the book, despite its ridiculous cover, will make a useful contribution to the literature for the busy student. However, one is still left uneasy in these post-modern times by the dogmatic “How to Read”. Perhaps “Ways to Read” would be more appropriate. late the success of series such as Fontana’s Modern Masters and Oxford’s Past Masters, both of which published volumes on Darwin in 1982, the centenary year of his death.
“How to Read”, though, claims to take an original approach, skipping biography and cutting to the ideas. Thus, apart from a brief chronology, we hear little about Darwin’s personal life. What we do get is a distillation of the ideas, liberally quoted, with a commentary. Six chapters cover “The Origin of Species” (as it is called throughout), three The Descent of Man and the final one The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. As to originality of approach, it is hardly novel to quote quantities of a writer’s own words, though it is novel to dispense with the potted biography. But the attempt to do justice to the complexities of Darwin’s thought is undermined by the marketing decision to limit the number of pages. The extracts, while interesting, seem arbitrary. This might not be an issue with a writer like Wittgenstein, who published relatively little, but we are not told why the selections here are deemed representative of the enormous quantity that Darwin wrote, and his range is barely hinted at.
Where the book does score highly is in setting Darwin’s mid-Victorian ideas in the context of modern discoveries, particularly in genetics, showing what is still of value and what has been superseded. In this regard the book, despite its ridiculous cover, will make a useful contribution to the literature for the busy student.
However, one is still left uneasy in these post-modern times by the dogmatic “How to Read”. Perhaps “Ways to Read” would be more appropriate.

Tom Ruffles

Desperately Seeking Paradise: Journeys of a Sceptical Muslim
By Ziauddin Sardar
Granta Publications, £8.99 (pbk), ISBN 1-86207-755-X

I confess I had never heard of Ziauddin Sardar, who has published over forty books and a vast amount of journalism, and has been active in many social enterprises. He is the British-educated son of Pakistani immigrants, born in 1951. He writes with both passion and clarity, and I found the book fascinating. It is the story of his search and struggle, constantly thwarted, for what he sees as the true values of Islam, and their practical implementation. The story is one of incessant travel, both physical and intellectual, and of his interactions with a host of scholars, thinkers, and activists, of all shades of opinion. I take the account to be essentially veracious, with (perhaps) a little literary license when it comes to detailed conversations. What interested me was, first, getting a view of Islam in the modern world from the inside. Islam is still, perhaps, seen by some as monolithic, and often now as extremist. In fact it is, and always has been, highly variegated, driven by factions, and (especially now) in an intellectual, political and spiritual turmoil. It is sometimes said that Islam is in need of a Reformation. Sardar rejects this, arguing that it has already had several. But then so did Christianity before Luther. And the second thing I find interesting is the impression I get of a (in some ways) mediaeval world. The Islam Sardar inhabits seems much like the Christendom of Bede or Chaucer. There is incessant debate about the true meaning of the Qur’an, the revealed word of God, and how to implement it. But there is no hint that the word might not be true at all. Sardar, at least in this book, encounters no non-Muslims, and Islam is accepted like night and day. There is an outside world, but it is intrinsically less civilized and potentially, often actually, hostile. He ends, in the midst of the disasters of the 21st century, with yet another journey:“Paradise awaits”. One might dare to suggest that what is needed is not a Reformation but an Enlightenment.

John Radford

The Obesity Epidemic: Science, Morality and Ideology
Michael Gard & Jan Wright
Routledge, £22.99, ISBN 0415 31896-3

Concern about obesity is nothing new: even Hippocrates saw it as a disease. According to Gard and Wright, scientific understanding has made little real progress since, with current research a mass of contradictions, assumptions and moral bias. Media hype about an ‘epidemic’ has added to the confusion, playing on public fears about the risks of modern life. Methods of measuring obesity are inconsistent, research is flawed, conflicting ‘evidence’ abounds, and even the World Health Organization acknowledges the difficulty of evaluating health consequences of obesity.
This is a deliberately controversial book, challenging the idea that diet/exercise are directly related to weight or that TV/computer use in children has any proven link with obesity, for example. It quite rightly points out (repeatedly) that moral censure permeates research (fat = lazy, gluttonous, weak-willed), that there are socio-economic and political factors involved and that every society since the Ancient Greeks sees itself in decline from some supposed Golden Age. However, these are fairly obvious, unoriginal ideas. The book is highly repetitive, sometimes contradicts itself and is in places as over-generalising as those it criticises. The socio-economic theory is not sufficiently expanded either. It does not propose any new theories, preferring to attack or repeat the obvious.
The authors believe science has failed miserably and should be abandoned: “the ability to think beyond science is a great untapped resource” because “there are some domains of life where scientific knowledge is crucial and it is probably right that scientists have the final word. Overweight and obesity do not constitute one of those domains… The reason why the ‘obesity epidemic’ has come about could not be less important”.
After 200 strident pages, the flaccid solution is that we should either “get over body weight all together” or “leave the model of body as machine behind”. Despite the weight of evidence presented, some may find the conclusion that obesity is a moral and ideological issue, not a scientific matter, unsubstantiated, unoriginal and woolly. This is a missed opportunity to make some highly valid points.

Tessa Kendall

The Science of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”
by Michael Hanlon
Palgrave Macmillan, £16.99, ISBN 1403945772

I approached this book with trepidation, not being a Guide fan. I heard none of the radio programmes, have read none of the books, and haven’t seen the film, though I saw some of the television series. But the title is misleading: it isn’t about the Guide, contains little about it, and you don’t need to be a fan to understand it. It is an excellent discussion of many topics raised by the Guide by the Science Editor of the Daily Mail, previously noted for debunking ‘alternative medicine’.
Hanlon leads us on a lively romp through aliens (where are they? – Roswell is “barely even worth a mention”, but he gives the solution to Rendlesham, with apt comment on people’s tendency to see what they expect to see); arguments for the existence of God; the end of the universe; the big bang; time travel; machine translation; teleportation; other worlds; and the interesting fact that if you Google ‘answer to life, the universe and everything’, you get 42 (I tried it and it’s true). The best parts are, first, Hanlon’s withering scorn for the “drivel” (a good example of his robust style) that conscious machines are around the corner. When the film 2001: A Space Odyssey was made in the mid-1960s, it was indeed seriously predicted that we would be talking to computers in a way almost indistinguishable from a conversation with a real person by, well, 2001. As you’ve probably noticed, it didn’t happen, and still hasn’t. (Another example of his style is the wonderful sentence: “Buses occupy a parallel universe that almost but never quite coincides with your own.”) Second, his discussion of people’s misunderstanding of the laws of chance, with surveys showing that people think that vanishingly tiny risks like nuclear power and air and rail travel are more significant than truly risky activities like riding a bicycle, driving and smoking (driving to the airport is vastly more dangerous than the flight). Drive your children to school and you will protect them from assault, abduction etc. But the chances of a child dying in a motor accident are at least 100 times greater than of being murdered by a stranger, so in driving your children to school you are actually exposing them to far greater danger than if they walked.
This is an excellent book exploring fundamentally serious matters in a most entertaining way. Rather a shame that many people will ignore it because they think it’s about the Guide!

Ray Ward

The Men Who Stare at Goats
by Jon Ronson
Picador, £7.99 (pbk), ISBN 0330375482

Jon Ronson brings his inimitable journalistic talent to bear on the subject of how some bizarre, even unhinged, thinking came to infect the world of US Military Intelligence over the last thirty years, up to and including the ‘War on Terror’. The title refers to attempts by a group of ‘Psychic Warriors’, drawn from the Special Forces, to stop the hearts of tethered goats by simply staring at them. With dogged persistence and skilful tongue-incheek questioning, Ronson always seems able to get his interviewees to reveal more than they probably would have wished and this can make for some riveting reading. Following an interview with Uri Geller in 2002, the trail leads to General Stubblebine, former Chief of Intelligence in the US Army, who became convinced that he could learn to pass through a solid wall by psychic means, and thence to Col. Jim Channon (Retd.). Channon, a disillusioned Vietnam veteran, became obsessed with the wilder ideas of the Californian New Age movement and then tried to sell them back to the Army with the promise that methods supposedly designed to ‘heal’ people could also be used to disorient and disarm them.
While Channon himself might have been motivated, at least in part, by purely humanitarian ideals when he suggested setting up a First Earth Battalion of Warrior Monks, the consequences, twenty years on, may be crazier and more horrible than anything he could have imagined. In May 2003 an American PsyOps unit imprisoned Iraqi detainees in a metal freight-container and bombarded them with music (including the I Love You song from the Barney the Dinosaur children’s cartoon) for twelve hours at a time, and Ronson shows a clear link between this kind of treatment and Channon’s original ideas. As the book points out, it can be difficult for even the most agnostic and sceptical among us to accept that our military and political leaders might operate simultaneously in both normal and supernatural dimensions. Well, here is plenty of evidence that they can.

Mike Hutton

Eight Preposterous Propositions: From the Genetics of Homosexuality to the Benefits of Global Warming
By Robert Ehrlich
Princeton University Press, £11.95 (pbk), ISBN 0-691-12404-3

In his previous book, Nine Crazy Ideas in Science, Ehrlich discussed outlandish scientific ideas and gave them a “cuckoo” rating according to how crazy he reckoned they were. Having a high cuckoo rating didn’t mean that there was no good evidence for a hypothesis, but reflected its sheer strangeness, as instanced by the disturbingly paradoxical ideas of quantum physics. In this new study, he replaces that grading system with degrees of flakiness, from zero to a maximum of four, to rate ideas that are not so much technical puzzles for scientists but issues that may concern the general public. His aim is to help the lay reader to assess the evidence and the reasoning behind the propositions in question.
These propositions are actually expressed as questions: Is homosexuality primarily innate?, Is Intelligent Design a scientific alternative to evolution?, Are people getting smarter or dumber?, Can we influence matter by thought alone?, Should you worry about global warming?, Is complex life in the universe very rare?, Can a sugar pill cure you?, and Should you worry about your cholesterol?
The chapter on that man-made plague, Intelligent Design, is suitably damning, yet, bizarrely, Ehrlich only bestows a 3-flake rating. The excuse for this is that human intervention in how organisms reproduce will increasingly outweigh natural selection, thus reflecting human design. Perhaps he has forgotten the detailed discussions of artificial selection in Darwin’s work. At any rate, this is an odd lapse. The chapter investigating the placebo effect is perhaps the most interesting part of the book. Ehrlich warns of the unblinding of double-blind tests using passive placebos (that don’t mimic drug side-effects): “studies show that with passive placebos between 78 and 88 percent of patients and physicians in antidepressant trials can correctly identify whether the drug being administered is the placebo or the active drug, based on the presence or absence of side effects and other subtle cues.” This unblinding would boost the apparent relative effect of the drug being tested.

Since useful and well-written books about complex issues seem to be quite rare in the universe, this one is warmly recommended.

Paul Taylor