The Unpersuadables: Adventures with the Enemies of Science, by Will Storr
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The Unpersuadables: Adventures with the Enemies of Science, by Will Storr
Download Ebook The Unpersuadables: Adventures with the Enemies of Science, by Will Storr
While excavating fossils in the tropics of Australia with a celebrity creationist, Will Storr asked himself a simple question. Why don’t facts work? Why, that is, did the obviously intelligent man beside him sincerely believe in Adam and Eve, the Garden of Eden and a six-thousand-year-old Earth, in spite of the evidence against them?It was the start of a journey that would lead Storr all over the world—from Texas to Warsaw to the Outer Hebrides—meeting an extraordinary cast of modern heretics whom he tries his best to understand. Storr tours Holocaust sites with famed denier David Irving and a band of neo-Nazis, experiences his own murder during “past life regression” hypnosis, discusses the looming One World Government an iconic climate skeptic, and investigates the tragic life and death of a woman who believed her parents were high priests in a baby-eating cult.Using a unique mix of highly personal memoir, investigative journalism, and the latest research from neuroscience and experimental psychology, Storr reveals how the stories we tell ourselves about the world invisibly shape our beliefs, and how the neurological “hero maker” inside us all can so easily lead to self-deception, toxic partisanship and science denial.
The Unpersuadables: Adventures with the Enemies of Science, by Will Storr- Amazon Sales Rank: #1100885 in Books
- Published on: 2015-03-03
- Released on: 2015-03-03
- Format: International Edition
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 7.99" h x .94" w x 5.36" l, 1.00 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 368 pages
Review "The subtle brilliance of The Unpersuadables is Mr. Storr's style of letting his subjects hang themselves with their own words." —Michael Shermer, The Wall Street Journal"A tour de force . . . A searching, extraordinarily thoughtful exploration of what it means to believe anything . . . There are entire novels that do less than Storr achieves here in a mere 30 pages . . . Running through all these stories is Storr’s growing uncertainty about certainty." —Laura Miller, Salon "Drawing upon his well-documented store of inquisitiveness about superstition, eccentricity, and idiosyncratic beliefs, Storr has delivered an accessible look at the brain’s capacity for adopting unconventional ideas . . . Storr’s distillation of current thinking on the subject is a nice primer for the non-expert reader." —The Daily Beast"Throws new and salutary light on all our conceits and beliefs. Very valuable, and a great read to boot, this is investigative journalism of the highest order." —Independent, Book of the Week "Storr can open chapters like a stage conjurer, and his prose has an easy, laconic style embracing Jon Ronson’s taste for the fabulously weird and Louis Theroux’s ability to put his subjects at ease. He is a funny and companionable guide . . . [who] confounds expectations." —Guardian
About the Author WILL STORR is a journalist who has dressed up as a woman to impress the transsexual leader of radical pro-suicide campaigners, trained in jungle warfare with the British army, and has been arrested and then deported under armed guard from Los Angeles. He is the author of Will Storr vs. The Supernatural and has written for many publications and won many awards.
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Most helpful customer reviews
64 of 69 people found the following review helpful. It Grew on Me By Book Fanatic This book is subtitled Adventures With the Enemies of Science and so I expected it to be a hard-hitting book debunking the ideas of psuedoescience and the extreme fringe. That is not at all what it turned out to be and at first I felt the author was much too sympathetic with the "unpersuadables". But as I continued reading through the book I found myself appreciating the author's perspective more and more and his approach which refuses to demonize the "enemies of science".This book provides the reader with a view of what the unpersuadables are like that at times is exasperating and at other times is fairly sympathetic. In the end one is left with the conclusion that they are our fellow human beings and are often just as sincere if not more so in their beliefs than the skeptics are.The stories in this book are entertaining and I think they are worth considering. We do not have to demonize one another just because we disagree whether the positions one holds or disputes are mainstream or on the fringes.Recommended.
48 of 52 people found the following review helpful. In a journalist's entertaining engagement with strange believers, science is a major casualty. By Peter Bianco This is a book about unreliable observers written by an unreliable observer. The author states that “most humans, not least myself, are an incoherent mess of madness and sanity.” While the self-acknowledged irrationality of the investigator of irrationality makes for dramatic situations that the author skillfully weaves into his story, it also leads to confusion in the author’s search for truth. Storr openly confesses his strong sympathy for the eccentrics he interviews, and demonstrates a painful (if often entertaining) difficulty in confronting and conclusively reporting the errors in their positions, whether they be from an advocate of creationism or a proponent of the moral innocence of Adolph Hitler. In contrast to his emotional attraction to the irrationalists he interviews, Storr also exhibits an open hostility to debunkers of irrational beliefs. He strangely includes among his subjects one such person, James Randi, and his interview with him is the only antagonistic one in the book. While Storr is often good at identifying irrational bias and its sources, he is not so good at separating the belief from the believer: Randi’s motivations for his investigations may (or may not) be irrational ones, but they do not determine the truth or falsity of his conclusions.A corollary of Storr’s personal attraction to strange believers is his failure (or lack of desire) to grasp the essentials of the scientific method. He frequently ignores large bodies of data and well-confirmed theory that demonstrate the falsity of the positions of his irrational subjects. For example, in his discussion of homeopathy he never cites the basic dose-response phenomenon universally observed in medical science, nor does he even hint at the existence of a massive body of high-quality, strong scientific evidence that ESP phenomena do not exist. He refers to “scientific dogma” as if scientific claims against various irrational beliefs are as dogmatic as the irrational claims themselves; thus all claims, in the author’s emotional view, seem pretty much the same at heart, and Randi is as wacky as is the man who claims that he communicates by mental telepathy with his terrier. But most damaging for his analyses, Mr. Storr shows no appreciation for the cumulative effect of the scientific process, how science works through the accretion of the results of hypothesis testing by scientists who examine each other’s work and either confirm or falsify existing claims, leading to a net result that is independent of individual emotion and bias.On the positive side, Storr’s account of the origin and nature of human irrationality is revealing, clear and convincing. His writing is effective and often highly evocative. And perhaps most usefully, his highly personal and confessedly muddled account of muddled thinkers invites the reader to reflect on the reader's own biases and on the virtues (and difficulty) of achieving modesty and balance in striving after truth.
19 of 21 people found the following review helpful. Explains a Lot By William Whipple III Why do people not only adopt their own views of how the world works, but hold these views tenaciously – even in the face of evidence to the contrary – and feel compelled to attack the views of others who disagree?Will Storr’s theory, admirably supported by interviews with a series of people with very pronounced and often controversial views, is that human beings need a story that places them in the scheme of things and provides assurance that their lives matter.Thus, to use one of the examples that is given, what happens when a global warming alarmist argues with a global warming skeptic like Lord Christopher Monckton? “It is not a matter of data versus data, it is hero narrative versus hero narrative . . . David versus David . . . a clash of worlds.”When things get teed up this way, it’s easy to be fooled by our own minds – which will look for evidence to support the chosen position, assure us that we’re right, and dismiss intellectual opponents as misguided or worse.So should one conclude there is no such thing as “truth,” as human beings exist in their own versions of reality? Or is there some way to break the power of stories and determine how things really work?The story-breaking method is supposed to be science, which tests theories based on the actual evidence, but it turns out that scientists (such as investigators who set out to debunk any theories that suggest paranormal capabilities, e.g., foresight or extrasensory perception) can be just as fallible and dishonest as the rest of us.While I’m not about to believe that Hitler knew nothing about the Holocaust or the creation story in the Bible is literally true, the other controversies that are explored seem less susceptible to black and white answers. Maybe brain waves do emanate beyond the physical boundaries of our skulls (some recent research suggests that “mind reading” may be possible after all), homeopathic remedies work in some cases (if only due to the placebo effect), and the global warming debate is about politics rather than science.If there is hope, Storr seems to be saying, it lies in humility. We may or may not change our minds about things, but we should try to understand why other people hold different views and consider whether they might actually have a point. Amen!
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