The Pseudoscience Wars: Who Safeguards Science?
The Pseudoscience Wars: Immanuel Velikovsky and the Birth of the Modern Fringe
by Michael D. Gordin
The University of Chicago Press, 291 pp, $29
IN THE MONTHS since Todd Akin, the GOP candidate for Senate in Missouri, made his career-crushing gaffe about “legitimate rape,” columnists and medical professionals countrywide have publicly debunked his “understanding” as misogynist and ignorant, a symptom of loony right-wing fringe. Akin’s assertion that “the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down” has been called “just nuts” in The New York Times, “folklore” on CNN.com, and “pseudoscientific” by publications including The Atlantic, The Economist, The Washington Post, and the Kansas City Star.
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The Pseudoscience Wars is a relatively slim volume, but Gordin siphons into it an overwhelming amount of information, often leading readers waist-deep into the reeds in his effort to prove that context can ascribe relevance to the wackiest of theories. His “detours” are necessary to our understanding of the stakes and contradictions of Velikovsky’s poor reception, but they could be condensed—and not by peer review. Gordin has the professorial quality of being able to retroactively explain tens of his own pages with a pithy one-liner; one wishes occasionally for more of this concision.
But Gordin shines when sketching personalities with primary sources. The book’s most delightful section recounts Velikovsky’s attempt to restore his own credibility by courting the friendship of Albert Einstein, who lived only “a longish walk” away from him in Princeton, New Jersey. Their acquaintanceship is alternately hilarious and heartbreaking: Velikovsky wanted Einstein’s respect and endorsement, Einstein wanted only a Jew with whom he could speak German. Einstein, who had a soft spot for people whose novel ideas had been quelled, shrugged Velikovsky off in letters. “I consider him gifted, but uncritical,” he told his longtime companion. And he reported to a colleague: “No, it really isn’t a bad book. The only trouble with it is, it is crazy.”
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The Pseudoscience Wars is a relatively slim volume, but Gordin siphons into it an overwhelming amount of information, often leading readers waist-deep into the reeds in his effort to prove that context can ascribe relevance to the wackiest of theories. His “detours” are necessary to our understanding of the stakes and contradictions of Velikovsky’s poor reception, but they could be condensed—and not by peer review. Gordin has the professorial quality of being able to retroactively explain tens of his own pages with a pithy one-liner; one wishes occasionally for more of this concision.
But Gordin shines when sketching personalities with primary sources. The book’s most delightful section recounts Velikovsky’s attempt to restore his own credibility by courting the friendship of Albert Einstein, who lived only “a longish walk” away from him in Princeton, New Jersey. Their acquaintanceship is alternately hilarious and heartbreaking: Velikovsky wanted Einstein’s respect and endorsement, Einstein wanted only a Jew with whom he could speak German. Einstein, who had a soft spot for people whose novel ideas had been quelled, shrugged Velikovsky off in letters. “I consider him gifted, but uncritical,” he told his longtime companion. And he reported to a colleague: “No, it really isn’t a bad book. The only trouble with it is, it is crazy.”
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