Exposed!: Ouija, Firewalking, and Other Gibberish - Hardcover

Broch, Henri

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0801892465 ISBN 13: 9780801892462

Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009

Synopsis

From horoscopes to telekinesis to the Shroud of Turin, much of what is popularly accepted as a mystical or paranormal phenomenon is, in fact, bunk. Henri Broch’s charged deconstruction of these and other acts reveals the hucksterism of pseudoscience.

Broch provides a scientific explanation for what many accept as supernatural or psychic. He explains how some tricks, such as bending silverware with the mind, actually work. He details plausible, scientifically grounded alternative explanations for others, such as dowsing, which is the practice of finding by nonscientific means hidden veins of water, gems, metals, and other materials under the earth. Broch's hands-on experiments demystify the mysterious and explain the inexplicable.

Featuring a foreword by Nobel laureate Georges Charpak and translated from French by Bart K. Holland, this persuasively argued and firmly scientific book exposes some of history's most persistent bamboozling. Be forewarned, you may never be taken in again!

About this title

About the Author:

Henri Broch is a professor at the University of Nice. He is the coauthor of Debunked: ESP, Telekinesis, and Other Pseudoscience, also published by Johns Hopkins.

From Publishers Weekly:

In this rational look at dowsing, ESP, astrology and other pseudo-scientific phenomena, physicist Broch exposes the trickery employed by paranormal practitioners and teaches readers how to recreate their own so-called supernatural effects at home. His examination of the shroud of Turin, for example, calls on research from the fourteenth century to the present to conclude the shroud is a hoax, created to profit a particular church, and details how Broch made his own shroud at home. Readers will also learn how to concoct saint's blood, hold hot coals, and complete controlled ouija experiments. Broch also covers circular reasoning, snowballing of anecdotal evidence, escalation of commitment and other techniques used to explain and defend paranormal phenomena. He counsels for an education system focused on reason and skepticism, and for consumers to pay attention to small details and motivation in practitioner justifications: "It's not so easy to separate the wheat from the chaff when so many publications seek to mystify rather than demystify."
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About this edition

• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0801892465
• ISBN 13: 9780801892462
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 168