He does not suggest teaching scientists to write. He talks about the failure of the educational system to teach children science. There is, however, one point he left out. He could easily have nailed pseudoscience, dismissed alien abductions and argued for scientific thinking as essential to democracy - at half the length. Sagan's manuscript had been abducted by editors. Indeed, a reader cannot help wishing that Mr. It takes a little less than half a page in a book that is more than 400 pages long, with more than its fair share of wind. He writes, ''Let me here mention a few of the cases where I've been wrong,''Īnd lists five. Sagan may be stuffy, but he is seldom wrong, a point made quite clear in a section describing the error-correction mechanisms of science. He asks, ''that we're undergoing a massive but generally overlooked invasion by alien sexual abusers, or that people are experiencing some unfamiliar internal mental state they do not understand?'' And he describes an earlier age's similar fantasies of nighttime visits of succubi and incubi. He notes how strange it is that the only extraterrestrials to visit us are so like human beings in basic form.
Primary target is the widespread belief in alien abductions. While he touches on various sorts of pseudoscience and antiscience, including repressed memories of all sorts, creationism, belief in miracles and, to his credit, the claims of tobacco companies that cigarettes have not been shown to be harmful, Mr.
The demons begin to stir.'' He could write for the tabs.
The siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive.'' He adds: ''The candle flame gutters. ''I worry that, especially as the millennium edges nearer, pseudoscience and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, Sagan does a good job of excluding whimsy from his own book, although he has a weakness for the apocalyptic. Whimsy, make it difficult for the public to distinguish real perils from tabloid fiction and conceivably can impede our ability to take precautionary steps to mitigate the danger.'' Seldom before has a tabloid been charged Paper about a doomsday asteroid about to hit the Earth, he notes that there is a real long-term statistical threat of an asteroid impact with Earth: ''Stories like this suffuse the subject with apocalyptic exaggeration and In commenting on another story in the same He knows perfectly well that Weekly World News is a supermarket tabloid that revels in imaginative trashiness. In his new book, Carl Sagan, the scientist who once delighted millions with his television tales of stars and galaxies, casts a bilious eye on pseudoscience, antiscience and the big-headed alien who frequently graces the cover of Weekly World News. The Demon- Haunted World Science as a Candle in the Dark. The New York Times: Book Review Search Article
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