---
title: "Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science"
chunk: 2/3
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fads_and_Fallacies_in_the_Name_of_Science"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:32:12.123271+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

In the Name of Science
the introductory chapter
Flat and Hollow
the Flat Earth theory of Wilbur Glenn Voliva
the Hollow Earth theories of John Cleves Symmes, Jr. and Cyrus Reed Teed
Monsters of Doom
Immanuel Velikovsky’s Worlds in Collision
William Whiston’s A New Theory of the Earth
Ignatius Donnelly’s Ragnarok; Hanns Hörbiger’s Welteislehre and Hörbiger’s disciple Hans Schindler Bellamy.
The Forteans
Charles Fort, Tiffany Thayer and the Fortean Society
The Hutchins-Adler Great Books Movement: "most of them regard scientists, on the whole, as a stupid lot."
Flying Saucers
Kenneth Arnold, the Mantell UFO Incident
Raymond Palmer, Richard Shaver, Donald Keyhoe, Frank Scully, Gerald Heard and the Unidentified flying object movement.
Zig-Zag-and-Swirl
Alfred Lawson and his "Lawsonomy"
Down with Einstein!
Joseph Battell, Thomas H. Graydon, George Francis Gillette, Jeremiah J. Callahan and others.
Sir Isaac Babson
Roger Babson and the Gravity Research Foundation.
Dowsing Rods and Doodlebugs
Solco Walle Tromp and radiesthesia
Kenneth Roberts, Henry Goss and their dowsing.
Under the Microscope
Andrew Crosse, Henry Charlton Bastian, Charles Wentworth Littlefield and others who claimed to observe spontaneous generation of living forms.
Geology versus Genesis
Philip Henry Gosse and his Omphalos
George McCready Price and The New Geology
Mortimer Adler’s writings on evolution.
Hilaire Belloc’s debate with H. G. Wells.
Lysenkoism
Lamarck and Lamarckism; Lysenko and Lysenkoism
Apologists for Hate
Hans F. K. Günther and “nordicism”
Charles Carroll, Madison Grant, Lothrop Stoddard, and “scientific racism”.
Atlantis and Lemuria
Ignatius Donnelly (again), Lewis Spence and Atlantis
Madame Blavatsky, James Churchward and Lemuria
The Great Pyramid
John Taylor, Charles Piazzi Smyth, Charles Taze Russell and others with their theories about the Great Pyramid of Giza.
Medical Cults
Samuel Hahnemann, The Organon of the Healing Art, and homeopathy.
Naturopathy, with iridiagnosis, zone therapy and Alexander technique.
Andrew Taylor Still and osteopathy.
Daniel D. Palmer and chiropractic.
Medical Quacks
Elisha Perkins
Albert Abrams and his defender Upton Sinclair.
Ruth Drown
Dinshah Pestanji Framji Ghadiali
color therapy
Gurdjieff
Aleister Crowley
Edgar Cayce
(in the Appendix) Hoxsey Therapy and Krebiozen
Food Faddists
Horace Fletcher and Fletcherism
William Howard Hay and the Dr. Hay diet
Vegetarianism ("We need not be concerned here with the ethical arguments...")
J. I. Rodale and organic farming
Rudolf Steiner, Ehrenfried Pfeiffer, anthroposophy and biodynamic agriculture.
Gayelord Hauser
Nutrilite
Dudley J. LeBlanc and Hadacol
Throw Away Your Glasses!
William Horatio Bates, the Bates method, Aldous Huxley, The Art of Seeing.
Eccentric Sexual Theories
Arabella Kenealy
Bernarr Macfadden
John R. Brinkley
Frank Harris
John Humphrey Noyes and the Oneida Community
Alice Bunker Stockham and “karezza”
Orgonomy
Wilhelm Reich and “orgone”
Dianetics
L. Ron Hubbard, Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. (The term Scientology had only just been introduced when Gardner's book was published.)
General Semantics, Etc.
Alfred Korzybski, Samuel I. Hayakawa and “general semantics”
Jacob L. Moreno and “psychodrama”
From Bumps to Handwriting
Francis Joseph Gall and phrenology
physiognomy; palmistry
graphology
ESP and PK
Joseph Banks Rhine, extra-sensory perception and psychokinesis
Nandor Fodor
Upton Sinclair (again) and Mental Radio
Max Freedom Long
 Bridey Murphy and Other Matters
Morey Bernstein and Bridey Murphy
A final plea for orthodoxy and responsibility in publishing

== History ==
The 1957 Dover publication is a revised and expanded version of In the Name of Science, which was published by G. P. Putnam's Sons in 1952.  The subtitle boldly states the book's theme: "The curious theories of modern pseudoscientists and the strange, amusing and alarming cults that surround them. A study in human gullibility". As of 2005, it had been reprinted at least 30 times.
The book was expanded from an article first published in the Antioch Review in 1950, and in the preface to the first edition, Gardner thanks the Review for allowing him to develop the article as the starting point of his book. Not all material in the article is carried over to the book. For example, in the article, Gardner writes:

The reader may wonder why a competent scientist does not publish a detailed refutation of Reich's absurd biological speculations. The answer is that the informed scientist doesn't care, and would, in fact, damage his reputation by taking the time to undertake such a thankless task.

And comments in a footnote:

It is not within the scope of this paper, however, to discuss technical criteria by which hypotheses are given high, low, or negative degrees of confirmation. Our purpose is simply to glance at several examples of a type of scientific activity which fails completely to conform to scientific standards, but at the same time is the result of such intricate mental activity that it wins temporary acceptance by many laymen insufficiently informed to recognize the scientist's incompetence. Although there obviously is no sharp line separating competent from incompetent research, and there are occasions when a scientific "orthodoxy" may delay the acceptance of novel views, the fact remains that the distance between the work of competent scientists and the speculations of a Voliva or Velikovsky is so great that a qualitative difference emerges which justifies the label of "pseudo-science." Since the time of Galileo the history of pseudo-science has been so completely outside the history of science that the two streams touch only in the rarest of instances.

While in the book, Gardner writes:

If someone announces that the moon is made of green cheese, the professional astronomer cannot be expected to climb down from his telescope and write a detailed refutation.  “A fairly complete textbook of physics would be only part of the answer to Velikovsky,” writes Prof. Laurence J. Lafleur, in his excellent article on "Cranks and Scientists" (Scientific Monthly, Nov., 1951), "and it is therefore not surprising that the scientist does not find the undertaking worth while."

And in the wrap-up of the chapter: