Once you have read Terence Hines' Pseudoscience and the Paranormal (2003, Prometheus Books), you'll hardly believe any popular story fed to you as truth. It turns out that much of what we hear and read is not much more than fairytales. Why it must be so is a matter for future research. In the meantime, we labor under the misconceptions of what Hines calls pseudoscience and the paranormal, the latter a subset of the former. Of course, Hines' effort does not represent the end of such stuff. In 13 chapters, citing specific topics, he lays out a persuasive panorama of junk often called fact. Much of it is the product of what he calls the "constructive nature of human perception." Essentially, the human brain will invent as fact any story that is even circumspectly suggested to it. He didactically digs into the nature of evidence in laboratory parapsychology and finds it wanting. Importantly, he cites a plethora of scientific evidence to support his conclusions.

Take Freudian psychology. It was fed to me as reliable social science at UCLA in the 1950s. Hines debunks it as bad science, right along with psychoanalysis, Jungian thinking, humanistic psychology, spiritualism, psychic readings, psychic crime detection, prophetic dreams, thought pictures and demonic possession. Ghosts, poltergeists, near-death, out-of-body experience and reincarnation receive no better treatment. Astrology, moon madness and biorhythm theory are more of the same ilk. As for UFOs and related phenomena, such as close encounters, photo evidence, abduction, ancient astronauts, pyramid power, Von Daniken, the Dogon and, gasp, the Bermuda Triangle, forget about 'em.

Faith healing drives Hines bonkers, so much so that he lectures the reader on the nature of disease, reminding us of its factuality. Thus faith healing techniques, along with psychic surgery and the role of shrines have not even chance value. Alternative medicine, featuring homeopathy, therapeutic touch, countless herbal remedies and other alternative techniques get no better treatment. Collective delusion, mass hysteria and environmental health scares, often relentlessly driven by media hype, are unsupported by scientific testing. In Chapter 13, "Special Topics," facilitated communication as a cure for autism is thrown into the dust bin, joined by creationism, cryptozoology, dowsing, the magic pendulum, fire-walking, graphology, Kirlian photography, polygraphy, and, of course, the Shroud of Turin.

There are undoubtedly many more untrue presumed phenomena to record, but that will be for an avid author to vacuum up and offer in an ordered compendium for popular use. What Terence Hines does is arm the freethinker, the secularist, with the philosophical underpinning, the scientific methodology and the rhetorical firepower with which to manage the daily grind.

There are undoubtedly many more untrue presumed phenomena to record, but that will be for an avid author to vacuum up and offer in an ordered compendium for popular use. What Terence Hines does is arm the freethinker, the secularist, with the philosophical underpinning, the scientific methodology and the rhetorical firepower with which to manage the daily grind.