Download or read book Scientists and Scoundrels written by Robert Silverberg and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2007-06-01 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As if history and nature had not provided wonders enough, through the ages humans themselves have contrived more marvels to deceive one another. Sometimes they have concocted evidence when none was available to prove pet theories; sometimes their intention has been to impress or defraud; sometimes they have acted merely for sport. ø Robert Silverberg tells the stories of a baker's dozen of these scientific hoaxers in a lively, good-humored book that ranges through time and across continents. Here are perpetual-motion machines and space rockets, men on the moon and serpents in the sea. The rogues? gallery is a varied one: Dr. Mesmer, who cast his hypnotic spell on eighteenth-century Paris; Charles Dawson, whose Piltdown Man challenged evolution; Dr. Cook, with his tale of ?discovering? the North Pole; and many others. ø These are fascinating stories and more than just entertainment. The author explains the scientific background against which the hoaxes appeared and the detective work that led to their exposure. The schemers teach us to be alert, to challenge the evidence, and to appreciate the healthy skepticism that characterizes the scientific method.
Download or read book Scientists and Scoundrels written by Silverberg Robert and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As if history and nature had not provided wonders enough, through the ages humans themselves have contrived more marvels to deceive one another. Sometimes they have concocted evidence when none was available to prove pet theories; sometimes their intention has been to impress or defraud; sometimes they have acted merely for sport.Robert Silverberg tells the stories of a baker's dozen of these scientific hoaxers in a lively, good-humored book that ranges through time and across continents. Here are perpetual-motion machines and space rockets, men on the moon and serpents in the sea. The rogues' gallery is a varied one: Dr. Mesmer, who cast his hypnotic spell on eighteenth-century Paris; Charles Dawson, whose Piltdown Man challenged evolution; Dr. Cook, with his tale of "discovering" the North Pole; and many others.These are fascinating stories and more than just entertainment. The author explains the scientific background against which the hoaxes appeared and the detective work that led to their exposure. The schemers teach us to be alert, to challenge the evidence, and to appreciate the healthy skepticism that characterizes the scientific method.Fantasy & Science Fiction Grandmaster Robert Silverberg brings the personalities, science, and events of these amazing frauds to vivid and relevant life.
Download or read book Scientists and Scoundrels written by Robert Silverberg and published by . This book was released on 1965 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exposes the hoaxes which scientists have devised to deceive their peers and explains the scientific background against which these hoaxes appeared and the detective work leading to their discovery.
Download or read book Scandals and Scoundrels written by Ron Robin and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2004-10-11 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ron Robin takes an intriguing look at the shifting nature of academic and public discourse in this incisive consideration of recent academic scandals—including charges of plagiarism against Stephen Ambrose, Derek Freeman's attempt to debunk Margaret Mead's research, Michael Bellesiles's alleged fabrication of an early America without weapons, Joseph Ellis's imaginary participation in major historical events of the 1960s, Napoleon Chagnon's creation and manipulation of a "Stone Age people," and accusations that Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchú's testimony on the Maya holocaust was in part fiction. Scandals and Scoundrels makes the case that, contrary to popular imagery, we're not living in particularly deviant times and there is no fundamental flaw permeating a decadent academy. Instead, Robin argues, latter-day scandals are media events, tailored for the melodramatic and sensationalist formats of mass mediation. In addition, the contentious and uninhibited nature of cyberdebates fosters acrimonious exposure. Ron convincingly demonstrates that scandals are part of a necessary process of rule making and reinvention rather than a symptom of the bankruptcy of the scientific enterprise.
Download or read book Scoundrels written by Timothy Zahn and published by Random House Digital, Inc.. This book was released on 2013 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Han Solo, Chewbacca, and Lando Calrissian work together on a potentially lucrative heist in the hopes of paying of Jabba the Hutt's bounty on Han's head.
Download or read book Charles Darwin s Barnacle and David Bowie s Spider written by Stephen B. Heard and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-17 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An engaging history of the surprising, poignant, and occasionally scandalous stories behind scientific names and their cultural significance Ever since Carl Linnaeus’s binomial system of scientific names was adopted in the eighteenth century, scientists have been eponymously naming organisms in ways that both honor and vilify their namesakes. This charming, informative, and accessible history examines the fascinating stories behind taxonomic nomenclature, from Linnaeus himself naming a small and unpleasant weed after a rival botanist to the recent influx of scientific names based on pop-culture icons—including David Bowie’s spider, Frank Zappa’s jellyfish, and Beyoncé’s fly. Exploring the naming process as an opportunity for scientists to express themselves in creative ways, Stephen B. Heard’s fresh approach shows how scientific names function as a window into both the passions and foibles of the scientific community and as a more general indicator of the ways in which humans relate to, and impose order on, the natural world.
Download or read book Heroes and Scoundrels written by Matthew C. Ehrlich and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2015-03-15 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whether it's the rule-defying lifer, the sharp-witted female newshound, or the irascible editor in chief, journalists in popular culture have shaped our views of the press and its role in a free society since mass culture arose over a century ago. Drawing on portrayals of journalists in television, film, radio, novels, comics, plays, and other media, Matthew C. Ehrlich and Joe Saltzman survey how popular media has depicted the profession across time. Their creative use of media artifacts provides thought-provoking forays into such fundamental issues as how pop culture mythologizes and demythologizes key events in journalism history and how it confronts issues of race, gender, and sexual orientation on the job. From Network to The Wire, from Lois Lane to Mikael Blomkvist, Heroes and Scoundrels reveals how portrayals of journalism's relationship to history, professionalism, power, image, and war influence our thinking and the very practice of democracy.
Download or read book Savages Scoundrels written by Paul VanDevelder and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2009-04-21 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author of Coyote Warrior demolishes myths about America’s westward expansion and uncovers the federal Indian policy that shaped the republic. What really happened in the early days of our nation? How was it possible for white settlers to march across the entire continent, inexorably claiming Native American lands for themselves? Who made it happen, and why? This gripping book tells America’s story from a new perspective, chronicling the adventures of our forefathers and showing how a legacy of repeated betrayals became the bedrock on which the republic was built. Paul VanDevelder takes as his focal point the epic federal treaty ratified in 1851 at Horse Creek, formally recognizing perpetual ownership by a dozen Native American tribes of 1.1 million square miles of the American West. The astonishing and shameful story of this broken treaty—one of 371 Indian treaties signed during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—reveals a pattern of fraudulent government behavior that again and again displaced Native Americans from their lands. VanDevelder describes the path that led to the genocide of the American Indian; those who participated in it, from cowboys and common folk to aristocrats and presidents; and how the history of the immoral treatment of Indians through the twentieth century has profound social, economic, and political implications for America even today. “[A] refreshingly new intellectual and legalistic approach to the complex relations between European Americans and Native Americans…. This superlative work deserves close attention…. Highly recommended.”—M. L. Tate, Choice “The haunting story stays with you well after you have turned the last page.”—Greg Grandin, author of Fordlandia
Download or read book Village of Scoundrels written by Margi Preus and published by ABRAMS. This book was released on 2020-02-25 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on the true story of the French villagers in WWII who saved thousands of Jews, this novel tells how a group of young teenagers stood up for what is right. Among them is a young Jewish boy who learns to forge documents to save his mother and later goes on to save hundreds of lives with his forgery skills. There is also a girl who overcomes her fear to carry messages for the Resistance. And a boy who smuggles people into Switzerland. But there is always the threat that they will be caught: A policeman is sent to keep an eye on them, German soldiers reside in a local hotel, and eventually the Gestapo arrives, armed with guns and a list of names. As the knot tightens, the young people must race against time to bring their friends to safety.
Download or read book A Book of Scoundrels written by Charles Whibley and published by . This book was released on 1897 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book One Good Earl Deserves a Lover written by Sarah MacLean and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2013-01-29 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lady Philippa Marbury is . . . odd The brilliant, bespectacled daughter of a double marquess cares more for books than balls, for science than the season, and for laboratories than love. She's looking forward to marrying her simple fiancé and living out her days quietly with her dogs and her scientific experiments. But before that, Pippa has two weeks to experience all the rest—fourteen days to research the exciting parts of life. It's not much time, and to do it right she needs a guide familiar with London's darker corners. She needs . . . a Scoundrel She needs Cross, the clever, controlled partner in London's most exclusive gaming hell, with a carefully crafted reputation for wickedness. But reputations often hide the darkest secrets, and when the unconventional Pippa boldly propositions him, seeking science without emotion, she threatens all he works to protect. He is tempted to give Pippa precisely what she wants . . . but the scoundrel is more than he seems, and it will take every ounce of his willpower to resist giving the lady more than she ever imagined.
Download or read book Scientist as Subject written by Michael J. Mahoney and published by Eliot Werner Publications/Percheron Press. This book was released on 2004-12-31 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, originally published by Ballinger in 1976, Michael Mahoney documents the idiosyncracies and foibles of the scientific process as a field of endeavor. A new introduction updates his discussion in light of subsequent developments, including such aspects of academia as politics and tenure, publication and power relations, science studies and constructivist inquiry, and what have come to be called the "science wars."
Download or read book Catalog of Copyright Entries Third Series written by Library of Congress. Copyright Office and published by Copyright Office, Library of Congress. This book was released on 1968 with total page 1380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Includes Part 1, Number 1: Books and Pamphlets, Including Serials and Contributions to Periodicals (January - June)
Download or read book Scoundrels written by Duncan Crowe and published by Scoundrels. This book was released on 2017-06 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Pseudoscience Wars written by Michael D. Gordin and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2012-09-17 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Properly analyzed, the collective mythological and religious writings of humanity reveal that around 1500 BC, a comet swept perilously close to Earth, triggering widespread natural disasters and threatening the destruction of all life before settling into solar orbit as Venus, our nearest planetary neighbor. Sound implausible? Well, from 1950 until the late 1970s, a huge number of people begged to differ, as they devoured Immanuel Velikovsky’s major best-seller, Worlds in Collision, insisting that perhaps this polymathic thinker held the key to a new science and a new history. Scientists, on the other hand, assaulted Velikovsky’s book, his followers, and his press mercilessly from the get-go. In The Pseudoscience Wars, Michael D. Gordin resurrects the largely forgotten figure of Velikovsky and uses his strange career and surprisingly influential writings to explore the changing definitions of the line that separates legitimate scientific inquiry from what is deemed bunk, and to show how vital this question remains to us today. Drawing on a wealth of previously unpublished material from Velikovsky’s personal archives, Gordin presents a behind-the-scenes history of the writer’s career, from his initial burst of success through his growing influence on the counterculture, heated public battles with such luminaries as Carl Sagan, and eventual eclipse. Along the way, he offers fascinating glimpses into the histories and effects of other fringe doctrines, including creationism, Lysenkoism, parapsychology, and more—all of which have surprising connections to Velikovsky’s theories. Science today is hardly universally secure, and scientists seem themselves beset by critics, denialists, and those they label “pseudoscientists”—as seen all too clearly in battles over evolution and climate change. The Pseudoscience Wars simultaneously reveals the surprising Cold War roots of our contemporary dilemma and points readers to a different approach to drawing the line between knowledge and nonsense.
Download or read book Wisconsin Library Bulletin written by and published by . This book was released on 1965 with total page 940 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Saints vs Scoundrels written by Dr. Benjamin Wiker and published by EWTN Publishing, Inc.. This book was released on 2017-12-21 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Saints vs. Scoundrels Dr. Benjamin Wiker invites you to interact not just with the ideas that have shaped history, but with the people who created and spread those ideas. In this collection of lively and imaginative conversations between the great truth-tellers and the great error-peddlers of history, you will come to appreciate the personalities behind the “Great Conversation” that has shaped western civilization. Jean-Jacques Rousseau vs. St. Augustine. Machiavelli vs. St. Francis. Ayn Rand vs. Flannery O’Connor. These people may have never met in real life, but the ideas they represent and the movements they started have interacted throughout history and shaped our present. And so how fascinating would it be if they had ever shared a living room? This is the question Dr. Wiker answers with deep research and dynamic storytelling. Enjoy this unique opportunity to join the conversation!
