'Closeminded Science' Site
Science Heretics' Bookshelf
Refs on Critical Investigation of Science

• THE ART OF SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION W.I.B. Beveridge
• HIDDEN HISTORIES OF SCIENCE R. Silvers, ed.
• SCIENTIFIC LITERACY AND THE MYTH OF THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD, Dr. H. Bauer
• FORBIDDEN SCIENCE, Richard Milton
• THE CONSCIOUS UNIVERSE Dr. Dean Radin
• THE SOURCEBOOK PROJECT, W. Corliss
• SEVEN EXPERIMENTS THAT COULD CHANGE THE WORLD, Rupert Sheldrake
• LIFTING THE VEIL, Dr. L.J. Shepherd
• CONFRONTING THE EXPERTS Dr. B. Martin, ed.
• OLDER:
  • Don't Be Such A SCIENTIST R. Olson
  • SCIENCE IS A SACRED COW, A. Standen
  • COSMIC PLASMAS, Dr. H. Aflven
  • THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF IGNORANCE
  • DEVIANT SCIENCE, James McClenon
• MISC. ARTICLES

An excellent little book, a must-have for the heretic library. Most is on the doing of science, but unlike others, Beveridge directs lots of critical apprasial at his own profession. See chapter IX. DIFFICULTIES, the sections on resistance to new ideas and opposition to discoveries. Also, under VII. REASON, words about hazards of overuse of reason. There are whole chapters about imagination and about intuition (both topics critical for the generation of new ideas.) For those needing evidence that science isn't airtight, controlled, and mundane, there is a collection of stories behind discoveries where chance played a large role.

An excellent and fascinating collection of critical articles by S.J.Gould, Oliver Sacks, and others. I particularly recommend Sacks' SCOTOMA: FORGETTING AND NEGLECT IN SCIENCE. This is the type of book that you'll want to buy several copies so you can loan it out to friends without losing your own.

The cover blurb:

Johathan Miller, Oliver Sacks, and Daniel Kevles show how and why some discoveries and insights emerge with great promise, only to be discarded or forgotten, then re-emerge as important years later. Richard Lewontin and Stephen Jay Jould suggest deep and largely unacknowledged distortions in the way scientists and popularizers alike conceive the structure of the world and its natural history.

Suspect something's wrong with conventional science? Then don't miss this one! Dr. Bauer (Chemistry, VPI/VSU) hits the bullseye on myths believed by the public and by scientists themselves. In Bauer's world the Filter, rather than Scientific method, rules all. "Science begins by chance and caprice, at the frontier, with hardly a shadow of the scientific method in evidence; and then it proceeds to be sieved, tested, and modified until it appears in the textbooks, whose tried and refined content can be explained so simply (albiet fallaciously) as resulting from application of the [scientific] method."

Chapter titles: Scientific Literacy, The So-called Scientific Method, How Science Really Works, Other Fables About Science, Imperfections of the Filter, Consequences of Misconception, In Praise of Science. You'll want to buy two, leaving one copy free to push on your science-worshipping friends!

"The conventional wisdom is blind to its own inadequacy, to the fact that, sooner or later, it will be found to be wrong in one way or another."

"...that science has adopted new ideas in no way demonstrates that the adoption of new ideas is somehow natural to science. Indeed, to assert that science is open to new things is to fly in the face of the evidence..."

"Science might be better served when some scientists generate novel ideas while others carp at everything new, than if all scientists could somehow become disinterestedly skeptical."

An excellent overview of current evidence for psi. Also quite a bit about the psychology effects encountered when researchers try to publish evidence for unorthodox and unpopular ideas.

A critical examination of Darwinism, and how heretics who question mainstream biology are treated. (no, not written by a creationist!)

One of the cover blurbs:

"James McClenon has written a book which could become a classic, not only to scholars of parapsychology, but also within the field of sociology. It appears to be the first text to combine two sociological traditions -the sociology of science and the sociology of deviant behavior- into a coherent theoretical model as applied to parapsychology... McClenon takes full advantage of the powerful participant-observer methodoly in sociology to add a richness of detail and color to his observations far surpassing those of other 'outside' observers of psi research. McClenon's perspective is broad, generous, and significant, in my opinoin, to the extent that it should be required reading for anyone working in parapsychology or related disciplines."

An intelligent, in-depth look at the hidden psychology which creates scientific censorship and 'taboo' fields of research and invention. This book is a treasure-trove of historical and contemporary examples; it covers the Wright Brothers, Cold Fusion, parapsychology, Velikovski, N-rays, and touches on many, many others. Something in modern science needs serious repair, and Milton points out the source of the malfunction in no uncertain terms. It's referenced throughout, so one may look up the original evidence. Large bibliography too.

Everything you ever wanted to know about the unknown from scientists' viewpoint.

Why not *continuously measure* the physical constants, rather than assume they are constant? What if scientists' expectations have imposed serious biases on basic physics experiments? Are amputee's "phantom limbs" real? ... This book is excellent, with disturbing reevaluation of the fundamental assumptions behind modern science, and a hard, clear look at both the myths of mainstream science and at the way contemporary science is REALLY carried out.

Dr. Aflven made himself a heretic/outcast by rejecting the Big Bang theory. Yet his exploration of plasma physics laid the foundation of quite a bit of modern understanding. For a look at some history of mainstream response to Alfven's work, see:

"Alfven's Programme in Solar System Physics", by Stephen G. Brush, IEEE Transactions of Plasma Science, Vol 20, No 6, December 1992.

From the title you might expect this to be a Creationist diatribe or crackpot screed. Instead it's a thoughtful critique written by a professional chemist with degrees from Oxford and MIT. I've always thought that Science should be policing itself far more than it does; catching its own incidences of hubris, puncturing it's own inflated ego, etc. Well, here's a scientist doing exactly that. He lets his own profession have it, with both barrels (doing it with good humor mixed with scathing honesty and clear vision of his profession's hidden foibles.) This book should be world famous. From it's contents, I can see why it's not popular or well known in science... which demonstrates that the problems pointed out by the author have still not been fixed.

Compiled by WR Corliss, this 15-volume set comprises a catalog of anomalies gleaned from major science journals. A must-have item for serious students of the Unknown. For those who don't want the full encyclopedia set, try his "sampler",
SCIENCE FRONTIERS, a very large paperback full of many hundreds of anomaly reports covering all fields of science.
http://www.science-frontiers.com/sourcebk.htm