BETWEEN APE AND HUMAN: An Anthropologist on the Trail of a Hidden Hominoid. Gregory Forth. The author, an Oxford-educated longtime professor of anthropology, examines the so-called “hobbit” discovery that excited both scholars and the public in 2003: In a cave on the Indonesian island of Flores, skeletons of a small-statured early human species were discovered along with stone tools and animal remains. Dubbed Homo floresiensis, the ancient hominin barely reached four feet in height and was initially believed to have lived as recently as 12,000 years ago (later dating suggested it was significantly older). The discovery was reported in these pages; see, for example, Kenneth Krause’s article “Pathology or Paradigm Shift?,” July/August 2009. There are many aspects of this intriguing discovery, including whether the curious stature was due to a well-known evolutionary process called island dwarfism, a result of long-term isolation on a small, resource-scarce isolated island. In his anthropology research on the island years earlier, Forth had collected reports and legends of half-human, half-ape creatures said to live in caves on the slopes of a nearby volcano—a sort of Indonesian “Littlefoot.” In this book, he explores the possibility of some connection and if the wild man stories might reflect a cultural memory of Homo floresiensis. Pegasus Books, 2022, 288 pp., $27.95.

CALLING BULLSHIT: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World. Carl T. Bergstrom and Jevin D. West. “The world is awash in bullshit. And we are drowning in it,” the authors begin. This book emerged from a course of the same title the authors teach at the University of Washington. They seek to teach how to think logically and quantitively about data. The authors observe that bullshit takes less work and intelligence to create than to clean up, and it spreads faster than efforts to clean it up—especially in today’s social media world. Since this book’s original publication in hardback in 2020, lead author Bergstrom, an evolutionary biologist, has become a major figure in the scientific community’s campaign against misinformation. They end with a useful guide to “The Psychology of Debunking.” This is the authors’ clear, no-nonsense, call-it-like-it is clarion call to understand and fight nonsense. Random House, 2021, 318 pp., $18.00.

 

THE JOY OF SCIENCE. Jim Al-Khalili. The author, a theoretical professor of physics at the University of Surrey and a well-known science communicator, provides a handy little book about the pleasures of science and “thinking and living a little more scientifically.” The success of science depends on its collaboration between scientists and nonscientists, he says. His aim is to explain “how thinking scientifically can offer you some control over the complex and conflicting information that the world throws at you.” Eight chapters argue the case that there are “objective truths,” point out that mysteries can both be embraced and solved, that evidence takes priority over opinion, that we need to change our minds in the face of new evidence, and other key components of scientific thinking. The final chapter is “Stand Up for Reality.” Princeton University Press, 2022, 224 pp., $16.95

PREVENTING THE NEXT PANDEMIC: Vaccine Diplomacy in a Time of Anti-Science. Peter J. Hotez, MD, PhD. Baylor College of Medicine physician and microbiologist Hotez, a familiar figure to viewers of CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC on behalf of good vaccine and masking practices during the pandemic, here addresses the rise in infectious and tropical diseases in this century due to war, shifting poverty, climate change, and “a new troubling anti-science.” He was the U.S. science envoy during the Obama administration and served on a binational science foundation during the Trump administration. He explains how vaccine diplomacy might offer new solutions to the devastation of infections and how it might prevent future disease catastrophes. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2021, 192 pp., $27.95.

 

SCIENCE AND THE SKEPTIC: Discerning Fact from Fiction. Marc Zimmer. Zimmer, a professor at Connecticut College and an author of several young adult books, offers this slender, nicely designed guide to what science is and how to distinguish between real science and fake science. It has five brief chapters: What Is Science?, Fake Science, This Is Science Not Politics, Quackery, and The Twenty Rules. The latter offers twenty succinct rules to help “distinguish between science and bad science, medicine and quackery, and fact and fiction.” Examples include a reminder that publication in peer-reviewed journals is generally legitimate while publication in predatory journals isn’t (he provides a link to a list of 2,500 of the latter) and to “Beware of medical products and scientific ideas promoted by celebrities.” Twenty-First Century Books, 2022, 120 pp., $27.99.

SCIENCE DENIAL: Why It Happens and What to Do about It. Gale M. Sinatra and Barbara K. Hofer. Two psychologist authors (University of Southern California and Middlebury College, respectively) concerned about public understanding and misunderstanding of science take on the persistent and growing problems of science denial, doubt, and resistance. From their own and others’ research into the psychology of thinking, they shed light on the key psychological reasons for these trends and offer steps to support public understanding of science. Chapters deal with such things as making sense of online science claims, what motivates people to question science, how emotions and attitudes influence science understanding, and what we can do about the problems of resistance and denial. Oxford University Press, 2021, 193 pp., $36.00.