Skeptophilia: Fighting Gullibility With Sarcasm

Shakespeare famously had Hamlet say to Horatio that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in his philosophy. P. T. Barnum, on the other hand, claimed that there's a sucker born every minute. If you put these two concepts together, and stir well, you get the world of woo-woo -- the oddball assortment of crazy ideas and loony theories that encompass such disparate realms as homeopathy, astrology, crystal energies, Bigfoot sightings, aliens, and why people keep seeing the face of Jesus on grilled cheese sandwiches.

"Skeptophilia" is a skeptic's view of this world -- usually wry, sometimes puzzled, often funny, this collection of 120 essays looks at why people believe odd, counterfactual, unscientific ideas, many times even in the face of evidence to the contrary.