"Not a Scientist" is not about Trump
584966
I'd expected that the Levitan was going to defend science from Trump's recent asults.  But, Levitan points out that the cut off date for this book was before the election in Nov. 2016.  If you are looking for stories related to Trump's first 100 days, this book is not for you.  I hope that there is a sequel.

Levitan describes  several of the common scenarios that politicians in particular use when describing science based topics.  He explains the problem with each scenario.

This book helps scientists understand how and why the lay public and politicians have such a hard time talking about science.  This is a general problem in our society.

I recommend "Not a Scientist"  to scientists interested in improving communication between the STEM knowledge experts and the public at large.
4467585
Brian Dunning takes a thoughtful, scientific approach to dissecting faulty thinking.  He is an equal-opportunity critic of flawed logic.  His coverage of a certain topic will lead you to believe he's a paid consultant for a particular political group.  Then the next topic will point the other direction.  I guess the bottom line is that no political group has cornered the market on pseudo-scientific thinking.  He's changed my mind on several issues.  He's informative, persuasive, and funny.  Judge for yourself.
4086031
I agree with one of the other reviewers that said this book was not all anti-Trump.  The book actually does two things (at least).  One it show the treachery and even criminal activity of White House Staff that think they know more than their boss. More than one actually stole a letter off President Trump's desk which at the very least should result in immediate dismissal.  Every employee know that you are there at the pleasure of the boss.  It is his agenda you implement not yours.  The second shows how committed President Trump is to honoring his campaign promises and to caring about American Taxpayers.  Of course there are parts of the book I didn't care for which is why I gave it a 3 instead of a 5 and parts that I did (the two things I mentioned) which is why I did not give it a 1. Thanks to Amazon for letting us review products and being able to read the reviews of others.
3664664
This is an exceptionally well done biography of Donald Trump; put together by Michael Kranish and Marc Fisher, supported by the staff of the "Washington Post".  The 'Post' has traditionally produced biographies of presidential candidates every four years, in an attempt to provide the electorate with timely information prior to the election.  This biography covers Trump's life up through the Republican Convention in June 2016.  As many reviewers have said, this book is not pro or anti Trump.  It is a clear-eyed, thorough, well-researched, and extensively annotated biography.  In the spring of 2016 after he secured sufficient delegates for the Republican nomination, Mr. Trump sat for extensive interviews with the authors.  Although produced in an extremely short amount of time, the book is interesting, well written, and thoughtful.  I feel it is at least a 4.5 star read.
Full disclosure: I am not a fan of Donald Trump.  He scares me.  And I'm afraid the book did not alleviate my concerns.  Throughout his life, really only one thing has been important to Donald Trump: Donald Trump.  Not family, not friendship, not religion, not country come before Donald Trump.  Secondly, truth is a concept that eludes him.  Or maybe what he says becomes the truth to him.  He has no discernible ideology - he's not a fiscal conservative, he's a recent convert to some aspects of social conservatism, he's officially changed his party affiliation at least seven times, and he's evasive about his  beliefs.  We truly don't know who this man really is philosophically or policy-wise.  Finally, he has an extremely steep learning curve in front of him and, to date, has shown very little evidence that he can be bothered with the necessary study/work the job requires.  That bodes extremely ill for the nation and the world.
What he is is perhaps the world's greatest showman/salesman (in the vein of P.T. Barnum).  He's a genius at picking up on the mood and desires of groups and crowds and feeding them what they want.  He's figured out how to sell his politics to a segment of society - a segment which he is not really part of.  He may have just completed one of the greatest scams in history - I guess we'll find out.
I highly recommend "Trump Revealed" by Michael Kranish and Marc Fisher.
3974604
I'm quite familiar with the forces the documentary says lie behind the global warming hoax. Once politicians get involved in science, funding drives the point of view the politicians want in an ever increasing extremes. Conspiracy theory? You don't really need one if you know how the world really works.

This is an excellent documentary that exposes the lies of Al Gore and the UN's Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change. They didn't have 2500 of the world's top scientist supporting their report. Many of those people aren't scientists at all, and among the top scientists, many disagree profoundly. At least one threatened legal action to have his name removed.

You'll even hear about something that hasn't been talked about much at all, the infusion of Eastern Bloc commies into the environmental movement after the fall of the Soviet Union. Although this documentary doesn't focus on that, I was aware of the connection - using CO2 as a measure of production - and working to control that, worldwide, as a new way to implement the corrupt Marxist dream.

Whether it's because you want to know the truth about global warming, or because you want to know more about the way the world really works and the corruption of modern day politics, this is a documentary you need to see.
1489570
I was disappointed by this book because I was misled by the title and the opening statement to think that author would provide some insights into the gender differentiations of the brain.  Instead, this book is *all* about disputing the scientific researches which I already knew though not to the extents of the book.  A more appropriate subtitle might have been "The limitations of scientific research and the flaws of applying the research results for one's political views".

It has been said that it is impossible to understand the brain by a brain.  While we are making small steps in understanding of our brain functions, we should be careful not to draw conclusions beyond what we really know.  To that, this book gives ample examples.
2840201
If you go to the authors webpage [...], you will see that he has divided his writings into biological and theological works.  "Of Pandas and People" is listed in theological, because this work, and creationism/intelligent design as well, are not science, but rather agenda-driven works of archaic superstitions pretending to be science in order to convince the deluded/ignorant.  Just as Holocaust denial is not taught in history class, evolution denial has no place in science.
1446479
The problem with some scientist-writers, is that they sometimes are incapable of interesting and therefore educating the lay public in their field. Their efforts are informed and valiant, but out of reach for the unscientific reader. What Lehrer is able to do in "How We Decide" is summarize the complex field of neuroscience in a very readable and scientific way without losing people without a PhD. On the other side of the coin, many "non-scientists" who try to write about science sometimes get their facts or conclusions wrong because of their lack of expertise in the field. I thought Lehrer did a fantastic job of avoiding both these mistakes by keeping it simple, accurate, and interesting - a rare combination in the exciting and new field of neuroscience.

His main idea is that we should make decisions using the right tool - sometimes based on reason (for fairly simple decisions) or sometimes using our emotions (for more complex ideas). This sounds a bit counterintuitive until you have allowed Lehrer to introduce you to some of the studies conducted in the field. Lehrer, in discussing reason vs. emotion, also didn't paint a black and white view of decision making (reason is better or emotion is better). He spends a lot of time discussing the errors of feeling certain and the limitation of both reason and emotional decision making (while using interesting examples from poker players to airline cockpits to NFL quarterbacks) so that the reader can better understand what is happening inside their brain and thereby avoid errors of cognition. In summary - a exciting and relevant read about how our brains work with regard to our own opinion generation and decision making.
1144790
I am not a scientist and will therefore not attempt to speak for them. But as a Christ follower who was raised as a Creationist, I can tell you that "The Selfless Gene" by Charles Foster will make Creationists angry.

Those people who are dogmatic about a six-day literal creation will most likely slam this book and its content without ever reading it.

Charles Foster is neither a scientist nor a theologian. He is a researcher who has researched both sides of the debate and has presented his findings.

Foster says that the Ultra Darwinists and the Creationists are both wrong. Neither natural selection nor creationism can explain everything in the universe. He thinks that both sides need to be considering the other side and not be so dogmatic. In fact, Foster says that it is Creationism that has paid the bills for the Ultra Darwinists. He may be right.

"The Selfless Gene" is a fascinating book that presents evidence against both sides of the debate (much that I have never heard or read). The chapters seem to rotate between easy reading and scientific journal reading. The book does not flow very well, but the information is still presented well. It is a bit redundant, and takes a little too long in some places to get to the point. However, I think the reason for the latter is for the skeptical scientist.

At times, I felt as though Foster assumed too much knowledge on the part of the reader, but the main ideas of the book are well-presented and easily understood.

This book is a great read for those who have struggled in their faith because of Darwinism or those who are skeptical of the idea of a six-day literal creation.
3086999
Provocative narrative, data driven, authoritative authors.  The negative reviews are from folks who don't like the conclusions.  It touches nerves. The authors did not write this for the purpose of making a fan club.  They are asking hard questions, arguing, building a case.  It's what good science does, and good scientists do.
1482970
This book is written so the non-scientist can understand the scam being perpetrated by the left. Before reading this book and many other articles, I believed AGW theory was 50% political and 50% science. After further research and with the help of the Vapor Tiger I now believe it is 95% political.
678451
The most provocative aspect of this book has little to do with the title (or the expectations the title might set up): it's the book's central argument, that knowledge is not necessarily power. Mooney makes a sophisticated argument here, much more so than most pop-cognitive-psych books, that more knowledge sometimes correlates to a greater willingness to rationalize away scientific fact. What this means is that more knowledge, more education, is NOT the cure for our society's anti-science woes.

Although his focus is on conservatives, particularly those who deny evolution, global warming, and certain historical and economic realities, the problems he describes here can probably just as well apply to the "liberal" side of things, i.e. doctors who support the anti-vaccine movement. In fact, the assumption he counters throughout the book -- that knowledge is always power -- is, perhaps, a very "liberal" one, as in, knowledge and education will always lead to freedom.

Affective reactions come first, Mooney and the research he turns to seem to suggest, and reason comes second, most often not in the form of logic, but in the form of rationalization. This work of popular-cognitive-psych-journalism could, perhaps, usher in a new posthumanist skepticism ...
3467982
I could recommend this book to verbal but unscientific promoters of fear and loathing from the Trump school but I won't.
1067674
Feynman was a brilliant scientist, and he has made fundamental contribution to the field of quantum mechanics. But, this book is NOT about any of his scientific discoveries. It is about his character, his nature and his wit. This book is like a collection of humorous anecdotes from various points in his life - like breaking locks at Los Alamos, being the youngest Mr. Fixit for radios, his adventures at topless bars, his personal eccentricities, his emotions about his early demise of his wife - to name a few.

  Feynman is a good storyteller, though I do not agree with all his views, esp, that he has scant respect for fields not connected with physics or mathematics. I am a computer scientist myself and I feel that Feynman's disrespect for other fields of study, esp those related to humanities will not make this book a suitable reading for a person deciding to make a career choice. He provides an unbalanced and in my opinion, an unfair review of other fields of study.

  If you are a scientist and are looking to have a hearty laugh or two, you'll finish this book in one sitting.
4784146
Professor Park has a dry satirical wit that he unleashes here on the practitioners of what he calls "voodoo science."  This oblique reference to Reaganomics is no accident since one of Park's targets in this fun-to-read debunking is the Strategic Defense Initiative ("Star Wars"), a pseudoscientific fraud that, in the author's words "only left the United States more vulnerable" and out thirty billion dollars.  The fact that we "won" the cold war is seen as fortuitous and irrelevant.  His attack on Edward Teller, Reagan's trusted science advisor, and his phony "super excaliber" x-ray laser is close to hilarious, and reminds me a little bit of some of the shtick in the film "Dr. Strangelove."

Park also takes apart the cold fusion delusion which he says went from incompetence to self-deception to outright fraud.  He quotes the science editor of an Italian newspaper who called  Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, the University of Utah scientists who concocted the delusion, "fornicating priests" for their betrayal of science and for defiling "the temple of truth."

Other targets include parapsychologists and their statistical "proofs"; NASA (for its manned space program instead of a robotic program that is both cheaper and more effective); homeopathic medicine, which Park claims is no medicine at all beyond a placebo value; Congress for being duped by the likes of Joe Newman and his infinite energy machine, and others; the media, especially Paul Brodeur of the New Yorker for ranting about a nonexistent connection between electromagnetic fields and cancer, and Michael Guillen of ABC news for TV "entertainments" that lent credence to a certain James Patterson and his magical energy beads as well as to such notions as psychokinesis and astrology.

Park even goes after that darling of public television and the New Age set, best-selling author, Deepak Chopra.  He writes, "Physicists wince at Chopra's use of the word quantum in the context of a discussion of cancer."  He suggests that "Dr. Chopra's familiarity with quantum theory consists of having read Hawking's enormously popular book on cosmology, A Brief History of Time" (p. 193).  He adds on page 208, "We cannot help but notice...that the author of Ageless Mind shows unmistakable signs of growing old right along with the rest of us."

I like the way Park shows that governmental secrecy is often just a way of keeping incompetence and delusion, fraud and embarrassing mistakes covered up.  He gives not only examples from the U.S. but describes how the French government under Valery Giscard d'Estaing covered up $200-million that was thrown away on a so-called "sniffer plane," an aircraft with a device that was supposed to be able to map mineral deposits from the air. Turns out it was just a bold-faced fraud dreamed up by a Count de Villegas.

In short, Park has both barrels loaded, takes dead aim and blasts fake science to smithereens.  Unfortunately, somebody else will just have to do it again next week, since everybody knows people love to believe, be it aliens or vast conspiracies or just in the seductive "myth of the self-educated genius fighting against a pompous, closed minded establishment" (p. 112).  Park is to be commended for writing this book because, as he notes on page 177, "It is an axiom in the publishing business...that pseudoscience will always sell more books than the real science that debunks it."  This axiom may be wearing thin since I notice that Voodoo Science has sold well while (e.g.) Suppressed Inventions, a book touting everything Park debunks here (and more), hasn't done so well.  Not that this proves anything; however, having read both books (or as much of the latter as I could stand) this is reassuring.
27132
A climate change denier who has publicly stated that he is not a scientist - a senator who has taken thousands of dollars from the fossil fuel industry - writes about how wonderful the fossil fuel industry is - and you're selling it?  Under science, not science fiction?  Shame on you!
717284
This is not a typical Crichton book, it is less fictional and more educational. I must say it really opened my eyes and drove me to go and do some research of my own and see if what Crichton was portraying in this book is for real... You'll have to make up your own mind. However, in amongst the serious side, this is an amusing if not politically charged story. I realize a lot of reviews will rate it very low because they don't like what this book says about "Global Warming" ; don't be put off by that, even if you are a die hard Global Warming advocate, you'll enjoy this read.