About the Author

Henry H. Bauer, professor of chemistry and science at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, is the author of The Enigma of Loch Ness: Making Sense of a Mystery and Beyond Velikovsky: The History of a Public Controversy.
 

Reviews

"Provocative. . . . Bauer argues that science does not proceed by the scientific method. If it did, experiments would inspire hypotheses which would then be tested until they generated reliable theories. As Watson and Crick's work [on DNA] shows, an elegant idea is often a headier lure than mere facts."--Newsweek

"Sound, sensible . . . and very easy to read. . . . I would strongly recommend this book to anyone who hasn't yet heard that the scientific method is a myth."--Science

"This is a book that every science teacher should read and consider. It will certainly affect their views of what science really is and influence their teaching."--The Science Teacher

"Bauer has undertaken to examine some widely held misunderstandings about how scientists work. . . . In describing these myths and exhorting his readers to abandon them, Bauer provides an excellent account of the main processes of modern science."--Journal of Scientific Exploration

"To put some of the adventure back in everyday science, this study is the place to start. Bauer ... upends current contentions about science literacy in a small, dense book that could be the nucleus of a restructuring of how science works in our culture, or, in the author's terms, how its reputation works." -- Publishers Weekly