The Disinformation Cycle: Hoaxes, Delusions, Security Beliefs, and Compulsory Mediocrity. . - New Books - book review

The Disinformation Cycle: Hoaxes, Delusions, Security Beliefi, and Compulsory Mediocrity. William Harwood. Xlibris Corporation, 1-888-7-XLIBRIS, www.Xlibris.com. 2001. ISBN 1-4010-4354-2. 277 pp. $18.69, softcover. Harwood's stated purpose "is to provide the maximum amount of information about which popular beliefs have been disproven in the minimum number of pages." He says he wanted "to make available to a wider audience information previously known only to persons with the relevant education and discrimination to recognize the qualitative difference between SKEPTICAL INQUIRER and National Inquirer." Avoiding voluminous detail, he refers readers to references in SKEPTICAL INQUIRER articles and various books.

An outspoken Ph.D. scholar and a member of the editorial board of Free Inquiry, Harwood was also a publicist for three stage hypnotists, and he says hypnotism does not exist. In fact, he says he was a former adherent of "many of the beliefs I now recognize as indefensible." Short chapters range over suc h things as recovered memories, aliens, psychics, conspiracies, social-science pseudosciences, psychiatry, education doubletalk, disputes among religions, and much else.

COPYRIGHT 2002 Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal
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