Customer Reviews
Forceful yet lightweight - By: Stucumber, 13 Oct 2008 
A good read but quite slight. Although I did agree with most of the author's arguments it was mostly because I was familiar with them already. I can't imagine that this would likely convince anyone who believesin 'alternative' notions of reality as it doesn't really examine them with any real rigour.
I'm still looking for the definitive book on all things 'woo' & though this is not it, it's still a decent primer into the world of 'Counter-Knowledge'.
Where the subject of this book -counter-knowledge- begins & ends I don't know & from the author's definition I'm still not entirely clear. Given the author's occupation as a writer for a christian publication, what defines orthodox knowledge for him may not chime with everyone else's definition.
Still, I believe at least he is nominally on the side of rationality & reason. Even if some of his personal beliefs, for me, make him a target of his own argument.
Terrific Stuff! - By: W. Heaven, 02 Oct 2008 
If the last Diana inquest bored you to tears, or you are sick of listening to crap 9/11 conspiracies, get hold of this brilliant book now.
Conspiracy theories, along with quack medicine, fake history & bogus science, all form "Counterknowledge" - that is, `misinformation masquerading as fact.'
The problem is huge, & Thompson powerfully argues that the 21st century faces a `pandemic of credulous thinking' when, conversely, our ability to evaluate claims made about science or history is better than ever before.
With the arrival of the scientific enlightenment, ideas that no longer held their ground were banished to the fringes of society. Now, with internet communication, they have a larger following than ever before.
But it's not all turtle-neck wearing novelists & bible-crazy wackos - the City of Westminster University offers, astonishingly, a degreein homeopathy.
Readers of the Guardian's Bad Science column will love this book. Damian Thompson fights Counterknowledge tooth & nail using reason and, crucially, systematically tested evidence. With his razor-sharp prose, he not only rubbishes the credulous world we live in, but calls on us to challenge the `guardians of intellectual orthodoxy' & waken them from greedy, slothful indolence.
Without doubt, this is my book of the year.
An odd combination of sneering and alarmism, containing numerous misconceptions and errors. - By: Tim Wilkinson, 21 Sep 2008 
Young-earth creationistsin the US have built a museum containing mechanised tableaux showing dinosaurs & humansin Flintstone-style coexistence. `Alternative' therapies of no more medical value than sugar pills are available on the British National Health Service, with homoeopathic hospitals well-established & degree courses availablein one of the new universities. In US academia, some `Afro-centric' historians play fast & loose with factsin their attempt to construct a distinctively `black' history which, according to at least one proponent, is teachable only by black people. Meanwhile, postmodernist literary & cultural theorists take it upon themselves to develop ill-conceived philosophical doctrines about the nature of truth & reality - & evenin some cases to offer criticisms of such specialised fields as quantum physics.
Damian Thompson criticises all these trends, with copious footnotes & some theoretical discussion. He alerts the reader to many other putative instances of 'counterknowledge' - glossed: "misinformation packaged as fact" (p1) - & decries the "casual approach to the truth"(pp12, 44) that underlies & sustains them. This seems a worthwhile project, &in reviews it attracts descriptions such as `timely' & `much-needed'. These epithets are somewhat hyperbolic: this is only the latest addition to a substantial body of debunking literature, which goes back at least to Charles Mackay's Extraordinary Popular Delusions & the Madness of Crowds, first publishedin 1841.
To adapt a remark of Dr Johnson, while one expects to see it done, one is surprised that it is not done better. While many of Thompson's points are correct as far as they go, the book's defects are so numerous & glaring & themselves betray such a `casual approach to the truth' that the reader could be forgiven for thinking that the word `Counterknowledge' embossed across the front categorises its contents rather than defining its subject matter.
One cannot avoid the suspicion that Thompson chose his title first & only then attempted to construct an entity corresponding to the catchy `counterknowledge' label. Many of the book's failings can be traced back to the assumption of a simplistic, polarised view of the intellectual landscape. Insiders, those engagedin a scarcely-examined `enlightenment project', have knowledge: a steady accretion of certainties, irrevocably established by academic consensus. Outside lies knowledge's evil twin, counterknowledge: not only untrue, but to Thompson, obviously so. The interesting - but potentially controversial - middle ground is simply ignored.
In delimiting the contours of his invented category, Thompson sides with orthodoxy & with the powerful, granting a latitude to supposed political & technical authorities which he denies to those on the intellectual or social fringes. Such facile deference betrays the enlightenment ideals he professes. Knowingly or not, he also includes among the enemies of reason a number of views which don't belong there. These views are caricatured or exaggerated, either by Thompson himself or by others whose reports he casually adopts.
The book is not aimed at changing minds: few of its significant targets will come as news to its self-selecting audience. There is nothing wrong with thatin itself, but Thompson affects a gravitas which leads one to expect something a little more edifying than the opportunity to bay & jeer, as an assortment of intellectual freaks & outcasts is paraded by. Still, Thompson does his best to foster a certain siege mentality. His readers may be assured of the triumph of reason & the rightness of their opinions, but, crucially, they are offered a frisson of danger & flattered with the role of tough-minded hero standing, with Thompson, against the forces of chaos.
In the first three pages, Thompson's vocabulary sets the tone: "pandemic" (p1); "disturbingly", "alarming" (p2); "threatened", "vulnerable", "[not] immune", "converts", & more subtly, "outlandish"(p3). According to the synopsis on the inside cover, Thompson demonstrates that "unless the defenders of enlightenment values fight back soon, the counterknowledge industry has the potential to create new political, social & economic disasters". On the back cover, reviewer Nick Cohen joins the fray, projecting his own preoccupations onto Thompson's sketchily apocalyptic canvas: "Thompson shows how apparently harmless pseudo-science breeds nationalism, race hatred & disease".
Finally & perhaps most perniciously, Thompson swaddles his banalities, biases & non-sequitursin an impenetrable tangle of junk philosophy & sociological verbiage. Even those astute enough to detect that something is wrongin Thompson's approach may well be baffled, browbeaten or bored into conceding that Thompson has a point - whatever exactly it is.
You can download my full detailed review - which is too long to post here - at mediafire.com/?mdyewdkdyw1.
A searing indictment of woolly thinking - By: Mr. K. Papas, 24 Aug 2008 This book must be read by the people who very earnestly insist that you "be more open-minded". Yes, Princess Diana may have been assassinated on the orders of the British Royal family, who may be lizardsin human skin - however this is unlikely,in fact extremely unlikely. This book is a testament to the power of logic & common sense. All the usual suspectsin the conspiracy theory game are picked apart, bit by bit, & revealed to be the total & inveterate nonsense that they are. We need more books like this for the people whose minds are so open, their brains have fallen out.
Shooting fish in a barrel - By: jsa, 06 Jul 2008 Generally I am with Mr R A Davies who gave the book two stars, but perhaps that is a little harsh.
Thompson is quite selectivein his choice of targets, & treats them largely the same (despite his repeated points about what is & is not "counterknowledge"). That is, he attempts not only to oppose their arguments & their evidence but also to undermine their motives, & to treat them as charlatans. In most cases that may be legitimate, but not always.
The blurb says he has a PhDin the sociology of religion from LSE (presumably supervised by David Martin?). I would have expected that someone who had workedin that very nuanced area, which poses interesting questions about the validity of knowledge, to have been able to distinguish between positions better than he does. Take complementary medicine (CAM) as an example. He is very rude about it, relying heavily on one of its severest critics. That's fine (and I tend to agree with him).
However, he extends his condemnation beyond the science to the business, including pharmacistsin Boots who refuse to assert that a product on sale is useless. This is not the same world. Placebo is a potent treatment, not entirely reliant on conscious belief but upheld by it (Evans D [2004] Placebo London; HarperCollins). The discourse has shifted, but Thompson has stuck with his positivism.
And it does not help that he castigates some proponents as "batty". Assertions like that are sloppy playground name-calling; they detract from his very sound analysesin many areas.
Pity; I heard him on "Start the Week". I was looking forward to reading the book, & to a sociologist's eye on these phenomena. All I found was some predictable debunking of fairly obvious targets.
Read Francis Wheen's "How Mumbo-Jumbo conquered the World" instead.
