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Title: Author says the emperor has few clothes...
Review: Classic 'emperor has no clothes' material. The most noteworthy sound bite in the book, to me, is Horgan's term Ironic Science. This seems particularly applicable in the field of physics and cosmology (with Stephen Hawking the head wizard) where string theory and multiverse theory have become the recent rages. It's like the most talented modern scientists at some juncture realized that they could either devote their careers to "the mere filling in of details" of some existing groundbreaking work such as relativity, or they could propose a truly new and probably unprovable theory that would garner some acclaim for them in a wider sphere. Naturally some of these ambitious fellows chose the latter course. But the 'man on the street' rather than just shrug and accept this and pay taxes for the next particle accelerator has a right to ask -- whither science?
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