Michael Shermer
American science writer
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Michael Shermer's Degrees
- Bachelors Psychology Pepperdine University
- Masters Experimental Psychology California State University, Fullerton
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Why Is Michael Shermer Influential?
(Suggest an Edit or Addition)According to Wikipedia, Michael Brant Shermer is an American science writer, historian of science, executive director of The Skeptics Society, and founding publisher of Skeptic magazine, a publication focused on investigating pseudoscientific and supernatural claims. The author of over a dozen books, Shermer is known for engaging in debates on pseudoscience and religion in which he emphasizes scientific skepticism.
Michael Shermer's Published Works
Published Works
- Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time (1997) (349)
- Free to choose. (2007) (294)
- Left Behind. (2021) (171)
- The Believing Brain (2011) (136)
- How We Believe: The Search for God in an Age of Science (2003) (90)
- A new phrenology? (2008) (78)
- Exorcising Laplace's demon: chaos and antichaos, history and metahistory (1995) (74)
- The political brain. (2006) (63)
- What is pseudoscience? (2011) (61)
- The doping dilemma. (2008) (44)
- Don't Be Evil (2008) (42)
- Why People Cheat, Gossip, Care, Share, and Follow the Golden Rule (2006) (40)
- This view of science: Stephen Jay Gould as historian of science and scientific historian, popular scientist and scientific popularizer. (2002) (39)
- The Mind of the Market: Compassionate Apes, Competitive Humans, and Other Tales from Evolutionary Economics (2007) (39)
- Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design (2006) (38)
- Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It? (2002) (34)
- The mind of the market. (2007) (30)
- On Fact and Fraud: Cautionary Tales from the Front Lines of Science (2010) (29)
- How We Believe (1999) (25)
- Stage fright. (2008) (24)
- I want to believe. (2009) (23)
- The Skeptic Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience (2002) (22)
- In Darwin's Shadow: The Life and Science of Alfred Russel Wallace: A Biographical Study on the Psychology of History (2002) (22)
- Arguing for Atheism (2007) (20)
- Science Friction (2004) (20)
- The borderlands of science : where sense meets nonsense (2001) (19)
- The (other) secret. (2007) (19)
- Starbucks in the forbidden city. (2001) (19)
- Surviving statistics. How the survivor bias distorts reality. (2014) (18)
- Smart People Believe Weird Things (2002) (17)
- Silent No More. (2018) (17)
- The Shamans of Scientism. (2002) (16)
- Wheatgrass juice and folk medicine. (2008) (15)
- What Is the Secret of Success? (2017) (15)
- The Enchanted Glass (2004) (14)
- Secrets of Mental Math: The Mathemagician's Guide to Lightning Calculation and Amazing Math Tricks (2006) (14)
- Colorful pebbles and Darwin's dictum. (2001) (13)
- The Ignoble Savage. (2003) (13)
- Nano nonsense and cryonics. (2001) (12)
- Shock and awe. (2015) (12)
- Heavens on earth. (2014) (12)
- Eat, drink and be merry. (2007) (12)
- The really hard science. (2007) (12)
- A bounty of science. (2004) (11)
- Scientific Naturalism: A Manifesto for Enlightenment Humanism (2017) (11)
- The truth will out (2010) (11)
- Rumsfeld's wisdom. (2005) (11)
- Science Defended, Science Defined: The Louisiana Creationism Case (1991) (10)
- Show Me the Body. (2003) (10)
- What's the Harm? (2003) (10)
- The Palgrave Handbook of Philosophy and Public Policy (2018) (8)
- I am a sceptic, but I'm not a denie (2010) (8)
- Perception Deception. (2015) (8)
- Guns, germs, and steel: The fates of human societies; Born to rebel: birth order, family dynamics, and creative lives (1997) (8)
- Why ET Hasn't Called (2002) (8)
- Demon-Haunted Brain. (2003) (8)
- Tracking Science: An Alternative for Those Excluded by Citizen Science (2021) (8)
- Conspiracy central. Who believes in conspiracy theories--and why. (2014) (8)
- The science of right and wrong. (2011) (7)
- Science and Pseudoscience (2013) (7)
- Why You Should Be Skeptical of Brain Scans (2008) (7)
- Death by Theory. (2004) (7)
- Wag the dog. (2008) (7)
- Flying carpets and scientific prayers. Scientific experiments claiming that distant intercessory prayer produces salubrious effects are deeply flawed. (2004) (7)
- God's number is up. (2004) (7)
- The art of the con. (2009) (6)
- Believing in Belief (2006) (6)
- Shermer's Last Law. (2002) (6)
- When ideas have sex. (2010) (6)
- When Facts Backfire. (2016) (6)
- The Conspiracy Theory Detector (2010) (6)
- Lies we tell ourselves. (2012) (5)
- Turn me on, dead man. (2005) (5)
- Folk numeracy and middle land. Why our brains do not intuitively grasp probabilities, Part 1. (2008) (5)
- The apparent metobolisable energy of diets iwth different sources of fibre when fed to emus, ostriches and cockerels (2001) (5)
- Bowling for God. (2006) (5)
- The real science behind scientology. (2011) (5)
- Reality Check: How Science Deniers Threaten Our Future (2013) (5)
- Psychic drift. Why most scientists do not believe in ESP and psi phenomena. (2003) (5)
- Codified claptrap. The Bible Code is numerological nonsense masquerading as science. (2003) (4)
- Doomsday Catch. (2016) (4)
- Wronger Than Wrong (2006) (4)
- The Feynman-Tufte principle. (2005) (4)
- The Domesticated Savage. (2003) (4)
- Pseudoscience and deception : the smoke and mirrors of paranormal claims (2014) (4)
- Flying Carpets and Scientific Prayers (2004) (4)
- The borderlands of science (2001) (4)
- Mesmerized by Magnetism. (2002) (4)
- The decline of violence. (2011) (4)
- The dangers of keeping an open mind. (2013) (4)
- Surviving death on Larry King Live. (2010) (4)
- Full of holes. The curious case of acupuncture. (2005) (4)
- The Prospects for Homo economicus (2007) (4)
- Heavens on Earth: The Scientific Search for the Afterlife, Immortality and Utopia (2018) (4)
- Bush's mistake and Kennedy's error. (2007) (3)
- What's the harm? Alternative medicine is not everything to gain and nothing to lose. (2003) (3)
- The Captain Kirk Principle (2002) (3)
- Free won't. (2012) (3)
- (Can't Get No) Satisfaction. (2007) (3)
- The crooked timber of history: History is complex and often chaotic. Can we use this to better understand the past? (1997) (3)
- The Immortalist (2011) (3)
- More Baloney Detection (2001) (3)
- Darwin, Freud, and the Myth of the Hero in Science (1990) (3)
- Paranoia strikes deep. (2009) (3)
- Race across America (1993) (3)
- Cures and Cons (2006) (3)
- Fake, mistake, replicate. (2006) (3)
- The gradual illumination of the mind. (2002) (3)
- The conspiracy theory detector. How to tell the difference between true and false conspiracy theories. (2010) (3)
- Mustangs, monists and meaning. (2004) (3)
- A view on science (2002) (3)
- For the Love of Science. (2017) (3)
- The left's war on science. (2013) (3)
- Weirdonomics and quirkology. (2007) (3)
- When science doesn't support beliefs. (2013) (3)
- Proof of hallucination. (2013) (3)
- I, clone. The Three Laws of Cloning will protect clones and advance science. (2003) (2)
- Consilience and consensus. (2015) (2)
- Rupert's resonance. (2005) (2)
- Thinking of nothing. (2017) (2)
- Creationism in 3-D. (2009) (2)
- Common sense. Surprising new research shows that crowds are often smarter than individuals. (2004) (2)
- Philosophy: Creative resilience (2012) (2)
- Paranormal claims : a critical analysis (2007) (2)
- Wronger than wrong. Not all wrong theories are equal. (2006) (2)
- The flipping point. (2006) (2)
- Forensic pseudoscience. (2015) (2)
- Mathemagics: How to Look Like a Genius Without Really Trying (1993) (2)
- LIVE LONGER AND PROSPER (2005) (2)
- The fossil fallacy. (2005) (2)
- A Random Walk through Middle Land (2008) (2)
- Mr. Hume: Tear. Down. This. Wall. A Response to George Ellis’s Critique of My Defense of Moral Realism (2017) (2)
- The science of right and wrong. Can data determine moral values? (2011) (2)
- The sensed-presence effect. (2010) (2)
- Digits and Fidgets (2003) (2)
- Miracle on Probability Street (2004) (2)
- Deities for Atheists (2006) (2)
- Candle in the Dark. (2003) (2)
- Fahrenheit 2777: 9/11 has generated the mother of all conspiracy theories. (2005) (2)
- The Blind Godmaker (2005) (2)
- Darwin on the right. (2006) (2)
- Born This Way. (2016) (2)
- When scientists sin. (2010) (2)
- Racial dynamics underlying crime commission, emotionality, and last statements among executed offenders in Texas (2020) (2)
- I Was Wrong (2001) (2)
- Darwin misunderstood. (2009) (2)
- The Soul of Science (2005) (2)
- The genesis of justice. (2014) (2)
- The Demon of Determinism (2003) (2)
- Telephone to the dead. (2009) (2)
- Agenticity. Why people believe that invisible agents control the world. (2009) (2)
- Bad apples and bad barrels. Lessons in evil from Stanford to Abu Ghraib. (2007) (2)
- None So Blind. (2004) (1)
- A Mysterious Change of Mind. (2018) (1)
- Testing tenure: Let the market decide (2006) (1)
- The Myth Is the Message (2004) (1)
- UFOs, UAPs and CRAPs. (2011) (1)
- The alpinists of evil. Nazis did not just blindly follow orders. (2012) (1)
- Airborne baloney. (2007) (1)
- Giving the Devil his Due (2020) (1)
- Outrageous. Why cops kill. (2015) (1)
- A random walk through middle land. How randomness rules our world and why we cannot see it, part 2. (2008) (1)
- Skepticism as a Virtue (2002) (1)
- Philosophy: What we don't know (2012) (1)
- Is God All in the Mind? (2001) (1)
- The myth of income inequality. (2014) (1)
- The Punctuated Politics of Stephen Jay Gould: Science and Culture in Evolutionary Theory (2003) (1)
- The Erotic-Fierce People (2001) (1)
- The Major Unsolved Problem in Biology (2004) (1)
- Extrasensory pornception. (2011) (1)
- Apocalypse AI. (2017) (1)
- Scientia Humanitatis. Reason, empiricism and skepticism are not virtues of science alone. (2015) (1)
- The Quack of the Gaps Problem. (2016) (1)
- JAMA and the mountebank (2008) (1)
- Methuselah's Moon Shot. (2016) (1)
- Imagine No Universe. (2017) (1)
- Dr. DARPA--Or How the Pentagon Learned to Stop Worrying and Love... (2006) (1)
- Hooey. Drivel. Baloney …. (2016) (1)
- Political science. (2009) (1)
- Hermits and Cranks. (2002) (1)
- The Science of Lying (2014) (1)
- Gods of the gaps. (2013) (1)
- Is God dying? (2013) (1)
- Aunt Millie's mind. (2012) (1)
- Stein's law and science's mission. (2019) (1)
- At the Boundary of Knowledge. (2016) (1)
- Is scientology a cult (2011) (1)
- Afterlife for Atheists. (2016) (1)
- The Sandy Hook Effect (2020) (1)
- Rational atheism. An open letter to messrs. Dawkins, Dennett, Harris and Hitchens. (2007) (1)
- The Meaning of Life in a Formula. (2015) (1)
- Vox Populi. The voice of the people reveals why evolution remains controversial. (2002) (1)
- It's Dogged as Does It (2006) (1)
- Quantum quackery. A hit film justifies hogwash with quantum mechanics. (2005) (1)
- Guest Comment: Hope Springs Eternal—Why People Believe Weird Things (1996) (1)
- Captain Hook meets Adam Smith. (2009) (1)
- Conspiracy contradictions. Why people who believe in one conspiracy are prone to believe others. (2012) (1)
- Folk science. (2006) (1)
- Mesmerized by magnetism. An 18th-century investigation into mesmerism shows us how to think about 21st-century therapeutic magnets. (2002) (1)
- Are We All Racists? (2017) (1)
- The prospects for Homo economicus. A new fMRI study debunks the myth that we are rational-utility money maximizers. (2007) (1)
- It's dogged as does it. Retracing Darwin's footsteps in the Galapagos shatters a myth but reveals how revolutions in science actually evolve. (2006) (1)
- Fox's flapdoodle. (2001) (1)
- Mr. Skeptic goes to Esalen. (2005) (1)
- The skeptic's skeptic. (2010) (1)
- The end is always nigh (2011) (1)
- As luck would have it. (2006) (1)
- The Sandy Hook effect: preventing highly improbable mass murders like that at Sandy Hook Elementary School is impossible, but there are things we can do to decrease violence (2013) (1)
- The Physicist and the Abalone Diver. (2002) (1)
- How to Be a Skeptic. (1997) (1)
- Here Be zombies. (2014) (0)
- OP-ED Resisting the Understandable Appeal of CAM (2011) (0)
- The skeptic's skeptic. In the battle for ideas, scientists could learn from Christopher Hitchens. (2010) (0)
- (Can't get no) satisfaction. The new science of happiness needs some historical perspective. (2007) (0)
- Firearms facts: reply (2013) (0)
- 23 and We. (2018) (0)
- Death Wish. (2016) (0)
- RESTRAINING ATTACHMENT THERAPY (2004) (0)
- Inside the outliers. (2009) (0)
- Financial flimflam. (2011) (0)
- Hope springs eternal. Can nutritional supplements, biotechnology and nanotechnology help us live forever? (2005) (0)
- The myth of the evil aliens. (2011) (0)
- Sacred salubriousness. (2011) (0)
- Romance of the Vanished Past. (2017) (0)
- Reason (and science) for hope (2018) (0)
- 5 Things We Know to Be True. (2016) (0)
- Opting out of overoptimism. (2012) (0)
- Are Markets Moral?: With Stocks Tumbling and Anxiety on the Rise, It's Time to Think About How Our Brains Shape the Economy. (2009) (0)
- Dictators and diehards. (2013) (0)
- CSI, science. Where neuroscience meets criminology. (2013) (0)
- What Is Truth, Anyway? (2017) (0)
- The Fallacy of Excluded Exceptions. (2018) (0)
- Miracle on probability street. The law of large numbers guarantees that one-in-a-million miracles happen 295 times a day in America. (2004) (0)
- Another Fatal Conceit: the lesson from evolutionary economics is bottom-up self-organization, not top-down government design (2012) (0)
- The moral animal: virtue, vice, and human nature (2016) (0)
- The science of lying. When are we most (and least) likely to lie? (2014) (0)
- Climbing mount immortality. How awareness of our mortality may be a major driver of civilization. (2012) (0)
- A noble conception (2009) (0)
- The Confirmation Bias : The Mother of All Cognitive Biases (2015) (0)
- Tiger Blood and Goat Milk. (2016) (0)
- THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE (2011) (0)
- Five myths of terrorism. Wht terror doesn't work. (2013) (0)
- Postmodernism vs. Science. (2017) (0)
- The awe delusion. What does the magnificence of the universe have to do with God? (2014) (0)
- Free to Inquire: The Evolution-Creationism Controversy as a Test Case in Equal Time and Free Speech (2018) (0)
- Politically irrational. Subliminal influences guide our voting preferences. (2012) (0)
- Democracy's laboratory. (2010) (0)
- The myth is the message. Yet another discovery of the lost continent of Atlantis shows why science and myth make uneasy bedfellows. (2004) (0)
- Five myths of terrorism. (2013) (0)
- Teach Your Child Science (1989) (0)
- The science of righteousness. (2012) (0)
- Alvy's Error and the Meaning of Life. (2018) (0)
- Meaning-Making Neurons (2010) (0)
- On Witches and Terrorists. (2017) (0)
- Foreword: Cognitive Creationism and a Realistic Vision of Human Nature (2019) (0)
- Paleo Diets, GMOs and Food Taboos. (2015) (0)
- Healing the Bonds of Affection (2020) (0)
- Sky Gods for Skeptics. (2017) (0)
- Reply to the Letter to the Editor (1993) (0)
- The Skeptic’s Chaplain (2020) (0)
- Kool-aid psychology. (2010) (0)
- Our neandertal brethren. (2010) (0)
- The believing brain. Why science is the only way out of the trap of belief-dependent realism. (2011) (0)
- A Moral Starting Point. (2015) (0)
- Expelled exposed. A film challenging evolution by game show host and financial analyst Ben Stein is a case study in antiscience propaganda. (2008) (0)
- Will E.T. look like us? (2009) (0)
- Who Are You? (2017) (0)
- The 10,000-hour rule debunked: The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance by David Epstein (2013) (0)
- Science, freedom and trade (2010) (0)
- Toward a science of morality: response to Christian Miller's critique (2016) (0)
- Vacation reading (2010) (0)
- Deconstructing the Dead (2001) (0)
- The Awe Delusion (2014) (0)
- Outlawing War. (2017) (0)
- The Electric Universe Acid Test (2015) (0)
- In the year 9595. (2011) (0)
- Is My Science avior (2005) (0)
- Gun science. (2013) (0)
- Magic water and Mencken's maxim. (2004) (0)
- Why Gloom Trumps Glad. (2016) (0)
- The alpinists of evil. (2012) (0)
- FOREWORD: Why People Do Not Accept Evolution (2017) (0)
- Sacred science. Can emergence break the spell of reductionism and put spirituality back into nature? (2008) (0)
- Kids These Days. (2018) (0)
- Hope Springs Eternal (2005) (0)
- Skepticism in behavior analysis: A panel discussion (2005) (0)
- Gun science: how data can help clarify the gun-control debate (2013) (0)
- The Final Mysterians. (2018) (0)
- Psychic for a day: or how I learned Tarot cards, palm reading, astrology and mediumship in 24 hours (2003) (0)
- Aunt Millie's mind: The death of the brain means subjective experiences are neurochemistry. (2012) (0)
- How to Think about God: Theism, Atheism, and Science (2009) (0)
- An unauthorized autobiography of science. (2007) (0)
- Can you hear me now (2010) (0)
- Morality is real, objective, and natural (2016) (0)
- Protopia, not utopia: A reply to the review of The moral arc. (2015) (0)
- Folk Numeracy and Middle Land (2008) (0)
- As Far As Her Eyes Can See (2011) (0)
- Why there is no supernatural morality: response to Miller's opening statement (2016) (0)
- Terrorism as Self-Help Justice. (2015) (0)
- Houdini's skeptical advice. (2011) (0)
- The Pentagon's psychic friends network (2005) (0)
- Remember the Six Billion (2003) (0)
- Logic-tight compartments. (2012) (0)
- ClimeApocalypse! Or just another line item in the budget? (2014) (0)
- Resisting the Understandable Appeal of CAM. (2011) (0)
- Confessions of a speciesist. (2013) (0)
- Adam's Maxim and Spinoza's conjecture. (2008) (0)
- The Exquisite Balance. (2002) (0)
- Unweaving the heart. (2005) (0)
- Michael Shermer The Believing Brain (2015) (0)
- Much ado about nothing. (2012) (0)
- Doing science in the past. (2010) (0)
- Skeptic. Shakespeare, interrupted. (2009) (0)
- Teach Your Child Math (1991) (0)
- Skeptic Adam ’ s Maxim and Spinoza ’ s Conjecture Belief , disbelief and uncertainty generate different neural pathways in the brain (2008) (0)
- Murder in the Cave. (2015) (0)
- Giving the Devil His Due: Why Freedom of Inquiry in Science and Politics is Inviolable (2017) (0)
- Ateísmo y espiritualidad (2017) (0)
- Orderly anarchists (2009) (0)
- Cultivate your garden. (2010) (0)
- Another Fatal Conceit: the lesson from evolutionary economics is bottom-up self-organization, not top-down government design (2012) (0)
- What makes a book a work of science? Response. (2007) (0)
- Sovereign insanity; how weird beliefs can land you in jail. (2013) (0)
- Why People Believe Weird Things: Science, Pseudoscience, and Critical Thinking (2004) (0)
- The power of belief (2008) (0)
- Weird Earth: Debunking Strange Ideas about Our Planet (2020) (0)
- Why Markets Are Moral (2008) (0)
- The Background In his " Skeptic " column in Scientific American in March , 2003 , (0)
- You Kant Be Serious. (2018) (0)
- Sport Cycling: A Guide to Training, Racing, and Endurance (1985) (0)
- Reviews (2005) (0)
- Mr. Armstrong's Jersey and Mr. Rogers's Sweater (2009) (0)
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Michael Shermer is most known for their academic work in the field of history. They are also known for their academic work in the fields of
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