The tempo of technological development and scientific discovery seems only to be accelerating every day, and the time that it takes for a discovery to make its way in everyday life shortens all the time. Unfortunately, many of these changes are not very well understood and there are vocal opponents of many of them. A healthy dose of skepticism about everything that is novel and makes promises that seem too good to be true should be welcome, especially for tools and technologies that have not been proven themselves. However, when a technological advancement has already been proven to be effective and promises to facilitate human life in a very dramatic way, then the opposition to that advance can be hurtful to the society in general. "Denialism" is a book about several of those technological developments. Some of them, like the vaccination, are actually centuries old, but the opposition to them has never completely gone away. To the contrary, it looks like it has only increased in the recent years. The author does a very good job of describing and arguing in favor of several of those technological advances, and takes their critics to a task. A long-time New Yorker contributor, Michael Specter writes a very exciting and passionate book. The topics that he covers are all very interesting, and for the most part well documented. Unfortunately, the book has many significant flaws that make it less-than-ideal argument in favor of those technologies.

The books biggest fault is the portrayal of a very natural and sometimes very legitimate human tendency to be suspicious and fearful of novel and unusual substances into something that is misguided at best and more often than not pathological. This attitude serves neither the author nor his cause well. If his aim is to change minds and win over hearts, it would have been much more prudent to assume a much more conciliatory and far less condescending attitude towards those who don't share his opinions. As it is, I am afraid that this book will just end up preaching to the choir and solidify the opposition to many of the scientific developments that are promoted herein.

Another big flaw is a completely one-sided presentation. I am very inclined to believe most of the stuff that Specter argues in favor of, but the fact that he presents an incredibly unbalanced presentation leaves me very suspicious. On a few occasions that he mentions some of the arguments from the opposing viewpoint they invariably come from people that are so out of the mainstream way of thinking that it is hard to believe they are very representative. In other words, there is a lot of straw-man in this book.

Overall, this is an interesting book that will most likely not change many hearts or minds.

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