Martin Gardner

Did Adam and Eve Have Navels?

A hilariously skeptical work that ranks with Harold Bloom's Omens of the Millennium and Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World.

Will asteroids rain down on earth, destroying life as we know it? Do eggs balance on end only on the first day of spring? Will drinking your own urine cure your ills?

Such laughable questions seem to occupy the minds of millions on a daily basis, as if the public were starved for any crumbs of knowledge that pass for science, willing to embrace far-fetched theories that do little but stir fear and amazement. Yet these notions, ludicrous as they are, hold sway in the courts of public discourse—on so-called "news" programs and in distinguished magazines—and too easily become respected pieces of information, soon to be called "truth."

So says Martin Gardner in this engaging and provocative book, Did Adam and Eve Have Navels? Possibly the most ingenious "debunker" of scientific fraud of our time, Gardner draws on his decades of expertise across a dizzying array of topics to lay bare New Age proclamations and dubious research by eminent scientists. Confronting maxims of pseudoscience with a keen, skeptical eye, Did Adam and Eve Have Navels? eviscerates specious claims about everything from numerology to Scientology, and muses on topics as diverse as the Heaven's Gate cult suicides and Senator Claiborne Pell's preoccupation with the paranormal. In doing so, Gardner, whose career began in the 1930s, turns America's seemingly inexhaustible appetite for superstition and quick health fixes back on itself, offering his own brand of wisdom in its place.

Did Adam and Eve Have Navels? is hilarious and riveting, and brilliantly unsettling in its exposé of falsehood and intellectual chicanery. The essays on urine therapy and reflexology alone should be required reading for anyone interested in so-called "alternative" medicine. A monumental work of "debunkery," Did Adam and Eve Have Navels? will give those of us who prize logic and common sense immense solace and inspiration, and will stand as a testament to the invaluable contributions made by Martin Gardner to our understanding of legitimate scientific inquiry of the past century.