Wednesday 28 December 2016

Anton Mesmer and Pseudoscience

In The Infinite Monkey Cage Christmas Special Brian Cox and Robin Ince discuss the Christmas ghost story, and look at the Victorian obsession with the supernatural, how studying paranormal phenomenon went from a genuine scientific endeavour, to the realms of pseudoscience.

Meanwhile BBC Radio 4 has Philip Ball telling the story of Anton Mesmer and the rise and fall of animal magnetism. He interviews Simon Shaffer, from Cambridge University, about the role of spectacle in science and medicine in the late 18th century and Richard Wiseman about the legacy of scientific scrutiny of the claims of parapsychology.




 


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