In a world run by lawyers, in which opinions are inevitably moulded by the popular media, what chance does science have? In Science Friction, Californian writer Michael Shermer presents 14 essays in which he attempts to shine a truth-torch on the business of science being muddied and manhandled.

He starts badly, for my money, by proving clairvoyants and palm readers are less than scientific when he fools four ‘clients’ after spending only one day studying how to be a medium. Chapter Two soon turns into an advertisement for the sceptic movement (Shermer is the director of the Skeptics Society), complete with gratuitous extended quotes from fan mail.

He finally locks in about midway with explorations of what can happen when human influence sullies research. Two chapters stand out: “Spin-Doctoring Science”, a discussion of the very different findings of anthropologists who studied the Yanomamö of Amazonia (Are they “fierce” or “erotic”? Or does it depend on the bad behaviour of thrill-seeking anthropologists?); and “Darwin on the Bounty”, which reveals the famous mutineers as heartbroken men eager to be reunited with their Tahitian girlfriends.

Shermer also spends a lot of time railing almost aggressively against the Intelligent Design movement, which is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel for a sceptic. What drives this obsession? It turns out the author’s world was turned on its head when he was a student at a Church of Christ-based university in Malibu. He was considering theology but “somewhere along the way I found science, and that changed everything”. It sure did.