In this new collection of bite-size pop science essays, Dr. Joe Schwarcz shows that you can find science virtually anywhere you look. And the closer you look, the more fascinating it becomes. In this volume, we look through our magnifying glass at maraschino cherries, frizzy hair, duct tape, pickle juice, yellow school buses, aphrodisiacs, dental implants, and bull testes. If those don’t tickle your fancy, how about aconite murders, shot towers,...

"We are in a crisis. A tsunami of misinformation and disinformation is threatening to engulf evidence-based science. While quackery—loosely defined as the spread of false “knowledge,” often accompanied by various versions of "snake oil"—is not a novel phenomenon, it has never posed as great a threat to public health as today. COVID-19 has unleashed an unprecedented flurry of destructive information that has fueled vaccine hesitancy and has...

" Halley’s Comet visits the earth every seventy-five years. Since the dawn of civilization, humans had believed comets were evil portents. In 1705, Edmond Halley liberated humanity from these primordial superstitions (or so it was thought), proving that Newtonian mechanics rather than the will of the gods brought comets into our celestial neighborhood. Despite this scientific advance, when Halley’s Comet returned in 1910 and astronomers announced...

"From CSI to Forensic Files to the celebrated reputation of the FBI crime lab, forensic scientists have long been mythologized in American popular culture as infallible crime solvers. Juries put their faith in 'expert witnesses' and innocent people have been executed as a result. Innocent people are still on death row today, condemned by junk science. In 2012, the Innocence Project began searching for prisoners convicted by junk science, and three...

"What actually is quantum physics? If you can answer that questions without bullsh*tting the person standing next to you in the bookstore, you can stop reading right now. But although most of us don't actually understand quantum physics, we know that it's mystical and awesome, and if we understood it we'd probably be rich and beautiful and happy, right? After all, there are plenty of people out there trying to sell you quantum crystals to align your...