Better than the truth

He takes a number of examples, including the Twin Towers conspiracy fantasies, creationist and Islamic fundamentalism, proceeding to demonstrate how such ideas and beliefs are built on ignorance, lies and deliberate misinformation.

He believes that, with the internet, such way-out theories and pseudo-explanations are having a global impact that was not previously feasible, but he provides little hard evidence that our "enlightened legacy is now being threatened." Are we more vulnerable than ever because of the internet and mass communications?

What Thompson doesn't examine - and this is crucial - is why so many people choose to believe concocted stories rather than more rational, evidence-based explanations.

The fact that governments and the power elites continually lie to us and then mount elaborate cover-ups only helps feed the hunger for alternative versions.

That the media collude in this mendacity is surely a key factor. They also prefer stories about aliens landing in Kent villages to ones about migrant workers in Kent orchards being paid peanuts.

A sensational fairy story is preferable to a true story of daily life under modern-day capitalism.

Thompson shows how the methodology of creationists and conspiracy theorists go hand in hand. They home in on seemingly inexplicable anomalies to undermine established theory. While real life in an increasingly unpredictable and rapacious capitalist system becomes more insane and, for most people, inexplicable, the flight to fantasy will become more attractive.

He runs the danger of promoting "expert" and "scientific" opinion as more valid by definition. But, when we recall the "experts" who foisted IQ testing on generations of school pupils, the medics who gave us thalidomide and the physicists who told us that radiation levels from nuclear testing were not dangerous, is it any wonder that many desert science for gobbledygook?

He also weakens his arguments somewhat by including someone such as GM lobbyist and failed ex-Labour and SDP politician Dick Taverne in his list of those who advocate scientific rationality. Still, the book is an entertaining read and basically a sound argument.

JOHN GREEN