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Self-help is an $8.5 billion industry but is it doing anyone any good? In SHAM, Steve Salerno argues that there’s no proof that it has.

As a former self help publisher, Salerno found it odd that self help gurus do market research on potential buyers and that the most likely customers were people who bought a self help book in the past 18 months. After all, shouldn’t someone be expected to read a self help book and be cured? Why would they need to buy another book on the topic?

Self help books fall into two categories: “victimization” - because we are victims of our upbringing and genetics, we can’t be held responsible for our actions - and “empowerment” - if we only believe in ourselves, we can do anything. Because of these categories, Salerno argues that the self help industry is responsible for our beliefs that something is wrong with us.

What follows is a mishmash of anecdotes about the personal lives of big name self help gurus like Tony Robbins, Dr. Phil, Dr. Laura, and John Gray. He also takes swipes at the life coaching industry, alternative medicine, motivational speakers and even Suze Orman’s personal finance books. As I read the book, I found myself wondering just where the line was between “self help” and virtually any spiritual or non-fiction publication. By Salerno’s definition, it seems like any psychologist, spiritual leader or business exec who offers advice to the masses falls into the broad category of “self help.”

Which brings me to my first major issue of the book - with such a broad scope, how in the world can you prove scientifically that the self help industry is a sham? What would be the benchmarks of success? How would you conduct the experiment? In cognitive therapy, for instance, the psychologist and patient set milestones to achieve a particular result, but I have to wonder what the success rate of that industry as a whole is - and how that would even be an apples-to-apples comparison? Throw in alternative medicine, pseudo-science, spiritual healings and everything else, and you get a jumbled mess not a scientific study.

Salerno’s criticisms that self help gurus do market research and target past clients seems more like good business skills than sketchy behavior. First, the competition in the book industry is fierce - not just to get published but to actually get people to buy your book. If you don’t have a large enough target market, chances are, the publisher will pass. Second, it’s not just self help gurus but just about all businesses that look for repeat business from customers. It costs a lot less to sell a past customer more stuff than it does to acquire a customer. That’s just business economics. (And personally, I’m more likely to buy a second book from an author I like and respect - especially if I’m interested in the topic.)

That Salerno chides the self help industry for failing to cure its customers with one dose also seems silly to me and shows a complete lack of understanding for human psychology. First, he rightly addresses the issue that after reading a book or attending a seminar, you get a boost in motivation. But as time passes, that feeling fades. To get it back, you must engage with the material again and again.

I’m not sure why this is surprising. If all you had to do was listen to a lecture once and not complete any of the exercises or re-engage with the materials, all college students who actually attended their lectures would have 4.0s. Unfortunately, that’s not how most humans learn. We must review the material several times for our neural patterns to form long term memories. Alternatively, it’s not like one time behavior has much of an effect on us. We can’t go to the gym once, diet for a day, or attend a cognitive therapy session and expect miracles.

Then, there’s the question of who’s responsible for our learning - the guru or us? Salerno chides the industry for promoting victimization and then questions whether it’s the guru’s fault, rather than our own, if we don’t succeed. This seems horribly backwards to me.

For instance, let’s say I read The Art of Happiness by the Dalai Lama. (By Salerno’s standards, this would seem to be a self help title.) If I don’t walk away from the book a changed person and happy for life, is that the Dalai Lama’s fault or mine? Is it remotely believable that without any work whatsoever on my part other than reading the book, I should achieve a lifetime of happiness on par with Dalai Lama and if not, it’s because he’s a shoddy teacher out to take all my money (or perhaps his co-author, Howard Cutler, is)? Or that I failed in some way?

Salerno also takes issue with sports motivation, which completely baffled me since there are numerous scientific studies out there showing a connection between positive thinking and achieving results. He didn’t refer to any of them during his criticisms of coaching.

Finally, for a book that supposedly is a scientific look at self help, he didn’t spend much time analyzing what attracts people to the industry. If Salerno is to be believed, it’s because these gurus are such excellent sales people and prey on insecurities created by the self help movement over the last 50 years. He doesn’t provide any real evidence for this other than a handful of brief correlations like the divorce rate is higher or that the self help industry is growing significantly.

He also doesn’t mention other possible influences like people turning away from organized religion, people looking for spirituality in a secular world, that post modern culture has exposed us to new ideas, that the $550 billion global pharma industry spends billions to promote ‘cures’ and finance psychiatrists, the looming threat of terrorism, or that scientific advances like stem cell research, cloning, and artificial intelligence that might make us question our purpose in life and what it means to be human.

The book has lots of interesting trivia but not enough evidence to support its premises. If you want to know the dirt on Dr. Phil, Dr. Laura, and Tony Robbins, you’ll find it highly entertaining. But if you want a scientific look at the self help industry’s impact on our culture, look elsewhere.

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I've always liked Michael Shermer's witty, skeptical approach to virtually everything in his Scientific American columns. Regardless of whether I agree with his conclusions, he always offers me a new perspective on various, obscure topics. So it was with great interest that I picked up his new book, Why Darwin Matters.

In the book, Shermer argues that science is under attack from Evangelical Christians, and it's about time that scientists stand up and debunk Intelligent Design for what it is - a way for Evangelicals to infuse religious teachings into secular education. If they don't, they risk allowing religious proponents to redefine "science" to support their claims.

According to the widespread myth, Darwin became an evolutionist at the Galapagos Islands in 1835 after discovering natural selection during his research there. But according to his diaries, Darwin wasn't convinced of evolution until two years later. It took him until 1844 to share his findings with his botanist friend, Joseph Hooker, where he wrote "I am almost convinced, (quite contrary to opinion I started with) that species are not (it is like confessing a murder) immutable." In fact, Darwin spent 22 years struggling with the question of whether to publish his findings. After all, if species could evolve through natural selection, what place was there for God? In 1859, he finally published On the Origin of Species, and only because another researcher, Alfred Russel Wallace, independently came up with the theory of natural selection and was considering publishing it.

Fast forward to the modern era and the scientific community is virtually united in agreement that evolution happened. The same cannot be said for the cultural landscape. According to a 2005 Pew Research poll, 42% of Americans hold creationist views that "living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time" compared to 48% who believe that humans "evolved over time." 64% are ok with teaching creationism in classrooms, while more than half of those individuals think evolution should be replaced by creationism in biology classrooms.

Even President Bush was quoted as saying that Intellectual Design (ID) should be taught in schools. The media frenzy was so potent that Bush's science advisor was compelled to clarify the President's words in a New York Times article. In it, he explained that the President meant that while ID might be discussed a part of the "social context" in science classes, it was not to be considered "science" and that "evolution is the cornerstone of modern biology." As a former creationist turned evolutionist, Shermer sets out to explain the hype surrounding the creation v. evolution debate and clarify the positions and motivations of both sides.

Shermer opens his book with the definitions of a scientific theory, the historical context in which Darwin introduced his theory, and the main tenants of the theory of evolution. He also introduces the foundations of the Intelligent Design philosophy - theologian William Paley's famous watchmaker argument. The 1802 philosophy posited that if you found a watch on the ground, you'd know that it must have a maker because of its complexity. Similarly, because the world is complex, it must have had a designer - God. Both Paley and Darwin sought to explain the world around them, but while Paley took a top down, religious approach, Darwin started from the bottom with natural selection. The religious community latched on to Paley's arguments. After much debate, the scientific community went with Darwin.

Evolutionary theory has developed considerably since Darwin's time. Shermer provides numerous examples of how scientists know evolution happened and how they test their hypotheses. He then tackles the question of why people don't accept evolution, pulling from a speech William Jennings Bryan was set to make, but never did, during the Scopes Trial of 1925 - that evolution implies that there is no God, that it leads to atheism and a life without morality or meaning. In fact, most people don't care about the basic tenets of evolution or the evidence supporting it. They're more upset with the notion that accepting evolution would somehow degrade our humanity and leave us Godless and immoral.

In probably the most comprehensive section of the book, Shermer sets his sights on the fallacies of logic in their Intelligent Design argument and argues against them one by one. If you've ever wanted to read an eloquently written challenge to ID, pick up this book. Shermer leaves no stone unturned when addressing common ID issues such as the plausibility of a supernatural creator, the burden of proof, that disproving evolution doesn't prove creationism (as they'd like you to believe), that one more fossil is needed to fill a particular gap as proof of evolution. He also refutes what he considers to be the 10 most cogent arguments with evolutionary science.

Next, Sherman tackles creationism and Intelligent Design in the courtroom. He discusses the 1987 Louisiana case that asked for balanced time for creationism and evolution and the 2005 Dover case that wanted a disclaimer for Intelligent Design added to the science curriculum. He then shows that the real agenda of Intelligent Design is to convince people that Darwinism is atheistic, thus shifting the debate from creationism v. evolution to God vs. no God. In other words, the ID community wants to convince you that if they can disprove evolution, that automatically means creationism (or ID) is correct.

Like Shermer's Scientific American columns, this book was a joy to read. In this book, Shermer tries to do three things: explain why evolution is considered science and intelligent design is not, defend science from those people who want to change its very definition to suit their religious needs, and show how you can still believe in God and accept evolution.

While, unfortunately, believers in Intelligent Design and creationism probably won't bother to pick up this book, it offers a compelling and thorough argument for evolution to anyone sitting on the fence or wanting to learn more about evolution.

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Human stem cell research is a major hot button topic that divides the conservative and scientific communities. Religious conservatives see it as tampering with nature and even playing God. Scientists, on the other hand, see the potential to treat many of the life threatening diseases of our times - from heart disease and diabetes to Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.

There's no question that there's been a lot of hype surrounding both sides, so it's refreshing that in The Stem Cell Divide provides a non-biased look at the science and politics surrounding this controversial topic.

The book is divided into 3 parts: Discovery of the Stem Cell's Unique Abilities, The Race to Harness the Power of Life, and Stem Cell Cures and Curses. There are two appendices: one describing how human cells are cultured and the other describing California's legislation concerning the funding of stem cell research. The book also has a fairly extensive glossary.

The first part of the book is concerned with stem cell basics. This section is designed to get novices up to speed with the history and process of stem cell research. Bellomo clearly explains why embryonic stem cells have advantages over adult stem cells, the scientific research up to this point, and our main sources for embryonic stem cells - namely stem cell cultures maintained by Dr. James Thomson of the University of Wisconsin and potentially, the thousands of unused embryos that are discarded at in vitro fertilization (IVF) clinics.

The second part of the book discusses the opposition President Bush has faced from his own party by his decision to veto any bill that allowed federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. Bellomo makes it extremely clear that the issue at hand is not whether embryonic stem cell research should be legal - it already is allowed, remains unrestricted, and is perfectly legal - but whether it should be federally funded.

On August 9, 2001, Bush announced that federal funding would only be allowed for researchers who experimented on the 60 or so existing embryonic stem cell lines. Determined to keep biotechs within the state, California responded with Proposition 71, legislature that essentially made conducting stem cell research a state constitutional right and allowed $3 billion in funds to be given over 10 years to stem cell research facilities, and specifically, embryonic stem cell research. That sparked a number of other states to also propose legislation to fund embryonic stem cell research.

At the federal level, President Bush has faced opposition in Congress. In May 2005, the Republican-controlled House passed a bill allowing federal funds to be used for embryonic stem cell research. Even staunch supporter, Dr. Bill Frist, broke from the Bush camp to support the legislation, saying

We should federally fund research only on embryonic stem cells derived from blastocysts left over from fertility therapy, which will not be implanted or adopted but instead are otherwise destined by the parents with absolute certainty to be discarded and destroyed.

Bellomo also addresses the rise and fall of Dr. Hwang Woo Suk, the South Korean researcher who claimed incredible advances in stem cell research and became somewhat of a celebrity in his home country. His promising career came to a crashing halt when it was made public that he had fabricated much of his results and had breached ethical guidelines when he paid women to donate their eggs for embryonic research. Scientists are still trying to decipher what, if any, part of his research is valid and what was fabricated.

Finally, in the third part of the book, Bellomo discusses the promises of therapeutic cloning - when embryonic stem cells are removed from the blastocyst, harvested in a culture dish and then injected with the nucleus from a donor cell so that the cell makes copies of the donor genetic material. Therapeutic cloning offers great potential to generate replacement tissues and organs for illnesses and injuries that currently have no cure and will greatly reduce the rejection rate for patients that need organ transplants. It is thought that if organs and tissues are grown from a patient's own cells, their body will be much less likely to reject the transplant than if that organ was donated by someone else.

Bellomo doesn't shy away from alternatives to embryonic stem cell research, covering briefly the pros and cons of using adult stem cells and germ cells, before tackling some of the key arguments for both sides.

Ethically, conservatives argue that embryonic stem cells are still the foundations of human life and therefore they have a right to life. As James Sherley of MIT says,

A human life begins when a diploid complement of human DNA is initiated to begin human development. Therefore, a life can be initiated by the fusion of sperm and egg or by the introduction of a diploid nucleus into an enucleated egg (ie cloning)

James Thomson argues from a different perspective.

The bottom line is that there are 400,000 frozen embryos in the United States, and a large percentage of those are going to be thrown out. Regardless of what you think the moral status of those embryos is, it makes sense to me that it's a better moral decision to use them to help people than to just throw them out. It's a very complex issue, but to me it boils down to that one thing.

Advancements in cellular research may eventually make therapeutic cloning more acceptable as scientists learn to remove the inner cell mass of a blastocyst without destroying the embryo or as research into how diseases develop helps find cures that don't require such practices. The final chapter offers predictions of where Bellomo sees the progress several years into the future.

While the byline of the book "The facts, the fiction, and the fear driving the greatest scientific, political, and religious debate of our time" suggests that it will tackle the ethical, religious, and political debate on stem cell research, the book only briefly tackles the ethical arguments for each side while focusing on the scientific process, experiments, and funding legislation.

The writing style is accessible and explains the science in clear terms with diagrams. This is a great, matter-of-fact overview of stem cell research that allows its readers to draw their own conclusions based on the facts presented. It will be useful to those looking for a comprehensive introduction to the subject as well as those looking to catch up with the latest research.