Author Robert Ehrlich, in his book 8 Preposterous Propositions, is not so much trying to convince you of his viewpoint on those propositions as he trying to show the scientific and critical thinking method that we all can (and should) use to evaluate these and similar propositions when we learn about them. In this way, this book is similar to a prior book by Ehrlich titled "Nine Crazy Ideas in Science".
This time around the topics are
For each topic Ehrlich examines the cases for and against while pointing out the dangers of being too open minded or too closed minded. He attempts to be objective while at the same time warning you in what ways he might not be. He even goes so far as to reveal that in the course of evaluating a particular topic, he has changed his position several times.
The net result is an excellent text in critical thinking and a fairly good book about the scientific method. His scale of "flakiness" (from 0 to 4 flakes) for how preposterous an idea is, is cute but, I think, would tend to indicate that science is rather arbitrary or that scientists somehow "vote" on how acceptable an idea is. I think he could do better describing the real path of scientific progress.
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