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Scientific American

April 1, 2004

1 min read

Magic Water and Mencken's Maxim

Social critic H. L. Mencken offers a lesson on how to respond to outrageous pseudoscientific claims

By Michael Shermer

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Michael Shermer is publisher of Skeptic magazine (www.skeptic.com) and a Presidential Fellow at Chapman University. His new book is Heavens on Earth: The Scientific Search for the Afterlife, Immortality, and Utopia (Henry Holt, 2018).

More by Michael Shermer

This article was originally published with the title “Magic Water and Mencken's Maxim” in Scientific American Magazine Vol. 290 No. 4 (April 2004)

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