The Secret Power of the Pyramid
Akins
1980
Submitter: Yes, the hit author of ESP: Your Psychic Powers and How to Test Them is back to tell you the truth about pyramids, who built them, and their mysterious powers.
I have no idea how this has lasted in a school library for 40 years, through at least five librarians, several LMS changes, and presumably an initial digitization of the catalogue. The only reason I caught it was because classes haven’t been allowed up to the library due to COVID-19, so I had extra time to weed and inventory our whole collection.
Any 40-year-old book that hasn’t been checked out since well before any of my students were even born deserves to be weeded, but this “non-fiction” book is a prime example of pseudoscience. It tells the reader about the “true” history of pyramids and how they were really built by either the gods, aliens, or Atlanteans. Certainly not a bunch of “primitive people” from Africa, don’t be ridiculous!
The book then goes on to extoll the powers of pyramids, which include preserving milk, sharpening razors, and growing plants. Really, pyramids seem capable of anything you want them to do! Akins even tells you how to conduct your own experiments to test these powers.
I’m going to keep this book to use as an example of pseudoscience for information literacy lessons. Generally, if someone promises that their magic doodad can do anything, it really does nothing at all, no matter how much it’s dressed up as science!
Holly: Public libraries are a better place for this kind of thing than school libraries. Mary loves this kind of thing (for entertainment, just to be clear, although she told an audience in a webinar today that she read a book about brainwashing so she could try to brainwash me. Maybe she did – I’ll never know!)
40 years without being checked out seems wayyy too long for any book in any library except maybe specific academic libraries.
I would be unlikely ever to believe the pseudo-scientific ravings of someone who thinks “phenomena” is a singular noun. Accordingly, I am dubious that “Drbal” really is pronounced “Dribble.”
But at least this book isn’t insisting that the pyramids were built to store grain — is it?
I’ll give them something for the cover font, especially how “the” is drawn. LOL @ having a magnetic field “built into” something.
Stupid, out of date, and racist. This one goes to the library sale — if that’s canceled due to the plague, it goes to recycling.
There’s a great irony on the last page. (pronounced Dribble)
Yes, it almost sounds like drivel. 😉
Or, indeed, “dribble”, as in if you believe this drivel, you probably drool when you drink.
Trees died for this??