What follows is from THE NIGHT IS LARGE: COLLECTED ESSAYS, 1938-1995, by Martin Gardner, published by St. Martin's Press, (1996):
[Regarding] the question of whether Americans today are more or less gullible than their forebears. My own opinion is that the gullibility of the public today makes citizens of the nineteenth century look like hard-nosed skeptics. A larger fraction of Americans now go to college, science has made astounding strides, popular books and magazines about science abound, and big newspapers have first-class science editors. The result? Almost every newspaper runs a daily horoscope, and astrology books, like books about crank and sometimes harmful diets, far outsell books on reputable science. A Gallup survey in 1986 found that 52 percent of American teenagers believe in astrology and 67 percent in angels. A 1974 poll by the Center for Policy Research in New York reported that 48 percent of American adults are certain that Satan exists and 20 percent more think his existence probable. Electric belts are out but crystal power is in. Time-Life vigorously promoted a set of lurid volumes about paranormal powers. Mesmerism now stimulates memories of past lives and the recall of being abducted by aliens from outer space. The most preposterous book ever written about UFO abductions, INTRUDERS, by Budd Hopkins, was published by Random House with full-page ads in The New York Times Book Review. Acupuncture charts show paths of energy-flow as non-existent as the paths of similar flow on chiropractic charts. The Hite Report and treatises on the "G-spot" are as comic as any sex manual of the past century. Spiritualism is back in full force in the form of trance channeling. Shirley MacLaine has become richer and more influential -- she is certainly prettier -- than Madame Blavatsky ever was.
