Saturday, January 10, 2015

Peter Hancock's "Hoax Springs Eternal"

Peter Hancock is Provost Distinguished Research Professor, Pegasus Professor, and Trustee Chair in the Department of Psychology and the Institute for Simulation and Training at the University of Central Florida.

He applied the “Page 99 Test” to his new book, Hoax Springs Eternal: The Psychology of Cognitive Deception, and reported the following:
I have been asked to consider the page ninety-nine test. This enquires whether Ford Madox Ford's statement "Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you," is accurate for my book? Well Ford may have been a ‘good soldier’ but his page ninety-nine test is full of sheep-dip. If you want to know about the quality of a book read it from first page to last and then provide your assessment. Quality, content, and importance by no means always co-vary and great insights may be obscure while the most meaningless drivel can be intoned in the most mellifluous of voices. However, the answer to this and all other human conundrums can be found on page ninety-nine of my new book Hoax Springs Eternal. Please buy it and enjoy it and I hope to earn enough in royalties this time to be able to afford a vente latte.
Learn more about Hoax Springs Eternal at the Cambridge University Press website.

--Marshal Zeringue