Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time is a 1997 book by science writer Michael Shermer.

He uses Edgar Cayce as an example, and while he agrees with parts of Ayn Rand's Objectivism, he criticizes its moral absolutism and argues that many follow her philosophy unquestioningly, which he believes contradicts free thinking.

He closes retelling how a constitutional ban on teaching creationism in public schools was narrowly upheld at the Supreme Court of the United States in 1987.

He takes ritual jabs at such old debunker punching bags as ESP and UFOs (through UFOlogy's newest twist, alien abduction of humans).

[3] According to the Los Angeles Times, "Shermer's directly written book is the perfect handbook to thrust on anyone you know who has been lured into conforming paranoias that circulate amid the premillennial jitters.