Voodoo Science

Bob Park's excellent book takes up company with recent works in the same vein by Dawkins, Gould, Sagan, Kaminer, and others. It is good reading and entertaining though you may find your blood pressure soaring at times. It seems idiocy knows no bounds.Parks takes a slightly different approach from most of the recent books challenging fringe science and discusses at length how our elected representatives and the U.S. government has been seduced into being advocates of voodoo science. Parks played a role as the information officer for the American Physical Society which has given him an inside view of how this has come about. The book also takes a look at our space program and Parks slices and dices manned missions versus robotic ones. The robotic ones come out on top without much of a struggle. Though I was aware that there was differences of opinion on this matter, I was not aware of the magnitude of the problem and I found this information rather startling and something not covered in any of the other similar books in the field. I don't think Parks is trying to equate manned flight with voodoo science but the discussion of the topic was something I found valuable nonetheless.If you have read the other recent books in this field you may have had a deja vu all over again feeling as they each tended to cover pretty much the same ground. Parks refreshingly expands the playing field and really does provide some new approaches and new information.

For years, Robert Park, a professor of physics at the University of Maryland, has written "What's New," a short weekly update on science issues for the American Physical Society. Park's quirky, pithy bulletins end with the phrase, "Opinions are the author's and are not necessarily shared by the APS, but they should be." Now he has written at length on some of the topics his column has touched on. His opinions may not be yours, but once you read _Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud_, they should be.For Park has taken what ought to be the uncontroversial step of simply insisting that basic science is true, and that those who profit because they can supposedly violate scientific laws are fools or frauds, and the rest of us ought not to be fooled or defrauded. He keeps things basic; he never enters, say, the controversy of creation "science" versus evolution. His realm is physics. For instance, Park spends many pages describing perpetual motion machines. A machine that makes more energy than it takes in (or runs on the same amount of energy it makes) would violate basic thermodynamic laws, which Park carefully and lucidly explains. We may wish for the waterwheel that pumps enough water up to fall over the wheel again and thus keep going forever, but it will never happen. Park covers plenty of other areas: homeopathy, magnet therapy, cold fusion, Star Wars / SDI, human versus robot exploration of space, therapeutic touch, extrasensory perception, alien abductions, Roswell, and so on. In each case, he simply aims cold, hard facts and physical laws at targets that fall under his good sense. "Most people who are drawn to voodoo science simply long for a world in which things are some other way than the way they are." With good humor and clear writing, Park has done us the favor of reminding us that the world is the way it is, that science shows the way it is, and that wishful thinking just won't do.

Bob Park, a distinguished physicist, has done the general public as well as the science, media, and investor communities a great service by his in-depth analysis of the growing boom in pseudoscience, crank science, and activities which could go as far as fraud. Park's impeccable scientific credentials and detailed examinations of the worst cases of what he calls voodoo science should help the media spot fringe science and refuse to give it ink or air-time; a thorough read of the book might save investors from losing their shirts in hare-brained schemes.And even the casual reader will learn the difference between real science and science on the fringe. The book and the science within are extremely accessible, even to the non-scientist.Besides, the book is an amusing read.