Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud - Park, Robert

Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud by Park, Robert

Format: Trade Paperback

Published by Oxford University Press, 2000

Touching on everything from Deepak Chopra's "quantum alternative to growing old" to unwarranted hype surrounding the International Space Station, Robert L. Park leads us through the dim back alleys of fringe science, down the gleaming corridors of Washington power and even into our evolutionary past to search out the origins of voodoo science. Along the way, Park offers some simple and engaging science lessons, showing us that you don't have to be a scientist to spot the foolish and fraudulent science that swirls around us.

While incorporating elements of high humor, this hard-hitting account also tallies the cost: the billions spent by the public on worthless therapies, the tax dollars squandered on huge government projects that are doomed to fail, the investors bilked by schemes that violate the most fundamental laws of nature. But the greater cost is human: fear of imaginary dangers, reliance on magical cures, and above all, a sort of upside-down view of how the world works.

Park exposes the forces that sustain voodoo science, examining the role of the media, the courts, bureaucrats and politicians, as well as the scientific community. in the end, Park argues that it is not specific knowledge of science the public needs, so much as an understanding that we live in an orderly universe governed by natural laws that cannot be circumvented by magic or miracles.