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Title: Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud by Robert L. Park ISBN: 0-19-514710-3 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.66 (74 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: A walk in the Park
Comment: Voodoo Science is the best skeptical book I have read yet. Organizing itself loosely around the theory that well-intentioned people can go from being wrong about matters of science to investing so much in their wrong theory that they will eventually prefer to turn their backs on science rather than admit a mistake, the book, subtitled "The Road from Foolishness to Fraud," uses cold fusion and perpetual motion as its leading examples but also takes on a laundry list of odd or (in its author's opinion) unwarranted beliefs from UFOs and the French "sniffer plane" to global warning and the Star Wars missile defense shield. Author Robert Park, a physicist by training, explains his views with laudable brevity and the greatest clarity and common sense I have seen in a book of this type. His writing style is also funny, and it contains just the right amount of sarcasm. If you make too much fun of peoples' cherished paranormal beliefs, you just insult them; if you take them too seriously, they find a way to think you believe them. Park walks the fine line between in a way I find the most effective yet. (Of course, as a fellow-traveler of Park's, I admit I do not know whether my belief that Park's way is best is borne out by its effect on an unconvinced audience.)
Besides being short, cogent, and respectful enough for a wide audience, Voodoo Science was valuable to a committed skeptic like me for its wealth of understandable explanations for physical phenomena I had grasped imperfectly or had been unable to explain simply before I read it. Park's arguments are so good I even agreed with him where I disagreed with him - his chapter on the absurd cost/benefit ratio of the manned space program is right on target, but I'll take humans in space on any terms I can get them, while Park apparently thinks we should quit trying to get people out of the gravity well.
If I were king of the world, the first thing I'd do after getting Simon and Garfunkel back together would be to get a copy of Voodoo Science to every household with a TV set.
Rating: 5
Summary: How to think like a scientist
Comment: Park's stated purpose in writing this book is "to help the reader to recognize voodoo science and to understand the forces that seem to conspire to keep it alive." [Page 10.] He approaches this goal by first defining his terms - something that not all writers of general science books remember to do. According to Park, pathological science is when scientists manage to fool themselves. Pseudoscience is when people develop myths that use scientific terminology or pretend to be based on scientific principles, but are nothing more than the modern-day equivalent of witches and faith healers. Junk science consists of arguments deliberately constructed to fool non-scientists like jurists and/or lawmakers. Park uses the term "voodoo science" to apply to all of them.
Park also adopts E. O. Wilson's definition of science as being "the systematic enterprise of gathering knowledge about the world and organizing and condensing that knowledge into testable laws and theories."
With the exception of chapter two, almost the entire book consists of different stories about how practitioners of voodoo science sell their wares. Chapter one also serves as a sort of summary of what's to come, with previews of cold fusion, perpetual motion machines, and the Patterson cell.
Chapter two, called "The Belief Engine," explains the evolutionary pressures that led to our ability to find patterns, and how that ability fosters belief in things that may or may not be true. Sprinkled throughout the rest of the book are examples of the belief engine, with reference back to chapter two, reminding the reader of what is going on as Park explains the workings of voodoo science.
Chapter three is about the placebo effect, with examples from the sellers of "Vitamin O" and Homeopathy. A key principle in Homeopathy is that "substances that produce a certain set of symptoms in a healthy person can cure those symptoms in someone who is sick." A second principle is that the less of the curative material one uses, the better its curative effect. Homeopathy thus engages itself with extreme dilution of the "medicine." With determined logic and reason, Park illustrates that the amount of medicine used in the dilution results in less than one molecule per dose. In other words, "there is no medicine in the medicine." Homeopathy is based on nothing more than the placebo effect. That's a real effect, to be sure. The voodoo science comes about in failing to understand that there is nothing else to it.
Chapters four and nine deal with aspects of voodoo science that take their breath from our modern scientific culture. There are examples of people who argue that manned space flight is the best way to do space science. Park eloquently illustrates that space science is - and probably always will be - most efficiently accomplished using space robots. But that is not what inspires politicians and the American public, and so we waste billions of dollars on manned space missions ostensibly in the name of space science. Chapter nine is similar, but deals with the junk science that often hides behind official secrecy in the armed forces. The primary example in this chapter is that of Star Wars.
Perpetual motion and cold fusion take up significant portions of the book. Chapter five, for example, is a condensed version of the cold-fusion story, complete with some rather interesting stories about congressional testimony. The other half of the chapter describes congressional action regarding perpetual-motion machines and Joe Newman (perpetual motion and infinite energy are also discussed in chapter six). One of the highlights is the story of how Senator John Glenn said to Newman: "It's a simple enough problem. You measure the input and you measure the output and you see which is larger." Glenn then asked Newman which laboratory he wanted to do the tests. Newman replied that "he objected to any tests by any laboratory on the grounds that it would be an affront to the scientists who had already vouched for his machine."
Such are the characteristics of voodoo science. They almost always deal with phenomena that are at the edge of detectabilty, there is a perpetual lack of progress, and skeptical inquirers and independent verification are not welcome.
Chapter seven is a most interesting account of the story of electromagnetic fields, power lines, and cancer. Park had some personal involvement in this field, and his accounts make for very interesting reading. With characteristic focus he illustrates how the pandemonium over power lines was derived from the classic situations and driving forces that characterize voodoo science, and how the evidence eventually settled the issue, but the myths and fears live on.
Peppered throughout the book are illustrations of illogical reasoning that forms the basis of voodoo science. One such case is the persistent reliance upon "possibilities" without evidence (what you might call wishful thinking). Park closes his book with a short but illuminating chapter on how scientists deal with possibilities.
This is an excellent book for introducing people to what it means to think like scientists. What the world really needs are more people that actually think and organize knowledge the way scientists do. This is illustrated with an amazing story of how a 9-year-old girl named Emily Rosa thought up a simple double-blind test to determine if certain mystics can actually feel the presence of another body without touching it. She though like a scientist, performed the experiment, organized the data, and formed the logical conclusion that they cannot do what they claim to do. And then she had here results published in the "Journal of the American Medical Association," becoming the youngest scientist ever to publish in a paper in a major medical journal. If only more Americans could think like Emily, we'd have far less voodoo science to worry about.
Rating: 5
Summary: Tightly written, engaging, fun ... and informative
Comment: Robert Park is a talented and smart writer who has crammed this book full of interesting facts and forceful counter-blasts against the endless "voodoo science" we are subjected to on a daily basis. One big revelation for me -- homeopathy is total hokum. I had no idea the various unique doses contain no ingredients, apart from the lactose pill or water (Park savages homeopathy in a chapter on the placebo effect). I also enjoyed his mention of how a schoolgirl invented a double-blind test that proved "touch therapy" was a load of cobblers (therapists put both hands through individual holes in a screen, while the girl would see if they could tell which hand she was holding hers under ... they got it right only 44% of the time, worse than not trying at all!). Get this book!
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