Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud (review)

Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud, by Robert L. Park. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2000. 230 pp. $25 (hardcover).

Robert Park says he wrote this book as a public service—to help lay people understand what they should know about science, and what they should reject as nonsense. He does exactly that in this entertaining, although occasionally repetitive, book. This is not a book for the scientific specialist, although Park's own credentials are impeccable. He is currently professor of physics at the University of Maryland, and director of the Washington office of the American Physical Society, where he campaigns against the misuse and misunderstanding of science, using venues ranging from the traditional media to a regular electronic column.

Under his catchall title of "voodoo science," Park discusses several, somewhat different forms of scientific delusion. There's "pathological science," in which legitimate researchers misinterpret data to convince themselves they have achieved the proverbial "breakthrough." Media frenzy can exacerbate the situation, often pushing scientists into positions from which it is hard to retreat. The classic example, which Park covers at length, is the cold fusion episode in the late 1980s and early 1990s that had the scientific community in an uproar until the claims of Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann eventually dissolved under increasing scrutiny.

Then there's "junk science," which may also be supported by some scientists, but which constructs theories, often with a conspiratorial bent, from faulty or nonexistent evidence. Its acceptance, as Park explains, depends on the lack of knowledge of lay people, from jurors to senators, and the willingness of some scientists to sell their expertise to the highest bidder. Park cites the furor around claims that electromagnetic fields from power lines cause cancer, and that this truth has been covered up in major conspiracies. Although the notion was eventually laid to rest, Park estimates that it cost around $25 billion in expenses such as decreased property values, useless research, and relocation of suspect power lines.

Perhaps the most familiar of Park's categories is "pseudo-science," which involves sincere beliefs, relying on no real evidence, but often based on religious faith or political ideology. This includes the whole gamut of "new age" beliefs, such as alien abductions, extrasensory perception, past lives, and of course creation science, although the latter receives scant attention here.

All these types of "voodoo science" depend, of course, on a great popular respect for science, often coupled with a scientific illiteracy that makes it difficult for people to distinguish genuine claims from fraudulent ones. In addition to that, we have the romance of the underdog—the maverick who stands against the stuffy scientific establishment. Park finds several prime examples, such as Joe Newman, whose perpetual motion machines have surfaced repeatedly over the years on television, news, and inspirational seminars.

Park is clearly most at home with the physical sciences, and his exhaustive critiques of gadgets that purport to break the laws of thermodynamics eventually become a little redundant. Perhaps more interesting for the readers of this journal are his discussions of "natural remedies," and the significance of the placebo effect. Although he does not condemn "natural" medicine in itself, Park offers a clear-eyed view of its potentially destructive misuses.

For instance, he offers an entertaining account of the "Vitamin O" saga, in which a company named Rose Creek Health Products sold "stabilized oxygen molecules in a solution of distilled water and sodium chloride"—dilute salt water—for $20 per tiny vial. Advertisements claimed that the miracle substance "maximizes your nutrients, purifies your bloodstream, and eliminates toxins and poisons—all of the processes necessary to prevent disease and promote health" (p. 47). The advertising campaign played on people's concern for nature and the environment, claiming that pollution and deforestation have depleted the oxygen in the atmosphere, thus making it necessary for people to top up their oxygen supplies. Park campaigned against the product in interviews and on radio...