Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud - Hardcover

Park, Robert

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0198507453 ISBN 13: 9780198507451

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2000

Synopsis

This book examines the social, economic and political forces that elicit or support flawed or fake science and sustain it in the face of often overwhelming contrary evidence. "Voodoo Science" is intended to include pseudoscience, or irrational beliefs dressed up in scientific garb, the misuse of science to deliberately mislead or confuse, and pathological science, in which scientists persist with their interpretations long after the evidence has decisively ruled against them in the perspectives of an objective observer. The book attempts to delineate the contexts in which fraud can arise in science, and also to assess the trends in the Public's ability to assess scientific issues and integrate scientific understanding in their judgements and world view. The story is told through examples ranging from impossible perpetual motion machines to magnet therapy. Drawing on his eighteen years of exposing bad science, Park does not hesitate to name names and point fingers. Park lays the ultimate blame for "voodoo science" not on the media, the government, or the scientific illiteracy of the public, but on the scientific community itself, and the failure of scientists to communicate to the public.

About this title

About the Author

Robert L. Park is Professor of Physics and former chairman of the Department of Physic at the University of Maryland. He also directs the Washington office of the American Physical Society. Author of more than a hundred scientific papers on the structure of crystal surfaces, he writes regularly for the New York Times and other newspapers and is a regular contributor of science features for the Washington Post. Professor Park lives in Adelphi, Maryland.

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0198507453
• ISBN 13: 9780198507451
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 240