A very good book about the junk science and the media's willing role in promoting it. Short synopsis: Cold fusion and perpetual motion bad, peer review good. ( )

Good book. Gets pretty detailed in the descriptions of physics and science (which I liked). I think he may have gone slightly over his intended audience's heads with the details though. ( )

Dr. Park is a physics professor at Maryland, and the American Physical Society's representative in Washington. He pulled together columns he writes for one of the physical journals for this book. It concerns science that is not right but not fraud, and ranges over various perpetual motion and endless energy schemes, cancer from electromagnetic fields and the lack of evidence for that scare, a very negative view of the space shuttle and space station, and other topics. It was very enjoyable, and much better than the other pseudoscience debunking book that came out this year, The Borderlands of Science, since this writer actually knows the science he writes about.

This highly readable book is an excellent discussion of how the lack of scientific literacy in America affects all of us.

Physicist Robert Park begins this wide survey of bad science with a discussion of how the media is helping to confuse Americans by regularly covering stories of exciting, but highly improbable, scientific claims. In a detailed discussion of the cold fusion disaster of 1989, he then goes on to look at basic human nature and how wishful thinking on the part of a scientist can lead from self-delusion to fraud with remarkable speed.

Though Park discusses some of the usual suspects such as homeopathy, astrology, and Deepak Chopra’s quantum stretches, he also spends a lot of time looking at more conventional scientific issues such as the manned space program. Park eloquently explains how politics, national pride and emotion have contributed to the wasting billions of dollars on a program that is—from a scientific standpoint—totally not worth it.

The chapter that I enjoyed the most is the one in which Park did a detailed breakdown of the EMF scare that began when a seriously flawed study showed a correlation between rates of childhood leukemia and the proximity of power lines. Park explains how that one flawed study, combined with an overzealous reporter trying to sell books, kept that fear alive for decades, causing great suffering to both parents and those with houses near suspect power lines, not to mention the diversion of enormous amounts of money to numerous follow up studies that ultimately showed that there was absolutely no connection.

Despite the findings of solid science on the EMF-cancer connection, the fear may well have been kept alive by hungry lawyers looking for the next big tort payday had it not been for some positive developments in how the courts relate to matters of science. Strong precedent has now been set requiring any science testimony admitted to an argument to be based on sound, accepted principles and not simply on some fringe scientists’ willingness to say that anything might cause cancer in exchange for a paycheck.

Despite this very positive step, Park’s book makes it clear that the public’s lack of basic scientific literacy allows people to be exploited and manipulated in unacceptable ways. Though parts of the book go into more scientific detail than I generally find interesting, Park’s argument is so compelling I made a point of re-reading these sections, making sure I understood them, so that I hopefully will no longer be part of the problem. ( )

Robert Park tackles a number of scientific hoaxes and examples of just plain bad science in this illuminating book. He examines several different types of "voodoo science," with examples. There are sciencists that apparently starts out well-intentioned, but want so badly to believe in their own results that they ignore flaws in their research, and eventually start falsifying or obscuring evidence; the chapter on cold fusion covers this rather nicely. There are out-and-out hucksters, like the guys who will try to convince you that they've discovered perpetual motion, and will sell you an engine for a few hundred bucks. And there is "science" that has always been bad science, like homeopathy and astrology, that has nonetheless become an intractable part of our culture. My favorite chapter was on the widespread panic about electromagnetic fields and high-tension power lines. Park very neatly dissects how this started out as a flawed scientific study regarding high-tension power lines and childhood leukemia, was quickly seized upon by several sensationalist journalists, and ultimately took decades and millions of dollars in research to debunk -- and some people STILL believe you can get cancer from living under power lines! ( )