Robert L. Park

Very disappointing. Superstition is a meandering exposition of the personal philosophy of Robert Park, not a serious attempt at debunking or criticism of belief. To be fair, Park is just as critical of New Age as he is of Creationism, and has some unpleasant things to say about the advocacy of “Alternative Medicine” by officials of the Clinton administration as well as prohibition of stem cell research (Park does point out that only Federal support of stem cell research was prohibited) show more by the Bush administration.


Park never gets deep enough into any of his subjects to be convincing. His chapter on homeopathy, for example, runs through the tired argument that a homeopathic preparation doesn’t contain any of the original substance – that’s true, but irrelevant, because homeopaths don’t claim that it does. The real hammer against homeopathy is its failure to perform in double blind tests. A good, solid, explanation of what a double blind test is (I ran across a dowser website in which one of the posters was convinced that it meant he had to wear two blindfolds while dowsing) and what it’s supposed to measure is worth 1000 calculations on the number of duck liver molecules in a 30X homeopathic preparation. (Park does narrate his failure to get Jaques Benveniste to submit his Web-based homeopathy to a double-blind test).


The concept of “metric” also works against Park. His case against various medical studies supposedly showing the efficacy of prayer centers on the fact that there is no metric for prayer – Christian prayer versus Jewish? Presbyterians versus Congregationalists? Tests of “prayer sincerity”? (I once answered the question “How much do you love me?” by saying “138.2 International Standard Love Units”. The relationship did not thrive). Park is, of course, correct. However, he apparently doesn’t realize that the same lack of metrics makes some of his own criticisms of religious belief cases of being hoist with his own petard. For example, consider this casual comment about the Ten Commandments (p 197 in my edition): “Indeed, fundamentalists who trumpet the Ten Commandments most loudly are often the first to call for war”. Oh, that’s interesting. What’s the “metric” for fundamentalists? How do you measure how much a fundamentalist a particular believer is? And how do you measure how much trumpeting of the Ten Commandments he/she does (perhaps in decibels?). And how often do the measured trumpeting fundamentalists call for war? And what percentage of the time are they “the first”?


I never read a book that had nothing useful in it, and this book does, of course, even if it’s often only to remind me of stuff I already knew. Park’s prose reads very smoothly and it’s a really quick read. But I got it out of the remainder bin, which isn’t surprising. show less

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, show more 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. show less

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 show more 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. show less

I feel that I know Robert Park, who was director of the Washington Office of the American Physical Society when this book was published, because of his weekly "What's New" column [see http://www.bobpark.org/bob.html], even though we have never met. "Voodoo Science" distills his thoughts on some of the most important recent examples of pathological science in the news and public life. In these ten chapters, he discusses Congress' perpetual credulity for claims of perpetual motion and "free show more energy" (not the kind I teach!), the low-frequency EMF scare, the politics of manned space exploration, Roswell and aliens, homeopathy, and Deepak Chopra, among others. While Park sympathizes with some whose lack of technical knowledge and understanding of the methods of science make them susceptible to charlatans, he also has a good theory as to how well-meaning amateurs like Joe Newman get caught up in the process that leads from an experiment in the garage to fraudulent claims of infinite energy. A constant throughout these episodes is the irresponsible behavior of the news media when reporting controversial issues with a scientific or technical component. CBS News was doing it again last night (6/29/00), when they devoted a full "48 Hours" program to psychic detectives, ESP, communication with the dead, and similar nonsense. Hardly a skeptical viewpoint was mentioned (as usual). show less