If you are someone who fears that critical thinking is under siege in the United States and that a scientific worldview is threatened by the encroaching forces of unreason, you will find a kindred spirit in Robert Park. A University of Maryland physicist responsible for the American Physical Society’s (APS’s) office of public affairs, Park is known in part for his humorous APS electronic column, “What’s New”. His current book offers further entertainment, although it also gives adequate cause for concern to those who think public rationality is on the wane.

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Did Adam and Eve Have Navels?: Discourses on Reflexology, Numerology, Urine Therapy, and Other Dubious Subjects By Martin Gardner W. W. Norton Co., 2000. The Triumph of Evolution . . . And the Failure of Creationism By Niles Eldredge W. H. Freeman, 2000. Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals’ Abuse of Science By Alan D. Sokal and Jean Bricmont Picador USA, 1999 Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels With Science By Paul R. Gross and Norman Levitt (Contributor) Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997

The primary target of Park’s assault in Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud is not mainstream scientists, but the practitioners and purveyors of what he calls “voodoo science”, a term that encompasses pseudoscience and fraudulent science, as well as “pathological” and “junk” science. These alternative “sciences” are not rooted in the scientific method, nor are their results peer-reviewed for quality; they are instead insidious forms of self-delusion and wish fulfillment and are often successful attempts to separate the public from its money (not to mention its rationality).

Voodoo science relies on a credulous public and an ill-informed media for its success. Park shows how political and religious commitments supplant critical rationality and condition the interpretation of issues as divergent as global warming and homeopathy. He claims that contending ideological positions may actually be healthy in public debates about science, but when ideology substitutes for the scientific method and free inquiry, the search for truth is threatened.

Some voodoo scientists use complex theories to confuse the public, and they are often perplexed themselves by the laws of nature that they do not completely understand. Park discusses the ill-fated searches for cold fusion and “free energy”, two subjects that have been soundly debunked by scientists but continue to attract money and attention from “true believers”. The failed attempt at cold fusion embarrassed a major public university, and many congressional representatives were taken in by the “perpetual motion” rhetoric of pseudoscientist Joe Newman.

Even worse, these stories were reported in the press with little or no criticism of the science (or lack of it). Park contends that “fringe” science stories are rarely held to the same standards as other news items, either because reporters do not understand scientific concepts, or because the human “belief gene” leads people to accept “scientific” claims that make them feel good.

Much voodoo science is relatively harmless, although it may function as a money sink that diverts funding away from more plausible projects. But bad science can also be dangerous. Park harbors particular disdain for the Strategic Defense Initiative, the Reagan-era “Star Wars” missile defense program that has little scientific credibility but nevertheless garners enduring support, driven by the fantasies of conservative politicians and the financial needs of defense contractors. Such voodoo science projects may actually foment global instability, increasing the chances of nuclear war. According to Park, other junk science initiatives, including, in his opinion, NIH’s Office of Alternative Medicine, give credence to medical theories that are at best placebos and at worst may harm patients or prevent them from seeking proven allopathic cures for disease.

Park’s book is informed, entertaining, and sharply polemical. Although it is bound to offend those who see science as a domineering ideology repressing alternative “ways of knowing”, it is difficult to defend the “achievements” of the pseudoscientists Park critiques. Regardless of one’s initial thoughts about mainstream science and its “alternatives”, Voodoo Science is sure to stimulate debate.