Voodoo Science

Science plays a huge role in our lives today. Unfortunately this can lead to things being dressed up as science which don't deserve the name. This can happen in several different ways, but Robert Park has introduced the term Voodoo Science to cover all such occurences. In this book he looks at devices which their inventors claim can provide free energy (including cold fusion), at the success of alternative medicine, and at why claims such as the link between EMF and cancer don't go away despite a lack of supporting evidence. He also discusses why people have a tendency to believe in such claims.

Park's grouping together of such a wide range of topics into the book does lead to the problem that some of those included are things which Park thinks to be unnecessary and expensive use of resources, such as manned space travel, rather than being bad science as such. I couldn't help feeling that the book would be better if Park had concentrated on what he is good at, which is going into the details of pseudoscientific claims. In particular he shows how even after something has clearly been shown to be nonsense, it have a tendency to pop up again in the media within a few years as revolutionary and new.