Voodoo Science
Subtitle: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: August 31, 2001
Language: eng
Number of pages: 240
ISBN-13: 9780195147100
Subjects: science; scientific fraud; pseudoscience; superstition
Genres: science
First sentence: I CALLED JOE NEWMAN at his home in Lucedale, Mississippi.
Description: A lucid explanation of what science is and what it is not, using widely publicized pseudoscientific "sensations" as examples.
Table of contents: title: Preface; title: ONE It's not news, it's entertainment - in which the media covers voodoo science; title: TWO The belief gene - in which science offers a strategy for sorting out the truth; title: THREE Placebos have side effects - in which people turn to "natural" medicine; title: FOUR The virtual astronaut - in which people dream of artificial worlds; title: FIVE There ought to be a law - in which Congress seeks to repeal the laws of thermodynamics; title: SIX Perpetuum mobile - in which people dream of infinite free energy; title: SEVEN Currents of fear - in which power lines are suspected of causing cancer; title: EIGHT Judgment day - in which the courts confront "junk science"; title: NINE Only mushrooms grow in the dark - in which voodoo science is protected by official secrecy; title: TEN How strange is the universe? - in which ancient superstitions reappear as pseudoscience; title: INDEX