Who Do Voodo?

Dateline: September 21, 2000

Introduction

We live at a time of dazzling scientific and technological progress. More than that, we live at a time when scientific and technological literacy is becoming even more important, not only to survive, but also to make informed decisions about what our present and our future should look like.

Unfortunately, our scientific advancements are not being matched by advancements in general scientific literacy. On the contrary, sometimes it seems that pseudoscience and quackery hold the upper hand among the public. It's as if people are willing to believe absolutely anything that doesn't manage to hold to basic scientific standards of validity and reliability.

The sad fact of the matter is, people just don't exercise enough skepticism - and herein lies the connection to a site about atheism. As I have stated more than once, atheism is less important than a generally skeptical and critical attitude towards claims. A person is better off being a skeptical theist than a gullible atheist.

Thus, it is important for all atheists to keep an eye towards other arenas of skeptical inquiry - and skepticism about pseudoscientific claims is one of the most important. There are a number of highly recommendable books that every atheist and skeptic should try to have in their library. These include Carl Sagan's The Demon Haunted World, Michael Shermer's Why People Believe Weird Things, and How to Think About Weird Things from Theodore Schick and Lewis Vaughn.

This year saw the publication of a new book which should fit well on the same bookshelf: Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud by Robert Park. As a professor of physics and director of the Washington office of the American Physical Society, Park has a lot of contact with some of the strangest and most bizarre claims you can imagine. All of this experience comes together into a discussion about the nature of science and pseudoscience that is never a really dry read.

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