Examples Cited
- Perpetual motion, free energy suppression and fringe physics claims
- Robert Fludd
- Garabed T. K. Giragossian
- The Energy Machine of Joseph Newman
- Better World Technologies (Dennis Lee)
- Blacklight Power, formerly HydroCatalysis (Randell Mills)
- Cold fusion (Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann)
- Patterson Power Cell (James Patterson)
- Gravitational shielding (Eugene Podkletnov)
- Human spaceflight (in terms of actual importance to science since the rise of robotic spacecraft)
- International Space Station (for claims of necessity to conduct scientific research)
- Gerard K. O'Neill, L5 Society and space colonization
- Robert Zubrin, Mars Society, Biosphere 2 and a manned mission to Mars
- Voodoo science protected by government secrecy
- Project Mogul and the Roswell UFO incident resulting in a loss of public trust, as well as the later alien autopsy video hoax
- Edward Teller and Lowell Wood's work on the Strategic Defense Initiative (especially regarding the X-ray laser, but also "Brilliant Pebbles")
- Great Oil Sniffer Hoax
- Superstitions and pseudoscience
- Mars effect (astrology) claimed by Michel Gauquelin
- Parapsychology (e.g. Robert G. Jahn and Dean Radin)
- Placebos and alternative medicine
- Vitamin O
- Homeopathy
- water memory (proposed by Jacques Benveniste)
- Animal magnetism
- Magnet therapy
- Therapeutic touch (debunked by Emily Rosa at age nine)
- Other health claims
- Maharishi Effect (using Transcendental Meditation (TM) to effect a decrease in societal violence; the spike in murders during the 1993 Washington D.C. study is specifically mentioned)
- Deepak Chopra (who makes claims linking Ayurveda (traditional medicine native to India) with quantum mechanics)
- Electromagnetic radiation and health (especially related to power lines and cancer risk)
- "Paul Brodeur and Microwave News in particular, had given the public a seriously distorted view of the scientific facts." (Page 158)
- Contributing factors
- Mainstream media reporting voodoo science uncritically as infotainment
- Abolition of the Office of Technology Assessment
- Establishment of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine
Park also discusses the Daubert standard for excluding junk science from litigation.
Read more about this topic: Voodoo Science
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