Is voodoo science a fitting topic for a university lecture?
After all, Antarctic Hollow-Earth Space Nazis seem so obviously bogus. The problem comes when voodoo science is sophisticated enough to slip past us. The cultural idea of the evil scientist. First a review of Robert Park’s voodoo science, the real evil science. For this presentation add a fourth category to Parks’ junk, pathological, and pseudoscience: • Evil science: Activities claiming to be scientific that are grotesquely immoral in their implementation, whether methodologically proper or not. Usually happens when politicians, commercial interests, or other powerful forces instruct scientists to produce results that are to their liking. Sometimes bureaucratic inertia contributes. But note: We are speaking here of a range of activities that span the spectrum from pseudoscience to proper science. So, if the real science is so fundamentally honest and voodoo science dishonest, why does popular culture so frequently regard real science with suspicion and embrace the “bold iconoclasts” a
