Over to Eric now and the other authors of the articles that follow, their words in blue, mine in white...

For while many professional physicists recognize him for his technical research on the structure of crystal surfaces, to the somewhat wider audience that includes readers of his weekly newsletter and zany inventors of all types, Mr. Park, 69, is known as a gadfly, an indefatigable debunker of alien abductions, miraculous cures, infinite energy sources and wasteful spending. Fact one; For most of his life, Park has been paid out of one public source or another.

In congressional testimony, he has railed against Star Wars defense strategies, government secrecy and research into alternative medicine; he has ridiculed the supposed dangers of silicon breast implants and electric power lines. He says the powdered orange drink Tang was not developed for the space program. More facts; he doesn't support an ABM defense. I wonder what his reasons are? What government secrecy and what research into alternative medicine? Why does he suspect silicon breast implants and electric power lines are safe? I find his preferences and what bothers him interesting.

Last year, he revealed that a pricey new health supplement called Vitamin O was nothing more than salt water, causing the Federal Trade Commission to charge its manufacturer with fraud. And this month he wrote about another company hawking a similar salt water supplement for $34.95. This was probably hailed as a benefit of government control. But FREEDOM means that all of us have the right and responsibility to make up our own minds regarding what "snake oil" we will or will not buy. Remember Mr. Park has been paid by a government or public agency all his life, as have many scientists who are particularly vocal in defense of establishment science.

He doesn't bother to cloak his attacks in diplomatic niceties. "He's more truculent than I am," says Michael Shermer, the publisher of Skeptic magazine, who considers Mr. Park a wonderfully credible ally, even if he does occasionally get under the skin of potentially powerful supporters. "He doesn't suffer fools gladly." Neither do I.

James Randi, a professional magician who exposes upernatural claims, has known Mr. Park for more than 10 years. "You have to hose him down every two hours just to keep him cool," he said with a laugh. James Randi shoots off his mouth a lot without backing up any of his contentions. He's nothing but another merd-slinging debunker. What we really need is factual evidence to disprove an outrageous claim or more likely the humble "I don't know" rather than the glib and often shrill attacks from the orthodox science community who are JEALOUS OF LOOSING ANY OF THEIR PUBLIC FUNDING for themselves and their pet projects to others who may have other ideas than theirs.

Mr. Park's revelations and his confrontational style have earned him a string of admirers as well as litigious critics, who occasionally threaten to sue him for ruining multimillion-dollar business prospects or for slandering them. Well and good, let these people sue him if they have the facts to back up their claims against Park in a court of law. If they can't, then let Park's criticisms stand. There are all kinds of "snake oil" out there. One doesn't have to be a U. of Maryland physics professor to tell it from something that has real merit however.

Such threats delayed for a month the publication of his first book for a general audience, "Voodoo Science" (Oxford University Press), which is now scheduled to appear in stores in May and has been written about by non-science media like Salon.com. That article will follow.

Sitting in the upstairs office of his home here, Mr. Parks seems unfazed. He is a compact man, and with his lean face, short gray hair and luminous blue eyes, he looks a bit like the actor Roy Scheider. "This is the most fun I've ever had," he says of his efforts to clue the public into scientific disputes. Yeah well, this comes as close to having the most fun for me too. Oh, I do enjoy playing the piano or having good sex probably more.

One of his favorite targets is NASA, which he says is constantly financing harebrained schemes. Instead of his?

The projects are then quietly dropped, he goes on, because the tests are "inconclusive" -- a word he describes in his book as "NASA talk for 'it didn't work,' but if you said 'it didn't work,' you'd have to explain why you'd paid all that money." So, what's his point? Should we have no public funding for space exploration? Or should they make him program czar? Why is he so concerned? NASA funding is miniscule compared to other government spending.

Just last year the space agency approved $600,000 for what Mr. Park describes as an antigravity device invented by an obscure Russian scientist that he says violates all the known laws of physics and that no other scientists have taken seriously. Maybe Park's referring to the experiments that revealed an anti gravitic property of revolving supercooled superconductors that turned up in Finland some years ago and was later tested in Switzerland and here too. The scientist that was involved did have a Russian sounding name.

Robert L. Norwood, director of the commercial technology program at NASA, says the grant is part of a program specifically designed to explore unconventional ideas. "This is a legitimate area of research," Mr. Norwood said, explaining that the agency is looking for "original, exotic techniques that could have huge payoffs in the future. . . . If the experiment doesn't work, then you drop it and move on." Of course Park may never know of the outcome of any of this research as it's bound to become secret, something I guess he also hates with a passion.

Marc Millis, a NASA aerospace engineer who is responsible for investigating cutting-edge ideas, said he thought that Mr. Park sometimes jumped too quickly to conclusions about the silliness of new research. All these traditional scientists do. Fact is Thomas Edison never thought alternating current would work. His skepticism was misplaced as well as self-serving. Real science does not need skepticism turned up to such a degree that it only serves as a cover to protect cherished theories as if they were dogma. This is NOT good science nor particularly useful skepticism. The space agency has a responsibility to be a leader in research, Mr. Millis said, and has a very systematic, step-by-step approach to check that progress is made before more money is spent.

Mr. Park gets even more exercised by advocates of alternative medicine, which he describes as more superstition than science. Park probably knows very little about the subject either alopathic or complementary medicine. He and other scientists are certainly doing no great service to Science by their EMOTIONAL reactions to fancied charlatans. There are plenty enough in traditional medical practice as it is, concentrated among the practitioners of psychiatry. He is appalled that the government has established a center for its study as part of the National Institutes for Health. In his characteristic slash-and-burn style, he called the center's previous director, Wayne Jonas, "crazy" because he is a homeopathist. And I consider Park and those like him CRANKS!

Mr. Jonas, who is now an associate professor of family medicine at the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences, the military's medical school, said that Mr. Park "goes way outside his field and just bashes everything." Jonas was being mercifully kind. I wouldn't have been nearly so. There are legitimate reasons to question some of homeopathy's results, Mr. Jonas said, but he added that Mr. Park "never seems to address any of those. He doesn't want to or doesn't know how to." Because he's OUT OF LINE!

To Mr. Park, alternative medicine exploits the placebo effect. And while he doesn't deny that the mind can play an extraordinary role in healing, he says that only goes so far. "The mind has something do with it, but it won't cure baldness and it won't shrink tumors," he said. "But people with a magical view will start claiming that you can." RIGHT THERE, the first instance of Park's unmasking. And he's caught big time since he can't have it both ways and no philosophical materialist ever can. First off if there is a "placebo effect" and the mind is behind it then there is something extra-material affecting matter. Or the person supposedly having the disease was misdiagnosed in the first place. It is in fact self styled skeptics of Park's ilk that have a "magical" view, which is their new-speak for suggesting that anyone who doesn't see things as they do is wrong, crazy or worse. None of this has anything to do with good Science but has plenty to do with EGO.

He points to the New Age celebrity health writer Deepak Chopra, who says you can use the mind -- through the techniques of meditation and yoga -- to banish aging. Last month Mr. Park went to see him speak at a luncheon in Washington. "Mostly I wanted to see if he was getting older, and he is," he says with glee. "It was unmistakable." Park is gloating. He can't banish aging either no matter how much he exercises. Aging probably can be banished or significantly retarded, but I am SKEPTICAL whether either Chopra or Park are on the right track.

Mr. Park picked up the mindset of a skeptic at an early age, when he was a boy on his father's South Texas farm. No, not "the mindset of a skeptic," but the mindset of a dogmatic philosophical materialist.

"At that moment I realized this was not for me. I couldn't help doubting." ALSO, at that moment Park had his first blast of ANGER at being scolded by someone telling him he was going to HELL if he didn't believe in their dogma. A LOT OF SCIENTISTS OF PARK'S ILK HAVE SIMILAR EXPERIENCES IN THEIR BACKGROUNDS. These experiences "authenticate" them in Sartre's sense. It doesn't make them very good skeptics or scientists. It does make them DOGMATIC and BIGOTED however, as though they are getting a transference of the dogmatic and bigoted viewpoint they reacted against as children.

After he left the service and returned to his wife, Gerry, and the University of Texas, he finished at the top of his class and won a graduate fellowship to Brown University. Government work on weapons systems at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque occupied the next 10 years, until the University of Maryland wooed him away with an offer to head the material sciences department. Great title for a department to be headed by such as Park.

Sixteen years ago, the American Physical Society, the nation's largest organization of physicists, asked him to try a temporary stint as its public affairs director during a sabbatical. He returned to teaching but also stayed on at the society, writing a weekly column called "What's New," which he ends with the tag line, "Opinions are the author's and are not necessarily shared by the A.P.S., but they should be." Be skeptical when someone says SHOULD that they aren't really able to be skeptical at all.

He arrives at the society's offices in Washington every morning at 6 a.m. to lift weights for an hour in the building's gym, later spending two hours running. He also runs marathons with his older son, Robert Jr., the principal cellist for the United States Army orchestra, and competes in triathalons with his younger son, Daniel, who owns a couple of bicycle stores. I wonder what really drives such compulsions? Fear of death? Fear of losing sentience? Most of these types are well on their way to both without knowing it.

He says he wrote "Voodoo Science" because he was tired of hearing scientists bemoan the scientific illiteracy of the public, without explaining what it is they should know. I bemoan a lot more than the "scientific illiteracy of the public." I bemoan the dearth of good scientists who are really skeptical about what is known, of the majority of scientists who are SMUG, who act SUPERIOR for no particularly good reasons, who have CLOSED MINDS when it comes to looking into anything that may disprove their precious theories, who are mostly ON THE PUBLIC DOLE and think the world owes them.

He lists five subjects or concepts that he thinks every educated person should understand: Check this out. Darwinian evolution, way out of date, disproved in a number of major ways. This is the KERNEL of their dogma. We may not know just how all the life forms on this planet got here, but this surely is not it. A real skeptic as well as a good scientist would toss Darwinian evolution right out and start looking at the evidence again. I suggest they start looking at both animal and human DNA. It will take another century to come up with anything resembling a robust theory. In the meantime much better to say WE DON'T KNOW than to continue to babble out Darwinism, which has at this time become either a fetish or a religion but not science. And just so nobody gets the wrong idea, the Biblical creationists don't have a leg to stand on either.

the Copernican solar system, probably the only thing we can agree on. Of course a knowledge of Kepler's and Newton's work would be handy too. But a good scientific presentation would have to infer that the work of these giants of science has been superceded and will be by cutting edge developments.

the size of the universe, nobody knows this for certain and does it really matter? What's his point? If anyone says they know the size of the universe, I am fairly sure I am dealing with a liar, a crackpot or both.

the laws governing the conservation of energy (that way people would know that infinite energy sources and perpetual motion machines are impossible) and I'll remind Park that half the gadgetry we use daily would have been considered impossible a century ago. A real skeptic would start asking whether there really were any natural laws governing the conservation of energy and then setting out ways to prove their exceptions rather than merely accepting a dogma and not trying to do anything new.

and ratios (so people would have a sense of scale). and this is a matter of measurement like learning to use a ruler, nothing remarkable there. Learning how to measure things is not science either. Handy as tools for conducting science, but not the thing itself.

"Beyond that, it is the responsibility of scientists to inform the public, and that's what we're not doing," he said. No, It is NOT the responsibility of scientists to "inform the public" as they like to say by offering new dogmas for old, but to push the frontiers of knowledge, of the possible, of human technical capabilities. Not much can be gained by merd-slinging and debunking which in itself is NOT SCIENCE.

Although energetic scientific disputes can confuse the public, Mr. Park thinks they can be instructive so long as the combatants adhere to the scientific method. Global warming, he says, is "an almost perfect example of how science rises above the flaws of individual scientists." Both those who fear warming effects and those who think the dangers are overblown have a kind of religious fervor and are convinced that truth is on their side, he says. But each side is also aware that the opposition will pounce on any scientific mistakes; this has led to an enormous expansion of knowledge about the climate. Indeed, and it is not hard for any sensible person to disagree with this assessment. I find it interesting that anyone can make some FINAL pronouncement about global climatic situations from even the total accumulated knowledge on the subject since we are in all probability dealing with a TINY FRACTION of the planet's total geologic time. We can draw up half a dozen scenarios based on what we know, for the rest we're really rather helpless.

He does, however, warn that dueling experts can lead people to conclude it is impossible to figure out what's going on and to feel that anything can happen. Well, isn't that what the K2 event tells us? Get used to it. Anything CAN happen. Our studies of the planet Mars, our closest neighbor offer sobering reflection on this score. There is strong evidence that Mars was a far different place from what it is now, a place that may have been very much like our own planet. But something terrible happened out there and now it's a dead world.

"And that's exactly the wrong message," he declares. "The universe is not nearly as weird as it used to be. A strange universe is one that does unpredictable things. This universe is less strange because it's more predictable." NOT. Why does Park need this? He's a hardened SKEPTIC supposedly. There is no SALVATION for such as he. He has thrown in with the philosophical materialists. He should be afraid, be very afraid. That's what a Darwinist is, someone who believes in "survival of the fittest" which is why he works out so much.

From his vantage point, "It's not the psychics who predict the future. It's the scientists." And what's his point here? Superiority? Maybe that would be easy for him, but why is it that it often takes "psychics" to solve murder cases that have evaded the best forensic scientists for years? I'm skeptical of such broad statements in favor of scientists over other groups of people. I prefer to think that the real aristocrats are fine artists, particularly those who have made classical music their territory. But now we're talking religion.

The Scrooge of science

When USA Today carried a full-page ad last year for a mysterious tincture called "Vitamin O," described as "stabilized oxygen molecules in a solution of distilled water and sodium chloride," few noticed that the ad was describing common salt water. Clearly, the manufacturer, Rose Creek Health Products, was betting on the public's unfamiliarity with scientific lingo to make a killing in the lucrative homeopathic market. It seemed a pretty safe bet: The company was selling 60,000 of the 2-ounce vials each month, retailing at $20 apiece, after ads promised Vitamin O would increase energy and even cure cancer. The premise was that our bodies need oxygen to function well but air quality is so poor that most of us don't get the oxygen we need. Yep, sounds like "snake oil" to me. I certainly wouldn't buy any. But I guess we need a government agency to "protect" us from frauds like this one. Without doing any critical thinking about it, people are willing to jettison their FREEDOM so that "experts" like Park can HAVE A JOB!

The Vitamin O scheme is an example of pseudoscience, also known as junk science or, as Park has dubbed it, "voodoo science." The label encompasses all manner of scientific concepts and claims that are wrong by established academic standards, yet attract large followings of passionate and sometimes powerful corporate and government allies. Emphasis mine. Although it has been present throughout human history, junk science has become increasingly sophisticated -- and more difficult for the layperson to detect -- because of the explosion in scientific progress and technological advancement. This added increased sophistication does not provide ANY excuse for some public agency to take away our FREEDOM to decide for ourselves.

Pseudoscience is a perennial bugbear for legitimate researchers, an increasing number of whom are beginning to sound the alarm. Along with the late Carl Sagan, Park is among the most stalwart champions of the cause. A 70-ish, bantamweight man who regularly runs triathlons, Park has been battling the many-headed Hydra of pseudoscience for the past 16 years through his role as director of public affairs for the American Physical Society, the largest professional organization for physicists in the country. I bet anyone who dares come up with something that might refute Newton or Einstein is NOT part of this organization.

"It's a target-rich field," Park says. Many of his favorite targets are skewered in his first book for a general readership, "Voodoo Science: The Road From Foolishness to Fraud," due this spring from Oxford University Press. The book attempts to debunk today's most foolish scientific claims: magnetic therapy, cold fusion, so-called free-energy schemes and alien abductions, to name a few. In the process, Park investigates how otherwise respectable scientists may end up committing scientific fraud; CLAPTRAP! What Park wants to do is set up A NEW INQUISITION for scientists! how our evolutionary heritage makes us want to believe in an era when belief is a hindrance rather than a protective mechanism more hooey! ; and how the public can distinguish false claims from genuine breakthroughs in a time of unprecedented scientific progress. Like we need THEIR help!

Park is a master of the snappy sound bite. When the Kansas Board of Education voted to remove evolution from the public school curriculum last fall, Park dryly observed, "The rest of the world is standing on the brink of a new millennium, and Kansas has voted itself back into the Stone Age." Maybe, but it's the same to me whether kids are told that someone created the universe in six twenty-four hour days. Darwinism is NOT THE TRUTH either. Since neither are adequate explanations why not admit to our kids, "WE DON'T KNOW" and set about trying to find out rather than ASSUMING that DARWIN WAS RIGHT WHEN HE WASN'T. I am FAR more skeptical than Bob Park on this issue.

Network news teams, radio talk shows and newspapers frequently feature him as the token skeptic when reporting on questionable scientific results. Park always delivers with his trademark acid tongue Park's zeal in ferreting out junk science has made him a controversial figure, hailed as a patron saint by skeptics and condemned by true believers as an archenemy of progress. He's neither. He's a CRANK masquerading as a scientist. Park just couldn't stand some stupid minister telling him he was going to Hell if he didn't believe so now he's telling the world they're going to Hell if they don't believe. Simple as that.

Supporters include magician and fellow debunker James Randi; detractors include psychic spoon bender Uri Geller. Another detractor is Nicholas Nossaman, a Denver family medical practitioner who relies almost exclusively on homeopathic remedies for his patients -- the popularity of which Park attributes sweepingly to the placebo effect. I've already mentioned the hapless impossibility of "the placebo effect" above for diehard philosophical materialists.

"WHEN SOMEONE IN A PARTICULAR SCIENTIFIC PARADIGM IS INTRODUCED TO SOMETHING THAT DOESN'T FIT THAT PARADIGM, EITHER THEY'VE GOT TO EXTEND THEIR BOUNDARIES, OR THEY HAVE TO INSIST THAT IT DOESN'T EXIST," says Nossaman. "RIGHT NOW THEY'VE CHOSEN NOT TO EXTEND THEIR BOUNDARIES." Nossaman acknowledges the existence of the placebo effect, but points out that it is also present in traditional medicine and that the effects are usually short-term rather than long-term cures. "I don't care if Bob Park is convinced or not," he says. "All I care about is that people get better." EMPHASIS MINE. I'd say that Bossaman is far closer to my idea of a scientist than Park is. Skepticism has little to do with trying out something new to see what happens, THAT'S SCIENCE.

Among scientists, opinion is sharply divided as to whether Park helps or hinders the cause, since his outspokenness frequently offends powers that be in Washington even as it garners coveted media attention. Since many scientists rely on federal funding, Park's bombastic style worries some researchers. Emphasis mine. In fact, the American Physical Society requires him to include a disclaimer at the end of his electronic newsletter, which nonetheless bears the inimitable Park imprint: "Opinions are the author's and are not necessarily shared by the APS, but they should be." You see, real scientists are hedging their bets against this crank. I guess he'll be "rotting in a box" soon like his equally smug and glib fool, Carl Sagan. When all the diehard Darwinists are finally dead maybe we can get back to doing some REAL science and finding out more about how we and the rest of the life forms on this planet got here.

Nor does his brash, highhanded approach always appeal to members of the general public, many of whom perceive him as an arrogant know-it-all poking fun at the public's expense, particularly when he targets alternative medicine, which now has its own branch at the National Institutes of Health, thanks to congressional influence. Because a lot of us have LOST FAITH in standard alopathic medical practice and a protectionist attitude in medicine in this country has hurt medicine in this country. But in "Voodoo Science," Park proves himself to be more than just a snide spoilsport intent on pissing on everyone's parade. Snappy sound bites might help bring science into the spotlight, but Park's ultimate objective is nothing less than a revolution in public thinking: imparting a sense of healthy skepticism to enable us to recognize bad science.

Consider the long and colorful history of free-energy schemes, which date from 1618, when a London physician named Robert Fludd tried to adapt a waterwheel into a perpetual-motion machine. His modern-day counterpart is Joe Newman, a backwoods mechanic from Lucedale, Miss., who claims to have invented an energy machine that operates on similar principles. Unfortunately for Fludd and Newman, such schemes violate the laws of thermodynamics, which dictate that friction and gravity prevent an object from spinning indefinitely -- a fact so widely accepted that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office generally rejects applications for perpetual-motion machines outright. Good! At least the US Patent Office is exercising common sense. Do we need Park or an army of them to convince us more, AT OUR EXPENSE? The fact is that if ever anything like this appears it will seem as astounding as the dynamo did a hundred and twenty years ago. It will be someone who is sufficiently skeptical about such "laws of thermodynamics" who will make the discovery and the rest of us will benefit. Real scientists do real science. Phony ones like Park do nothing but throw merd.

But like the medieval alchemists who devoted their lives to turning base metal into gold, such men continue to pursue the pipe dream of an unlimited source of energy. Park knows of at least three companies doing business in this country that claim to have developed infinite-energy devices, bilking millions of dollars out of starry-eyed investors. Inevitably, the inventors seek to silence detractors by likening themselves to Newton or Galileo: scientific geniuses ahead of their time who are thwarted by a closed scientific establishment. But there is a "put up or shut up" factor that affects investments and in any case such matters are based on that other maxim, caveat emptor. People have been bilked out of fortunes forever. There is no guarantee that a government or scientific warning system will prevent it. I give as an example the boron fuel fiasco in the 1950's which sought to create a super jet fuel based on boron. It was based on the arrogance of a few scientists who had the rest of the military establishment convinced that "these guys KNOW what they're doing." Then it was discovered that such a fuel would result in filling the atmosphere with boric acid. It was a scam too but we never took these scientists to task even though their hair-brained scheme cost the taxpayers millions.

Despite its reputation for skepticism, the media frequently contributes to the proliferation of pseudoscience, sometimes fanning the flames of public hysteria. Conspiracy fears were at the center of the decade-long power line scare, based on a 1989 series of articles in the New Yorker by investigative reporter Paul Brodeur that asserted that prolonged exposure to the electromagnetic fields of power lines caused cancer in those unfortunate enough to live near them. Brodeur made a convincing case, drawing on the findings of an early study (now widely acknowledged as flawed because the number of subjects was limited) and circumstantial, anecdotal evidence. High tension lines have been around for quite a while. People and livestock have lived around them for a long time. Birds land on them. Has there been any circumstantial evidence of human or animal abnormalities traceable to high tension power lines before this? NO. So is it likely that high tension power lines cause cancer? NO. CASE CLOSED. We may also add to this list, radio transmissions, including cellular or portable telephones and microwave ovens. If Brodeur and his sources are "fanning the flames of public hysteria," then there are public laws concerning "creating a public nuisance" that probably apply and should be invoked in a court of law. If one really cares. Obviously most of us when we hear such stuff reason with what good sense we have that we are listening to hooey. But Park and others doubt we are smart enough to think for ourselves.

That revelation came at a high public cost. By 1999, the total cost of the power line scare, including the relocation of power lines and the loss in property values, was estimated at more than $25 billion by the White House Science Office. The only person who seems to have benefited from the hysteria is Brodeur, who wrote two sensational books based on his New Yorker series: "Currents of Death" and "The Great Power Line Cover-up." Now retired, he persists in his belief in a widespread conspiracy despite the mounting pile of epidemiological evidence to the contrary. So, SUE HIM!

Park's efforts occasionally have happy endings, as in the Vitamin O scam and power line controversy. Yet for every head of Hydra he manages to lop off, another grows back in its place. "No matter how thoroughly you think something is debunked, believers still persist," Park marvels. "It's a mistake to underestimate the human capacity for self-delusion," he concludes. And Don Quixotes like him aren't going to solve the problem. For example, sales of magnetic-therapy kits topped $2 billion last year, buoyed by endorsements from pro golfers and other athletes. Yet, retailing for $39.95, they are little more than common refrigerator magnets in flashy packaging, with magnetic fields too weak to penetrate the material in which they are encased, much less have any noticeable effect on tired or strained muscles. Yeah, but most of us already figured that anyone using such stuff and really believing it has any benefits was a kook. In America the First Amendment of the Constitution gives "the fool the right to drool in public" as Oliver Wendell Holmes put it. If one wants to be a kook, that's their right. We do not need people like Park BEING PAID FROM THE PUBLIC TILL to tell us THE RIGHT THINGS TO THINK. This is not skepticism. It is a neo-orthodoxy that tends to stultify science.

Another Park peeve is the ongoing public fascination with UFOs and alleged alien abductions, fueled by a slew of Hollywood films and popular TV series -- and undaunted by the CIA's revelation that more than half of all UFO sightings from the late 1950s and 1960s were secret reconnaissance flights by U-2 spy planes. Park has seen only one episode of "The X-Files," at his son's urging, and was duly unimpressed, except for one small detail: the poster in Fox Mulder's office depicting a UFO, with the slogan "I want to believe." So what? It's entertainment. Is that so terrible? Look, I don't particularly like the public's fascination with vampires, gruesome horror or tales of crazed criminal activity. But this is America not the former Soviet Union.

Therein lies the secret behind the pervasiveness of pseudoscience: People want to believe, and they will distort and deny the facts any way they can to support a belief. "Many people choose scientific beliefs the same way they choose to be Methodists or Democrats or Chicago Cubs fans," Park writes. "They judge science by how well it agrees with the way they want the world to be." The solution, he insists, lies not in imparting specific knowledge of science to the public but in encouraging a more scientific worldview, which he describes as "an understanding that we live in an orderly universe governed by natural laws that cannot be circumvented by magic or miracles." Emphasis mine. And you certainly cannot convince me that Park and his ilk do not operate under the same illusions. Unless new information confirms what they already want to think, these scientists so called are very apt to go berserk.

Park admits it was a humbling experience. "I was primed to see a flying saucer [by the powerful impression of the ice meteorite], and my brain filled in the details," he writes. "Whenever I become impatient with UFO believers, as I often do, I try to remember that night in New Mexico when, for a few seconds, I believed in flying saucers." Well, I guess when one lands on Park's front lawn and carries him away for a rectal exam and leaves a weird device in him somewhere, he too can say "for a few seconds, I believed in flying saucers." The joke will be on him.