快猫短视频

For more than 20 years Bob Park has waged a war against bad science. Each Friday he takes a wry look at the week鈥檚 issues in his cult internet column 鈥淲hat鈥檚 new鈥�. There is no shortage of targets. Cold fusion, intelligent design, alien abduction and the dottiness of law-enforcement agencies buying dowsing rods 鈥減rimed鈥� with pictures of cocaine 鈥� they all come under Park鈥檚 gaze. But this poking fun at nonsensical ideas has a serious purpose. He rails against the false view of the world that pseudoscience promotes and champions clear thinking: how to distinguish the real stuff from junk science and fraud. He talks to Maggie McDonald about his life as a debunker.

When did you become a sceptic?

It was when I was about 12. I was going to a youth group within the Methodist church, which had hired a pastor to work with the teenagers. I had a couple of problems with biblical accounts, including Genesis, that clearly could not be taken as literal truth. I chatted to the pastor and explained my concerns. Instead of debating with me, he said: 鈥淵ou can go to hell as quickly for doubting as you can for stealing.鈥� That violated everything I felt.

So that made you want to be a scientist?

I started out as a lawyer, but my time at law school was interrupted by the Korean war. During the war I went to radar school. I loved the science, and that is how I got into physics.

How did you begin debunking bad science?

I got a call from Stephen Barrett, who runs an organisation called Quackwatch that sets out to combat medical frauds, myths and fads. He asked me: how dilute is 鈥�30C鈥�? Well, I had never heard of 30C as a dilution. It turned out to be a designation used by homeopaths when they dilute medicines. When he explained that 30C meant that you dilute 1 part in 100 and then repeat that 30 times over, I burst out laughing. If there was just one molecule of the substance in the entire solar system, it would be more concentrated than that. That got me interested. I began to discover how many really crazy ideas are held even at high levels of government 鈥� in the US Congress, in the Senate 鈥� and by the Prince of Wales.

What makes people fall for pseudoscience?

A lack of questioning. Especially when learning about religion, people are taught from the start that doubting is a flaw, faith is a virtue. That is bad training.

But isn鈥檛 that the way we teach science in schools?

In early education there are a few things that you cannot question, otherwise it is hard to make any progress. But we start almost from a child鈥檚 first breath teaching myths concerning the creation of Earth and so forth. I do not blame people who hold odd beliefs, but I think we鈥檝e got to find a way to get around this lack of questioning.

What part do you think the media plays in this?

In the first place, it is the desire to be even-handed. The media often feel compelled to give both sides of the issue even when one side is clearly nonsense. The one that is currently before us in the US is the issue of intelligent design. The media has felt compelled to state claims from both sides of the debate as if they are somehow equal. Even-handedness is a virtue, but there are times when there really is only one side to an issue.

What annoys you most?

Claims from inventors of perpetual motion machines. What makes me indignant is that these claims, by and large, are made by people who ought to know better. My book Voodoo Science had the subtitle 鈥淭he road from foolishness to fraud鈥�. Initially these people are quite sincere. They believe they have made this great discovery 鈥� perpetual motion 鈥� that everyone else has somehow missed. That certainly can happen, but as time goes on they must surely recognise that things are not working. At that point they come to a fork in the road. In one direction lies acknowledgement that perhaps they are wrong. In the other direction is denial. If you continue down that road too far, that is the road to fraud.

Isn鈥檛 it difficult to admit that a piece of research has gone wrong?

Making mistakes is a part of being a scientist. None of us is will get through a career in science without making some pretty awful bloopers. Mostly we are going to put it behind us.

Some government science projects rile you too.

Yes. For example, I have a great deal of scepticism about the way the space programme has been going. Space exploration is one of the places that a civilised society should be putting its resources, but if we have learned anything from space exploration it is that space is a lousy environment for human beings. We know how to build machines now that are extensions of ourselves. This is natural for a scientist. No scientist sticks his or her finger into a liquid to find out if it is hot. You put in a thermometer. We do not need to go to Mars to find out what Mars is like. We have two robotic explorers there right now that are doing a splendid job at about 10 per cent of the cost of a human being. I wish that we would concentrate on areas in which we can actually achieve something rather than wasting our resources on international space stations and human exploration of Mars.

You take your role as a debunker seriously, but is it really anything more than a bit of fun?

Since the Enlightenment, we seem to be sliding back into the darkness. Debunking is terribly important for society. But you cannot build a career by debunking bad work. The result is that debunking is mostly done by old people.

How do you ensure a continuing supply of sceptics?

I am also a teacher. I teach physics at the University of Maryland, and from time to time that includes a course in scepticism for honours students. The standard assignment is that students must come to class with clippings taken from the daily news. We discuss the stories with an eye to what is missing or wrong that might distort the readers鈥� conclusions. Most stories are fine. Some are badly reported and occasionally one is totally wacky. The emphasis is not on science, but on stories that are affected by science. At first the students have trouble spotting the science link, but by the end of the semester they see a link in just about everything in the news.

What are you doing now?

I鈥檓 writing a proposal for a book about the conflict between science and religion, which is ultimately where the greatest need for scepticism is. I have a clear image of who I鈥檓 writing the book for: a reader of The New Yorker magazine, educated and sophisticated, but not educated in science. I doubt very much that I鈥檓 going to convert any fundamentalist Christians or Muslims. But there are an awful lot of people who are where I was at age 12.