The Editor
New
Scientist
18 November
2000
Voodoo
Science?
Dear Sir
I see that
Robert Park’s “Voodoo Science” has reached the British bookshops (Opinion, 18
November, p60). I was away at the time
or I would have commented on the review in your June 3 issue (Wendy Grossman,
p50). How many readers will realise, I
wonder, that Park is sometimes highly and irresponsibly selective in his research? As he is listened to by the American
Physical Society, this can have serious implications, discouraging attempts to
publicise any controversial idea and stifling progress. After all, was Feyerabend so very wrong when
he advocated “proliferation” of theories?
The case in
point is cold fusion and other low energy nuclear reactions. How, I pray, does cold fusion classify as
“voodoo”? Park has chosen to ignore the
serious research in this area, which has resulted in tantalising hints of new
physics and the publication of hundreds of papers, some of which he cannot fail
to have seen. How many readers will
know that Arthur C Clarke (who has made positive contributions to science in
the past, for example working out back in 1945 the formulae behind the
geostationary communications satellites) has called the failure to take cold
fusion seriously “almost certainly the biggest scandal in the history of
science”. The journal Accountability in
Research has recently published a Special Issue on the subject, condemning the
failure of the peer review system in the field.
One must, I
suppose, commend Park for airing these controversial ideas, but readers should
be aware that they may not be being told the whole story.
Caroline H
Thompson