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FW: TOURBUS -- VOODOO SCIENCE
I saw this and thought some RADSAFE readers would find it interesting.
-- John
John Jacobus, MS
Health Physicist
National Institutes of Health
Radiation Safety Branch, Building 21
21 Wilson Drive, MSC 6780
Bethesda, MD 20892-6780
Phone: 301-496-5774 Fax: 301-496-3544
jjacobus@ors.od.nih.gov (W)
jenday1@email.msn.com (H)
-----Original Message-----
From: Patrick Douglas Crispen [mailto:crispen@NETSQUIRREL.COM]
Sent: May 19, 2000 2:25 AM
To: TOURBUS@LISTSERV.AOL.COM
Subject: TOURBUS -- 18 MAY 00 -- BARTLEBY / VOODOO SCIENCE
. . .
--------------
Voodoo Science
--------------
I mentioned this in a recent TOURBUS Plus post, but I thought you
might like to see this too. A few months ago, while at a wedding in
Toledo, I spotted a full page USA Today ad for what appeared to be a
perpetual motion machine. The add used a bunch of gobbledygook --
like mentioning the little-known FOURTH law of thermodynamics
(*giggle*) -- in an attempt to convince people to attend an upcoming
seminar in their hometown.
What made the ad even more amusing was that the people I was hanging
out with at the wedding all held engineering degrees from Purdue.
From what the group could gather from the ad, the mysterious fourth
law is "a fool and his money are soon parted."
Well, Robert Park, a physics professor at the University of Maryland,
has just released a WONDERFUL, easy-to-read book titled "Voodoo
Science" that exposes the "foolish and fraudulent science that swirls
around us." Forbes Magazine recently published some excerpts from the
book, and you can find those excerpts on the Web, for free, at
<A HREF="http://www.forbes.com/forbes/00/0515/6511128a.htm";>
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/00/0515/6511128a.htm </A>
and
<A HREF="http://www.forbes.com/forbes/00/0515/6511117a.htm";>
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/00/0515/6511117a.htm </A>.
Even if you don't decide to order the book, the excerpts are a fun
read. :)
. . .
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