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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.

Then Robert Park, a physics professor at the University of Maryland, exposed the scam in his provocative weekly electronic newsletter, "What's New," which reports on science issues. A subsequent interview with Park on National Public Radio raised enough public pressure to cause the Federal Trade Commission to investigate. Three months later, the FTC charged the supplier with fraud and ultimately closed down the company.

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. 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.

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.

"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; how our evolutionary heritage makes us want to believe in an era when belief is a hindrance rather than a protective mechanism; and how the public can distinguish false claims from genuine breakthroughs in a time of unprecedented scientific progress.

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." 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. 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.

Next page | "All I care about is that people get better."