The shadows of science – a Princeton historian’s take on pseudoscience

Princeton University historian Michael Gordin has been researching pseudoscience for a new book, and he has good news and bad for those scientists determined to keep their pursuit free of imposters. The good part is that scientists should take the proliferation of pseudoscience as a compliment. It's because the public respects and even reveres science that so many fakers and wannabes clothe themselves in scientific trappings.

 The bad news is that pseudoscience can't be eradicated. "It's not a pathogen or a germ that we can cure from American culture," he said. "It's more like a cancer." If scientists try to emphasize some distinguishing trait of science, pseudoscientists will try to copy it. If being published in a peer reviewed journal is important for science, then pseudoscientists will create their own peer reviewed journals devoted to ESP, creationism, or cold fusion. If testability is the key, the pseudoscientists will claim to have passed one.

Gordin's book is called The Pseudoscience Wars: Immanuel Velikovsky and the Birth of the Modern Fringe, and as the title implies, he centers his case on one particularly charismatic 20th century peddler in pseudoscience....