{"id":2727,"date":"2008-07-08T08:17:01","date_gmt":"2008-07-08T08:17:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2008\/07\/08\/help-me-locate-kooks\/"},"modified":"2008-07-08T08:17:01","modified_gmt":"2008-07-08T08:17:01","slug":"help-me-locate-kooks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2008\/07\/08\/help-me-locate-kooks\/","title":{"rendered":"Help Me Locate Kooks"},"content":{"rendered":"

The final chapter of Bunnies Made of Cheese: The Book<\/cite> is currently envisioned as a look at the mis<\/strong>use of quantum mechanics by evil squirrels: qucks and hucksters of various sorts. As a result, I spent a good chunk of yesterday wading through the sewers of alternative medicine books on Amazon, using the “Search Inside This Book” feature to locate good manglings of quantum theory in the service of quackery. I feel vaguely dirty.<\/p>\n

I also spent some time on the web page of Bob Park’s favorite shills<\/a>, BlackLight Power, which provides another example of the appropriation of quantum concepts for nefarious purposes (I need to hedge this a little, though, because their incorrect findings are evidently based on the “Grand Unified Theory of Classical Physics,” which doesn’t bear explaining).<\/p>\n

I would like to find a good example of someone citing a misunderstanding of QED as the basis for “free energy,” though. It would balance things out pretty nicely if I had a concrete example of a perpetual motion scheme claiming to be based on vacuum fluctuations or the Casimir force, or some such.<\/p>\n

I know I’ve seen such things, but my Google-fu is weak (possibly because Google tracks my search preferences, and sends me to real physics sites first), and I couldn’t find anything specific enough to cite. I know I’ve heard of such schemes, though.<\/p>\n

Can anybody provide a reference to a good one? If you provide a pointer to a useful sort of kook, you’ll get an acknowledgment in the published book, and I’ll give you an advance look at the relevant chapter when I finish re-writing it.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

(One additional note on the Amazon-based quote mining: Given that Amazon limits your look inside a given book to something like five or six pages, it might seem hard to justify this practice. I’ve looked at enough of these books to feel ok with it, though, because the general pattern is always the same: there are five or six pages in an early chapter presenting a warped version of modern physics and claiming that as a basis for their mystical claptrap, followed by a couple hundred pages of meditation techniques and mystical puffery unburdened by even a hint of science. You really can find essentially every mention of modern science just by searching for the right keywords.<\/p>\n

(Also, I will be damned if I’m going to let one nickel of my money find its way into the grasping hands of a charlatan like Deepak Chopra, so there’s no chance that I’m going to buy any of these books. The college’s library is not in the habit of purchasing or promoting woo, and there are limits to the amount of time I’m willing to spend copying things down in bookstores, so Amazon is a convenient alternative.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The final chapter of Bunnies Made of Cheese: The Book is currently envisioned as a look at the misuse of quantum mechanics by evil squirrels: qucks and hucksters of various sorts. As a result, I spent a good chunk of yesterday wading through the sewers of alternative medicine books on Amazon, using the “Search Inside… Continue reading Help Me Locate Kooks<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67,7,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book_writing","category-physics","category-science","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2727\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}