Quantum Catastrophe: Pseudoscience in the Popular Media

Just wanted you to know, I didn't make the whole list a s***list... i.e. David Griffiths' textbook is listed too, and I found it somewhat useful myself for some of my own coursework. The whole list was directly from amazon.com, I'm just griping about how many of the titles in that list are obvious BS, and certainly should not be coming up as some of the 1st entries when I type "quantum".

 

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That's true. I remember once when I was attending one of those High School career day things back in the day, a chemist was one of the presenters and he was complaining about how a particular shampoo brand was advertising their "beta-hydroxy" formula, even though he said that could apply to a million different things. Not to say there's no science in shampoo- there's tons, but none of it is of legitimate interest to the layman.

It's the same sort of bullcrap with stuff like these "magic ion bracelets" that I still see being advertised on TV (ok, I think the magic ion bracelets are way worse); just make it vague and scientific sounding, and people will buy. It's also funny how so many people seem to think positive ions are good, and negative ions are bad. Entire belief systems are founded on this kind of nonsense.

And that's one of the frustrating things about trying to explain to laymen the difference between junk science and legitimate science. People get upset with me when I challenge ill-thought-out views. How am I supposed to explain it to them, am I supposed to sit there and teach them linear algebra?

 

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