City Journal: Unscientific American

My fourth year teaching at Normandy, I was the department chair.  My department was concerned that students didn’t know the scientific method.  I taught all Physics and Honors Physics, so figured my kids certainly knew how science worked.  Sure, they could list some steps, but they couldn’t really think scientifically.

Around the same time, John Stossel, at ABC News, had done a special on pseudoscience, called, The Power of Belief.   It seems a little quaint now, but it was an engaging look at unscientific beliefs that were popular in the culture.   Magic crystals, past lives, faith healing, past lives, that sort of thing.

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