Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att-cb!att-ih!ihnp4!ihlpe!res
From: res@ihlpe.ATT.COM (Rich Strebendt, AT&T-DSG @ Indian Hill West)
Newsgroups: sci.misc
Subject: Re: Omni-Americans
Summary: OMNI = Pseudoscience
Message-ID: <2724@ihlpe.ATT.COM>
Date: 8 Mar 88 18:52:05 GMT
References: <5017@uwmcsd1.UUCP| <2790@gryphon.CTS.COM|
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories - Naperville, Illinois
Lines: 40

In article <2790@gryphon.CTS.COM|, edk@gryphon.CTS.COM (Ed Kaulakis) writes:
| In article <5017@uwmcsd1.UUCP|, markh@csd4.milw.wisc.edu (Mark William Hopkins) writes:
| | Read Omni instead of Scientific American.  It's much better because it has 
| | all things Futuristic in it, be they science fact or science fiction (i.e.
| | science yet-to-be-fact).
| 
| 	Science is not facts. It's not theories. It's most certainly not 
| pretty images. It's a world view based on a class of bullshit detectors...
| It has no place for democratic determinations of what is the case; thus, 
| Omni's UFO "reportage" is, in the absence of convincing evidence, mere 
| pandering, more comparable to the supermarket tabloids than to Sci Am.
| 
| That's why I think Omni is a sort of Trojan Horse for the marching morons.

I agree.  I cancelled my subscription to OMNI when I got fed up with
the way they were covering pseudosciences.  Unfortunately, contemporary
exposure to the pseudosciences (astrology, UFO-ology, and a host of
other dubious -ologies) and to the popular press's favorable treatment
of charlatans like Uri Geller, has led to the attitude expressed in the
first posting quoted above -- that there is no real difference between
science and pseudoscience ("science yet-to-be-fact").  I urge the first
poster to get ahold of a copy or two of the Skeptical Enquirer to get a
different perspective on the pseudosciences.  While the Skeptical
Enquirer is sometimes a bit strident, it does attempt to expose the
pseudosciences for what they are -- usually quackery, sometimes fraud.

As to the futurism aspect, I feel that the future will NOT be based on the
wishful thinking embodied in the pseudosciences (telepathic communications,
the world saved by noble UFO pilots, ones future foretold by ones birthdate,
etc.).  Rather, the future depends on applying our knowledge to the problems
at hand with undiluted vigor.  Such problems as AIDS, world hunger, 
diminishing energy resources, and fundamental inhumanity of man toward one
another, will not be solved by the Uri Gellers of the world, or by
consulting the "predictions" of a Jean Dixon.  They will be solved by the
application of the sciences (both hard and soft) to these problems.  The 
more energy is diverted into bogus "sciences" the longer it will take to
solve these problems.

				Rich Strebendt
				...!ihnp4![iwsl6|ihlpe|ihaxa]!res