Acute Angles: A Career in Pseudo-Science |
Since the recent publication of an article on pseudo-science, a number of people have written in asking how they can get into this fast-growing and lucrative field. In keeping with its long-standing tradition of public service, this column will try to provide as much information as it can to help you succeed in this endeavor.
There a number of active fields in today’s pseudo-science business, but not all of them are appropriate for a beginner. Some require a modicum of education, and others require special skills. The most suitable fields to go into, if you have no specialized education or training, are probably nutrition, public health, new age archaeology and economics. The necessary knowledge and background for some of them can be acquired in relatively short order. Others require slightly more education or training, at least through the high-school level.
A rudimentary knowledge of statistics is necessary for expertise in public health. You should at least know that the term "correlation" implies that two items are related. Otherwise there’s no way you can discuss the environmental hazards of power lines.
To be an economist you need to be familiar with the Laffer curve, which proves that when you cut taxes the government collects more money. You also need a selective memory that enables you to forget that when President Reagan did it, the national debt increased astronomically..
If you want to give lectures and demonstrations of psychokinetics, you have to be willing to spend the time and effort to acquire skills to the level of the average show-business magician. You don’t have to have these skills if you merely want to lecture on extra-sensory perception.
It helps if you can call yourself "Doctor." At one time that used to take a lot of work, but things are different now. The prices of doctorates have steadily come down to the point where you can now get an unaccredited honorary doctorate for less than $200 in about 7 to 10 days, and even some at no cost. Lists of some of the best-known and most prestigious unaccredited diploma mills are available at libraries, bookstores and on the internet. Since this column would not recommend anything to its readers that it has not thoroughly researched, in preparation for this article it has acquired a perfectly legitimate unaccredited honorary doctorate.
Nutrition and health maintenance are hot fields at the present time. Try to develop a seminar on the current alternative medicine gospel, which seems to be: Throw away your medications, take herbs and food supplements, think healthy, and you can live disease-free forever. You’ll be amazed at how many people are receptive to this philoso-phy and how many attendees you’ll get at such a seminar. A word of caution: Be careful not to practice real medicine, which requires a medical degree and state certification.
Another good branch of pseudo-science is new age physics, which includes conjectures on the origin of the universe and on the practical possibilities of cold fusion. If you’re going into physics, in addition to having the doctorate you should know that the universe is made up of quarks, leptons, photons, particles and antiparticles, and that matter can be converted into energy and vice versa. Also learn the magic words Quantum Chromo-dynamics, which you mostly call QCD. Refer frequently to Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle – you don’t have to understand the details. Also try to find out what E=mc2 means. A little knowledge of mathematics helps, and perhaps even some calculus.
For cosmology and astrophysics you should know that the universe started with a Big Bang, that it is about 15 billion years old, and that there may be several parallel universes. You can get most of the background you need from reading a few issues of the Scientific American and some of the other newsstand science magazines.
One of the newest fields of pseudo-science is the study of man’s origins. If you study the Bible and compare it with the legends of other ancient cultures, you can easily find a scenario which proves that a superior race of extra-terrestrial beings once inhabited the earth and shaped man’s destiny. You may even get lucky and find an angle that no one else has thought of.
The information which has been presented in this column should be enough to get you started on a career in pseudo-science. The rest – how far you progress in this field, and whether your book becomes a best-seller – depends strictly on how much effort you devote to your new career.