By Arthur Bridgeforth Jr.

Noted author and Physics Professor Robert L. Park will discuss the "Seven Warning Signs of Voodoo Science" as the keynote speaker at the Vaden Miles Memorial Lecture on Thursday, March 27, 4 p.m., at Wayne State's General Lectures Hall in Room 150.

Park, a professor at the University of Maryland in College Park, Md. and director of the Washington D.C. office of the American Physical Society, wrote a book titled Voodoo Science that was published in 2000. It's from the book that Park derived his litmus test intended to root out bogus scientific claims. The test is known as "The Seven Warning Signs of Voodoo Science."

The signs involve the red flags that help debunk any would-be claims of significant breakthroughs in scientific research. Those warning signs are:

1. A discovery is pitched directly to the media.

2. A powerful "establishment" is said to be suppressing the discovery.

3. An effect is always at the very limit of detection.

4. Evidence for a discovery is anecdotal.

5. A belief is said to be credible because it has endured for centuries.

6. An important discovery is made in isolation.

7. New laws of nature are proposed to explain an incredible observation.

Park's career in physics didn't come about with the intervention of a voodoo priestess, but fate did move its mysterious hand and plucked Park from law school at the University of Texas in 1950 to the U.S. Air Force and the Korean War.

Park was assigned as an electronics officer in the Air Force, instead of a lawyer. When he returned to the University of Texas in 1956, Park switched his major to physics and graduated Phi Beta Kappa with high honors two years later.

In 1960 Park became the Edgar Lewis Marston Fellow at Brown University, where he studied surface physics under the late Harry Farnsworth, one of the pioneers of the field. Park received his doctorate at Brown in 1964.

In 1965 he joined Sandia Laboratories in Albuquerque, and in 1969 became head of the Surface Physics Division at Sandia. Park was appointed professor of physics and director of the Center of Materials Research at the University of Maryland in 1974. He became chair of the department of physics and astronomy four years later.

Park is the founding editor of "Applications of Surface Science" and he is a fellow of the American Vacuum Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Physical Society.

In 1998, he received the Joseph A. Burton Award of the American Physical Society for his contributions to the public understanding of issues involving the interface of physics and society.