Abstract:

A best-selling health guru insists that his brand of spiritual healing is firmly grounded in quantum theory; half the population believes Earth is being visited by space aliens who have mastered faster-than-light travel; and educated people are wearing magnets in their shoes to draw energy from the Earth. Did we set the public up for this? In our eagerness to share speculative new ideas at the frontier of science, have we conveyed the message that the universe is so strange that anything is possible? What can we tell people that will help them judge which claims are science and which are voodoo?