Pathological Science: The Science of things that are not so.

Denis Rousseau

Department of Physiology and Biophysics

Albert Einstein College of Medicine

Bronx, NY

In this talk, pathological science will be discussed.  These are episodes in which members of the scientific community have been self-deluded and lost their objectivity in the pursuit of exciting new phenomena. The symptoms of pathological science include the observation of a very weak effect, the lack of a correlation of the magnitude of the effect with the size of the causative agent and an unwillingness to do or accept a definitive experiment.  Contemporary examples to be discussed include polywater, infinite dilution and cold fusion.