Breaking the Second Law

Please bear with me as I rage.

You know how necessity is the mother of invention? Well, invention's nasty twin sister Scams has struck my in box again with yet another junk automotive product. And leave it to a Fox News station to make it appear legitimate with this TV spot.

I hope that the vast majority of people remember their basic high school physics/chemistry and recognize stuff like this as garbage, that consumer advocate groups or government programs will shut down these companies, and that the con artists go broke and die alone in jail. But in reality, there's enough suckers out there that slept through class or want to believe there's an easy solution to the fuel crisis, that these hucksters can survive. I wonder how much money is made in the industry of crap fuel additives and its cousins male enhancement, non-verified herbal supplements, and get rich quick schemes.

I think that one thing that allows pseudoscience to thrive is the widespread mistrust of the institutions of science. Some of the You Tube comments under that Fox News clip testify to this, as does the film "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed." That film propagates the oft-repeated claim that Science censors truths that contradict its status quo. It presents professors that were shut out of educational institutions because they taught Intelligent Design theory as martyrs, when in actuality, they were fired because they were not teaching science (Intelligent Design, whether it's true or not, is not a scientific theory, because it makes no verifiable scientific claims). This mistrust of the scientific process is one reason why I think that even if scientists debunk them, people will continue to buy the miracle herbal diet pills and 100-miles-per-gallon fuel additives.

Ugh. Too much raging when I should be sleeping.