Well Aric2000, science has to start somewhere. Before you can move to the design of an experiment, long before you get to actual experimental tests, you need to know what your experiment is designed to do. So you need a "speculation," a theory first.
Some of the science that is presented in these books is right. Some of it is plausible speculation. Some of it is wrong. And some of it is, in the words of Dirac reviewing a paper, "so bad it's not even wrong." But if you don't know the physics already, you can't tell which is which, and, of course, the authors sure aren't going to stop in the middle of the book and tell you "oh, and by the way, all the science on the past four pages is bogus." (To give the authors credit, I do think that they do believe that the stuff they're writing is true and they are not just cravenly "writing what the gulls want to hear," but they should at least be honest enough to put in somewhere the point that most of the scientific community doesn't buy their interpretations.)Again, trying to go through all the physics that is wrong or misinterpreted in these books would take an entire book itself, but almost all the mistakes are of the following form:
The writer makes a statement about quantum mechanics that is strange, weirdsounding and counterintuitive to common sense.
The writer says (explicitly or implicitly) that quantum mechanics is true.
The writer makes a statement about (choose as many as apply) new age thought, spirituality, psychic phenomenon, philosophy, psychology, mysticism, etc. that is strange, weirdsounding and counterintuitive to common sense, but sounds vaguely like statement A.
The writer concludes that since statement A is weird but true (and scientifically proven at that!) then statement C must also be true.
I forget the exact term for this type of logically fallacious argument, but I like to call it "guilt by association." But again, trying to use a physical theory about particles to prove a psychological/spiritual point doesn't work because they're entirely separate areas.For example, say the book says something like this: "Since quantum mechanics shows that electrons can tunnel through solid matter, past 'forbidden zones,' then we know that our consciousness can ascend to other realms forbidden to our normal existence." So statement A here is the part about electrons tunneling through matter and it is completely true. But statement C (the part about our consciousness) has nothing to do with statement A other than they are both in the same sentence. What do consciousness and electrons have to do with each other? Are there any studies showing such a connection between electron tunneling and consciousness? For that matter, electron tunneling and "forbidden zones" refers to the physical realm. Is the author then saying that these "other realms of consciousness" exist physically in space? Of course some authors and readers would argue back at this point that the writer is merely making a metaphor in comparing the physical world of the electron and the spiritual world of the human consciousness. And I would reply that if that is the case, then they should stop trying to be metaphorical. Skip the part about electrons and quantum mechanics and go straight into the part about consciousness since that is their main point. Why bother with all the science stuff if it's just there to "pretty up" the writing? And the answer is that the science is there to add credibility and validity to their statements, never mind that the science has nothing to with what they're talking about. (When I was an undergraduate we heard a lecture in sociology class from Reverend Ike, a wealthy and flamboyant black minister who had gotten rich using radio and TV appeals. The difference between him and Robert Tilton is that Rev. Ike made no pretense that he wasn't rich. God had wanted him rich, and his followers had seen to it that God's Will was done. Rev. Ike also made no bones about the methods that a lot of evangelists (himself included) used on their congregation. "You would not believe," he told us, "the number of people out there who will believe anything you tell them, no matter how ridiculous, so long as you put a Bible verse in front of it and another Bible verse after it. We call that a 'Scripture Sandwich.'" The writers of the new age physics books use the same method to present "science sandwiches" to their readers.)