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Saturday, April 22, people throughout the nation and world joined the first-ever March for Science, including a march held in Salt Lake City.

Many rightly praised science for having saved and improved so many lives. Science made America great. That's reason enough to support it.

But there is an even deeper reason.

Science is not simply a compendium of impressive facts and achievements. At its core, science is also a method — a method for discovering reality, and for distinguishing reality from make-believe and wishful thinking. As Richard Feynman remarked, science is "imagination in a straitjacket."

The scientific method — as a process, not a product — is the reason that science will continue to make important conceptual and practical advances into the far future. To undercut this approach is a more profound attack on science than is any temporary political cut in funding.

Hence it was deeply unfortunate that the local organizers in Salt Lake City, apparently knowingly, used the March for Science as a platform to publicly endorse magical thinking: the personal testimony given by Brigham Young University law professor Brigham Daniels that God had answered his desperate prayers, and had intervened to save his wife from cancer.

Too bad for all those other cancer victims who died. If only they'd had Professor Daniels to plead their case, God might have helped them, too.

Granted, God purportedly intervened by providing Daniels' wife a top surgical team. But the important conceptual issue here isn't how a magical deity intervened. It's whether or not magic was involved at all.

Stunningly, Daniels subsequently remarked, "As a person of faith, I am embarrassed that others would use their faith to deny empirical findings of science."

Reality check, Professor Daniels. The overwhelming scientific consensus is that intercessory prayer, like other putative forms of telepathy and telekinesis, is quackery.

But you're right about one thing: Preaching such alternative facts is indeed an embarrassment. Particularly in an event intended to promote science.

Daniels' attempts at reconciliation notwithstanding, science and faith are incompatible, both in content and process. Natural and supernatural explanations inherently conflict. In science, faith is a vice; in religion, it's a virtue, as biologist Jerry Coyne remarked. Science vigorously attempts to disconfirm favored hypotheses: Experimental "control" groups serve to evaluate alternative, possibly better explanations. In contrast, religion preaches that you should "doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith."

"God did it" could explain anything, and hence explains nothing.

Faith is a horribly unreliable tool for determining empirical realities. Of course, some faith-based claims are correct. Even the Magic 8-Ball is right some of the time. The fundamental problem isn't that particular answers based on magic are wrong; it's relying on magical powers to begin with.

As a rationale, "My faith says," deserves the same respect as, "My Magic 8-Ball says": None.

Promoting such magical thinking degrades scientific literacy. Conclusions should be based on reasons, not faith. Relying on faith is a recipe for disaster for any scientific topic, from vaccines to climate change.

This is not a matter of freedom of speech or religion. It's a matter of what constitutes science, and what doesn't. Peer-reviewed scientific journals don't publish everything they receive.

Unfortunate, too, was the organizers' own implicit religious bias. Host Denni Cawley rightfully promoted diversity and inclusion in science. She explicitly welcomed people of faith — "all faiths." But she gave no acknowledgment to people who belong to no faith at all.

So, here's a tip, #marchforscienceslcut. The overwhelming majority — over 90 percent — of members of the National Academy of Sciences, our nation's most esteemed scientists, are either atheist or agnostic.

Which is no surprise. Because when it comes to the real world, science works. Religion doesn't.

Next time you're publicly promoting diversity in science, consider including in your welcomes people who don't belong to any faith.

And next time actually sponsor a March for Science, rather than a March for Magic. Because research conducted by consulting the Magic 8-Ball, like health care provided by divine intervention, doesn't deserve support in the way of public funding.

Or in any way at all.

Gregory A. Clark, Ph.D., is an associate professor of bioengineering at the University of Utah conducting biomedical research. Without using a Magic 8-Ball.