La Brea Tar Pits’ Page Science Museum sells a pseudoscience product—“Mystery Marbles”—at its museum store

The George C. Page Museum, adjacent to the famous La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, is a natural history museum devoted to the fossil discoveries drawn from the tar pits. In other words, it’s a place for science and science education. Here are my daughters looking at a mastodon.

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So imagine my surprise to see positive energy Mystery Marbles being sold at the science museum’s gift shop. Mystery Marbles promise to deliver everything from calm for the anxious to romance for the lovelorn.

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Here’s detail, from the lower right of the Mystery Marble display.

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Minerals possessing various energy qualities (calm, compassion, focus etc.)? Marbles with “metaphysical characteristics” being sold at a science  museum?  Why not also sell rabbits’ feet and astrology books–and bones and pieces of cloth from dead saints?

I mean, seriously.

If you think, as I do, that promoting pseudoscientific mystical energy products at a science museum is problematic, you might want to contact someone connected to the science staff of the museum (as I intend to). Here’s the number of Ms. Shelly Cox, one of the contact people listed at the museum website: (323) 857-6300 x 122.