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Crichton graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College, received his MD from Harvard Medical School, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, researching public policy with Jacob Bronowski. He taught courses in anthropology at Cambridge University and writing at MIT...Crichton’s interest in computer modeling went back forty years. His multiple-discriminant analysis of Egyptian crania, carried out on an IBM 7090 computer at Harvard, was published in the Papers of the Peabody Museum in 1966. His technical publications included a study of host factors in pituitary chromophobe adenoma, in Metabolism, and an essay on medical obfuscation in the New England Journal of Medicine.

More interesting information at his website.

That's sad news, and odd timing for me, because I just found his website with his speeches a few days ago, and then got State Of Fear out of the library yesterday.

His speeches are not too long and are really great reads. There are some mistakes and things I disagree with, but they provide a lot of interesting information and a lot to think about. I particularly like Aliens Cause Global Warming.

Ahh, breaking news. When I started writing this post, his website was working fine... now it's already timing out. News travels fast these days.

That's sad news, and odd timing for me, because I just found his website with his speeches a few days ago, and then got State Of Fear out of the library yesterday.

His speeches are not too long and are really great reads. There are some mistakes and things I disagree with, but they provide a lot of interesting information and a lot to think about. I particularly like Aliens Cause Global Warming.

Ahh, breaking news. When I started writing this post, his website was working fine... now it's already timing out. News travels fast these days.

2) Yes.

3) Watch the video, he explains it better than I can:

http://www.michaelcrichton.com/video-speeches-independent.html

and also this: http://www.michaelcrichton.com/video-charlierose-2-17-07.html

2) Yes.

3) Watch the video, he explains it better than I can:

http://www.michaelcrichton.com/video-speeches-independent.html

and also this: http://www.michaelcrichton.com/video-charlierose-2-17-07.html

http://www.michaelcrichton.com/video-speeches-independent.html

And of course this is completely bass-ackwards. Religion and science are antithetical. Religion is based on untestable claims and dogma. Science is based on repeatable observations for gathering facts, and theory to provide a consistent framework to explain them.

Your statement is more indicative of prejudice than anything else. Not all religions are based on "untestable claims and dogma". In fact, a great many religions rely on personal experience and experimentation, and are differentiated from science by the nature of the data collected (unquantifiable) and not by an embrace of blind faith. You have done just what I criticized: taken one version of religion (the stupid version) and conflated it with religion in general.

The bible itself (just as one example) decries this stupid approach to religion in John 7L17:

"17 If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself."

Translation: test the doctrine out in your life and through personal experience you will come to know if it is true or not.

Furthermore it is trivial to see that religion without testing and experimentation is frought with moral dilemmas. If the point of religion is to accept dogma without reason, than there is no moral distinction between someone who accepts religion A and religion B, and therefore God is unjust to differentiate between the two.

So I've just illustrated the obvious moral problems with blind-faith based religion and the scriptural basis for Christianity (which I'm not claiming is unique in this regard) to establish a reason and evidence based approach to religion.

The problem is that you, like many young materialists, are so wrapped up in ridiculing the stupid version of religion that you're unwilling to consider the possibility that other and less intellectually retarded versions may exist. Try talking to a philosopher of religion or a trained theologian and I think your preconceptions about the role of reason in religion will be challenged.

Science, on the other hand, is certain *intended* to be as you describe. But you're contrasting religion at it's worst with science at it's best. The fact of the matter is that while what you say is theoretically true about science (and theoretically false about religion) in practice science (e.g. the body of professional scientists, publications, and the theories and work they produce) departs radically from "true science".

Michael Crichton gives several excellent examples of this regrettable trend in his essay "Aliens Cause Global Warming": http://michaelcrichton.com/speech-alienscauseglobalwarming.html

Here are a few quotes:

nd in Green Bank, West Virginia at the new National Radio Astronomy Observatory, a young astrophysicist named Frank Drake runs a two week project called Ozma, to search for extraterrestrial signals. A signal is received, to great excitement. It turns out to be false, but the excitement remains. In 1960, Drake organizes the first SETI conference, and came up with the now-famous Drake equation:

N=N*fp ne fl fi fc fL

Where N is the number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy; fp is the fraction with planets; ne is the number of planets per star capable of supporting life; fl is the fraction of planets where life evolves; fi is the fraction where intelligent life evolves; and fc is the fraction that communicates; and fL is the fraction of the planet's life during which the communicating civilizations live.

This serious-looking equation gave SETI an serious footing as a legitimate intellectual inquiry. The problem, of course, is that none of the terms can be known, and most cannot even be estimated. The only way to work the equation is to fill in with guesses. And guesses-just so we're clear-are merely expressions of prejudice. Nor can there be "informed guesses." If you need to state how many planets with life choose to communicate, t

Media carries with it a credibility that is totally undeserved. ... You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. ... then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read with renewed interest as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about far-off Palestine than it was about the story you just read. ...

I'd point out it does not operate in other arenas of life. In ordinary life, if somebody consistently exaggerates or lies to you, you soon discount everything they say. ... But when it comes to the media, we believe against evidence that it is probably worth our time to read other parts of the paper. When, in fact, it almost certainly isn't.

I get my facts from a variety of sources. I watch South Park for fun. South Park is great at satire.

I love your tagline:
"Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so."

That's exactly what the Gaiainists that have taken over the environmental movement are doing.

More here.

I find it hilarious that the Slashdot "democracy" will support Crichton on the inadvisability of gene patents while casting aspersions on his scientific opinion regarding enviroreligiosity. You can't have it both ways, guys and gals. Either the author of the TV ER series is a Hollywood kook, or he's a serious scientist and M.D. who has done his homework and knows what he's talking about.

Stumbled across this relevant speech from Michael Crichton. The upshot is that he laments the emergence of science and scientific critique shaped by politics rather than rigorous scientific method.

http://www.michaelcrichton.com/speeches/speeches_q uote04.html

If we're talking political abuse-of-science, can I link to this essay by Michael Crichton about "environmentalism as religion" just to remind everyone that things like this cut both ways?

Reminds me of a recent John Crighton essay on the topic of "environmentalism as religion"... so where does this leave RMS? :)

Like his idea, this one will be shot down for the same reason: It might actually do something about the problem, doesn't funnel money to the climatologists pushing Global Warming as a means of securing ever-more funding, and it offends the the civil religion of environmentalism by allowing Western Civilization to escape suffering (in the form of a stagnant economy die to crushing greenhouse gas taxes) for its "environmental sins."

"Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism. Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists. Why do I say it's a religion? Well, just look at the beliefs. If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths. There's an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there's a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment. Just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide-free wafer that the right people with the right beliefs, imbibe. Eden, the fall of man, the loss of grace, the coming doomsday---these are deeply held mythic structures. They are profoundly conservative beliefs. They may even be hard-wired in the brain, for all I know. I certainly don't want to talk anybody out of them, as I don't want to talk anybody out of a belief that Jesus Christ is the son of God who rose from the dead. But the reason I don't want to talk anybody out of these beliefs is that I know that I can't talk anybody out of them. These are not facts that can be argued. These are issues of faith. And so it is, sadly, with environmentalism. Increasingly it seems facts aren't necessary, because the tenets of environmentalism are all about belief. It's about whether you are going to be a sinner, or saved. Whether you are going to be one of the people on the side of salvation, or on the side of doom. Whether you are going to be one of us, or one of them."

http://www.michaelcrichton.com/prey/index.html

ahhh! Global Warming!!!! AHHHH!!!! Read a book and draw your own conclusions. There is NO data that proves global warming even EXISTS.

Yes, but the guy who wrote the book the movie was based on has written a new book, to be released this week, suggesting that such fears are overblown.

In advance of the book's publication, Crichton has written the cover story in today's Parade (Sunday magazine supplement in many US newspapers) giving several examples of such exaggerated predictions.