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The Undergrowth of Science
A scientist once wrote that all truth passes through three stages: first it is ridiculed, then violently opposed and eventually, accepted as self-evident. Charles Kettering, the legendary former head of General Motors, once lamented: 'First they tell you you're wrong and they can prove it; then they tell you you're right but it isn't important; then they tell you it's important but they knew it all along.'
Both of these notions are quoted in Walter Gratzer's excellent new book, "The Undergrowth of Science: Delusion, Self-Deception and Human Frailty." Gratzer writes exceptionally well. He teaches at the Randall Institute, King's College London. His books include the "Longman Literary Companion to Science" and "The Bedside Nature."
Gratzer examines the underbelly of scientific theory, namely how some of the most delusional and outrageous scientific theories -- Russian water that could congeal oceans, Monkey testis implants that restore declining sexual powers, "truths" about genetics and the discovery of matter -- occur and are widely accepted in the scientific community. This book is equal parts science and history, a collection of gripping tales that remind us to take even the most high-minded and supposedly scientific discoveries with some caution.
Science makes much of its rules and legendary peer review procedures, but personal vanity, contemporary politics, greed, stupidity, and incompetence all pop up in these shocking episodes. Gratzer details how intelligence and reason don't necessarily exclude irrationality. One chapter takes us to eighteenth-century France, where Franz-Anton Messmer persuaded a gullible public of the existence of animal magnetism and harnessed it to cure diseases. (Messmer didn't actually invent the theory of animal magnetism, he learned it from a notorious Austrian priest known as Father Hell.)
One powerful chapter details the tragedy of Soviet genetics, the history of Russian biology in the period between the Revolution and the death of Stalin in l953, a time the author calls "a woeful chronicle of wanton destruction of both a scholarly discipline and the lives of many of its most respected practioners." Gratzer also explores the misuse of science in the Third Reich, and the rise and fall of Eugenics.
This isn't just ancient history, though. Misguided scientific theory is all too contemporary.
"Most remarkable," writes Gatzer, "is the way that false theories and imagined phenomena sometimes spread through the scientific community. A kind of mass hysteria, which parallels in the world at large, such as UFO sightings alien abductions, 'recovered memory' and probably chronic fatigue syndrome, takes possession of a hitherto rational population, like a virus of the intellect. On such occasions scientists in some area of research throw aside, to the amazement of their colleagues, the intellectual constraints that had until then guided their working lives. They become selectively uncritical and intolerant of any unsought evidence. Sometimes such a perversion of the scientific method results from external, especially political, pressures, but at other times it is a spontaneous eruption."
In the media age, these scientific stumbles are particularly dangerous, as they become powerful memes that are rapidly and virally transmitted to the general population by information technologies like TV and the Net.
In this era, science and technology are central to contemporary political, social, economic and cultural lives. How science can sometimes go awry is thus an important story. Despite the fact that Gatzer tells it entertainingly and with enormous authority, this is a disturbing book. Science in the wrong hands, used for the wrong reasons, is scary stuff.
Purchase this at ThinkGeek.
What I meant was, "Even though many scientists scoff at religion, humility, a value common to religious belief systems, is something we could all use." I was not saying that science scoffs at humility ;-)
Sorry for any misunderstanding! :-) I know that science treasures both humility and skepticism. The ability to admit you are wrong is key to scientific endeavors. I was just trying to point to an irony, in that despite the open hostility between religion and science, they often have shared values :-)
"Doubt your doubts and believe your beliefs." -- Switchfoot, Ode to Chin
A more honest description would have been along the lines of: "There's something really odd going on here guys, something not explained by any known physics of materials, and we've been running experiments to try to figure out what's going on."
Calling the unexplained phenomenon cold fusion at that stage (or even at the current stage) was pretty damn silly --- despite the fact that whatever is happening is very real and very unexplained by current theory, it is not fusion as we've known it for decades and may not be fusion of any kind at all. This could have led to an excellent area for loads of well-funded pure science and maybe by now even some solid engineering, instead of the media circus that was. Shame on everyone.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
In high school, I read Stephen Jay Gould's The Mismeasure of Man . That's what opened my eyes to how scientists are just as prone to wanting to advance their causes as the next guy (or gal).
"How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
...but there is no guarantee for how long it will take. Bad science can survive for a generation or two and cause much grief on the way.
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Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
Personally, I expect a book reviewer to tell me something about the book, its strengths and weaknesses, and maybe some biographical info about the author. Silly me.
--
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Scientists are human, so yes, you will find many examples of quackery, and many examples of closed-minded intolerance of other opinons that you can point at as anecdotal evidence to support your predetermined conclusions. But as a group, scientists do not confuse opinion with fact, and few of us claim to know "absolute truth," despite your accusations. In fact, it is the religious community that claims to have a monopoly on the truth, but in your typical intellectualy dishonest mode of argument, scientists are the ones accused of such hubris.
I refuse to tolerate your intolerance. That's what I mean by "go away." If you are willing to ask questions without first formulating the answers, then you are welcome to stay and debate.
In other words, faith is not evidence. So go away.
I can see the fnords!
Hey, Katz, you oughta read " The mac is not a typewriter ", by Robin Williams. That'll teach you how to type properly.
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If you ask me the guys who came up with repeated reports of cold fusion after it had started being debunked should be dragged through the streets and forced to repay every penny of taxpayers' money that they got in grants
If that's an example of your opinion, I wont' be asking.
So it's okay to follow a line of research as long as no-one's debunked it? That'd be great for the idiots who spend their lives debunking evolution, and it also pretty much puts paid to extra-solar planets, cloning, relativity and... well, pretty much everything. Look back far enough and you'll probably find someone grunting the caveman equivalent of 'fire? load of bollocks, that'.
> The problem I have is this: traditional science is only set up to understand that which is easily and repeatedly observable under controlled conditions.
If that were true, we wouldn't have any astronomy. As it happens, astronomy is one of the oldest of sciences.
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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Screwball theories taking hold is the scientific equivalent of Dave Rhodes and "Make Money Fast". . .
You must also remember, being a Scientist does NOT give you a corner on every single aspect of reality. Hence, ideas that appear plausible to one scientist on a general basis may be obviously bogus to another with specific and detailed knowledge of that particular field of study: things are WAAAAAAY too broad for any scientist to have much more than an informed laymans' level of knowledge of most of it. . .
To people in India the recent (last five years) floods must seem 'biblical' in scale. Thousands died, the flooding was from horizon to horizon in some areas.
I don't doubt that flooding has always killed people, even the ancestors of those who wrote the bible. But I do doubt the forty days and forty nights, and the bit about rain covering the highest mountain.
You need fairly specific proof, not just that someone named Noah did live and did get through a flood on a raft/boat, but that he had a boat big enough for two of every animal plus food, for well over forty days.
It is widely accepted that there was a siberian/alaskan land-bridge, this isn't enough proof for Moses and the red sea... etc
1) Skepticism is what untestable claims should be greeted with.
2) Scientists are very good at testing claims that something happens very rarely.
Ok, more detail....
For #1, many more things don't happen than do happen. For every time a bird flies by, an uncountable number of UFOs and invisible dragons DON'T fly by. If someone says that an invisible dragon flies by, only when nobody capable of testing for it is nearby, it MAY be true, but very probably is not.
Also, if that claim is testable but always produces negative results, out of line with those reported, it's reasonable to believe it's false. If your phone line had static during all calls, except that the telco people could never hear static even when placing a call from your house, they'd be justified in thinking it didn't exist. If however they merely try a few tests and don't find anything, they're being lazy in presuming it's nothing.
And as for #2, how do you think doctors discover that a drug causes side effects to one in two-hundred thousand people?
Similarly, when scientists are looking for something they have reason to believe is uncommon, they perform very many tests.
But if they're testing for something that they are told happens very often, they can conclude that (if the event is independent of their testing (ie, the static doesn't go away just because test equipment is hooked up)) the event isn't happening, or at least, not as reported.
What you attribute to the inability of science to deal with uncommon events is merely the laziness of people who don't want to investigate something that might mean them making a hundred tests over a long period of time. That's not bad science, that's bad tech support.
There are two different arguments in here Phil, both of which are important:
:-)).
Firstly, how 'truth' is pursued within the boundaries of a particular scientific community, and secondly, how those outside the community try to manipulate the work for their own benefits.
What you refer to with reference to your own field is the tension that arises when the boundaries become blured - and, I agree, commercial funding of academic research labs can result in unfortunate situations.
Reading some of the other posts, it is interesting to see people complaining that the scientific establishment, which controls funding and publications, is intransigent and guided by vanity and personal ambition. At the same time, others are complaining about quite the opposite - fraudulent, or faulty, science that claims exciting new breakthroughs, is too easy to sell to an uneducated, gullible public. This suggests to me that the current peer-review process, coupled with scientific method is probably the best compromise we can come up with at the moment. The intransigence of peer review at least provides a level of hysteresis, and, I think I'm right in saying, most of the most embarassing 'scientific' cock-ups were as a result of people not publishing under peer-review (e.g. Arpad Puztai and his Genetically Modified Potatoes - I notice that sounds like a fairground act, which seems quite appropriate really
As far as outside manipulation goes, you are right that science tries to build a self-sustaining edifice, that industry and politics try to manipulate it, and that academic scientists have a duty to be aware of these pressures and resist them.
The thing that irritates me the most is the use of the phrase 'there is no scientific evidence that...' (insert Mad Cow disease and BSE, uranium tipped shells, Genetically Modified anything...). Generally, this is because no one has done the experiment. This is the same problem that predicate calculus has - True and False aren't enough to represent incomplete knowledge.
There is no scientific evidence that I am not a teapot. It would be foolish, however, to assume that, as a result, I am one.
Often, these arguments are combined with the use of spurious statistics - Children in single parent families are more likely to commit crime, therefore divorce should be made harder. Creative people are, apparently, more accident prone, therefore if you're accident prone, you're likely to be creative. People that wear skirts to school do better in exams, therefore, we should oblige all children to wear skirts so that their academic grades improve. Fire engines are associated with fires, therefore we should ban fire engines...etc... All these statements are equally ridiculous, it's just that some appear less so than others.
It seems to me the *reverse* is opposite. The scientific community seems very resistant to new, strange ideas. Otherwise totally rational people, having gotten a certain meme stuck in their head about how implausible or silly something is, totally discount it, refuse to rationally look into it, for fear of being considered a fool by peers. Shouldn't we have gotten over this by kindergarten? Remember, a lot of science is people's egos and careers. Galileo wasn't too popular for his ideas of the earth revolving around the sun, and it took Columbus and Magellen to dispell the stigma on the notion that the world was a sphere. Einstein also shook up those adamant that the entire universe was based on simple Euclidean geometry. New ideas have to fight every way to be recognized. A lot of the "common sense" we take for granted was vehemently opposed by the scientific community at one point.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Can lead to Microsoft.
Screw the grammar. I just wanna see Katz learn the difference between a "1" and an "l". "l953"?
DUDE! It's a computer, not a typewriter! And the Courier font's "1" has been different from the "l" for decades!
that should read:
biophysicist
/me wonders why katz doesnt take the time to make sure his grammar is correct.
how can journalistic integrity be maintained without correct grammar as a basis?
signatures are for fools with hands
The *problem* is Pons and Fleischmann had that huge announcement, and were debunked (proper scientific theory, a success). However - now people scoff at the idea of "cold fusion". (A misnomer)
But there's a lot of reseach in the same fields going on. Its not bogus, and they're not trying to save the world and make a huge announcement.
You're letting the 1 big event color your perception of the the entire field - which isn't correct. There's a lot of stuff we don't know, and a lot of people trying to discover that.
http://www.virtualschool.edu/mon/SocialConstruc
(Google is your friend!)
Addison
Granted, this book is probably a fun an interesting read. But one of the best things about the scientific process is that eventually, after all of the human frailties have burnt out, truth does prevail. It may take years or decades or even centuries - but truth is truth, and no amount of human greed, bigotry, or censorship can ever change it.
John "Dark Paladin" Hummel
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
A SlashDot login in the wrong hands is.... um... OK, I guess *that's* harmless :-)
It never fails to amaze me how people cannot fathom that such things as history, science, government, education, religion, art, etc. are directly influenced by those who practice it. Nothing, I repeat NOTHING, is free of the influence of people no matter how much we wish it to be (or, to be more accurate free of influences other than our own). No perfect system will ever be put into place. But, what you can do is have a) acknowledge that bias exists and b) have a free and open society where alternate ideas can at least be expressed. It doesn't guarantee that what is "right" or what is "true" will come out on top, but it's a hell of a lot better than the alternative.
If you don't have anything nice to say, say it often.
- Ed the Sock
Every one of these has been stringly refuted. You should read the talk.origins archive, but you probably won't.
You really should read The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan. Not that I think you wrong, exactly, but to paraphrase Sagan's example, if you say you have a dragon in your garage, but it's invisible, leaves no footprints, can't be touched, can't be covered in paint, makes no noise, and breathes invisible fire without heat; then your neighbors are going to have doubts. :)
It's the easy to say "Blame the society/system"
In many cases when a revolutionary new view of things was introduced by someone, it wasn't the public that ridiculed and humilated him, his peers, the other scientists were the ones that fought against those new ideas(of cource thereby forming "Public" opinion
Not even the greatest minds(think about how long the academie francaise denied to accept any evdience for meteors, think abouts Einsteins constant tries to "defeat" quantum mechanics, think about simon newcombe mathematically "proofing" that a body that is heavier then air can never fly).
"Mommy, mommy! The garbage man is here!" "Well, tell him we don't want any!" -- Groucho Marx
Money in the wrong hands, used for the wrong reasons, is scary stuff.
Power in the wrong hands, used for the wrong reasons, is scary stuff.
Coke and Pop-Rocks in the wrong hands, used for the wrong reasons, is scary stuff.
Religion in the wrong hands, used for the wrong reasons, is scary stuff.
Fresnel lenses in the wrong hands, used for the wrong reasons, is scary stuff.
Computers in the wrong hands, used for the wrong reasons, is scary stuff.
A nation in the wrong hands, used for the wrong reasons, is scary stuff.
Dude, that's seven more aritcles for you, right there.
information wants to be expensive...nothing is so valuable as the right information at the right time.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
For those of us geeky enough to care about what the cold fusion claim was about:
Fusion is what happens when two atoms' nuclei fuse, or join, into one nucleus. Its simular to fission, which involves one atom's nucleus splitting into two. Both fusion and fission turn a small amount of matter directly into energy, and even though the amount of matter involved is almost miniscule, its far more efficient then chemical reactions (such as burning coal), which only involved harvesting energy from breaking chemical bonds. Fusion is what powers the sun, which transforms 2 hydrogen atoms into one helium atom. It requires very high temperatures to strip the electrons away from the nuclei so that the nuclei can react. Although fusion is a form of nuclear power, no nuclear power plant that I'm aware of uses fusion as a source of commercial power generation. All fusion power generators that have been built (such as the tomahawk) have been experimental machines. Due to the heat involved, fusion is a tad difficult to harness. Quite literally, its like having a piece of the sun on the earth.
Now cold fusion is the dream of a fusion reaction that runs at around room temperature, making a simpler, more easily controlled reaction. Although its a nice dream, in reality, there is no theoretical framework for cold fusion.
People, being people, still tried. One group of researchers came forward and said that they finally discovered a method for cold fusion. However, their results were never reproduced in other experiments. (See the parent post for more information about this.)
If I understand the science behind it, they were claiming that something at the chemical level could affect something on the atomic level and generate "cold" fusion, by acting as sort of a catalyst. Now chemical reactions can change electron orbits, but they (AFAIK) cannot change anything in the nucleus, therefore, their cold fusion claim was rather remarkable, since nothing in chemistry ever indicated it was possible. Chemical reactions don't care about the nucleus, if they did, it would be possible to do stuff like seperate different isotopes of uranium chemically. (When the US government seperated U238 from U235 during the second world war, they *did* combine it with florine into a chemical gas (UF6), but only so that they could seperate the isotopes due to U238's slightly heavier mass. The florine did nothing but made it into a gas for easier seperation. I haven't doublechecked this fact, but I believe it was through diffusion, which was allowing the gas to escape into another chamber through a small hole, due to U238's weight, it didn't diffuse as fast, repeating this step many times led to higher concentrations of U238.)
Therefore, any cold fusion claim is like a claim of discovering little green men on Mars, or that the earth is actually flat. Its just bad science.
I see things like that throughout history and I just keep wondering how many "modern truths" will be proven as ridiculous as the "modern truth" in that time that the sun and planets revolved around the Earth.
For instance, the "modern truth" that people that are way too angry and take that anger out on others are somehow victims themselves. That one kills me. It seems the modern science of psychology says that we are all victims. Even the guy that picks up a gun, carries it in his car, and shoots people at random is a victim. He's suffering from "road rage". It seems that the "modern truth" of psychology is that no one is responsible for their own actions. At least, that certainly seems to be the case, and people embrace that thought because it is a wonderful thought that no matter what you do, no matter how misbehaved you are, you are not responsible for your own actions. You are a victim.
Then there is the "modern truth" of c-space. It is impossible to ever pass the speed of light. Just like it is impossible to pass the sound barrier? Or just like humans won't be able to breath when the pass 30 miles per hour? I don't know, I think it is ridiculous to assume that just because we haven't found a way to do something, that automatically means it is impossible.
Of course, I'm not one of those "science can cure all ills" people that thinks of science as the modern religion. I don't ask for blind faith, but common sense would suffice. If a theory is just a theory it should not be accepted as truth. If a "truth" is proven wrong, easily and verifiably, why beat the person that has proven it into a mental shell?
Of course, in today's society, the possibility that science will continue to move forward seems to be dwindling as well. Science in the wrong hands may be better than science in no one's hands. But, in the "money is all that matters" society of today, even that seems unlikely. Advancement for the sake of advancement would be an interesting proposition, but I think we are a long way off from the "Star Trek" version of humanity, where money ceases to be a concern, and scientific discoveries become paramount.
Ah, the beauties of modern science.
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The theories you mention have remained unquestioned by modern science for a long, long time. Unfortunately, the common misconception is that if a theory isn't "proven" wrong in a few days/weeks/years, then it must be a fact. There is probably a good reason why those theories are not proven wrong, there is no one questioning them.
(Well, except for Evolotion, which is only questioned by the hard-line, militant, christian propogandists, and thusly, the only people questioning it are dismissed as "wackos". Pity really, even the wackos have a valid point sometimes. I happen to disagree with their conclusions, but I don't mind listening to their arguments.)
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We are not discussing societal or cultural pressures forcing a scientist to recant against his will or better judgement. That is well documented, and actually is still happening today.
What we are talking about here is that scientists, trained and immersed in the discipline of skepticism and doubt, are often blind to their own propensity for making assumptions. This, coupled with believing you are being scientific leads to moronic theories at best. At its worst, it brings us mass extermination and eugenics.
Humility, a value of many religions scoffed at by scientists, is still the paramount character trait to seek. If you are seeking truth, you must first realize your own limits and your own propensity to think of yourself more highly than you ought.
"Doubt your doubts and believe your beliefs." -- Switchfoot, Ode to Chin
Science is knowledge that survives testing.
However, it may take a generation or two to get
past some wrong or evil idea if controlled by a
dogmatic group.
The opposite of science is dogmatism and revealation.
By definition, their body of knowledge is presumed
correct, albeit errors in transmission.
All new data has to fit their world view or be
rejected.
The problem with the cold fusion fiasco wasn't a credulous scientific establishment, it was that Fleischman and Pons went to the media instead of publishing for peer review first. There's a reason that major discoveries show up in Nature before the New York Times - the editors and readership of the former are equipped to examine claims critically. The general media is not.
Once other labs started trying to duplicate the cold fusion experiments of Fleischman and Pons, it quickly became evident that they hadn't discovered anything except poor experimental procedure. There was some brief noise about a couple of labs that said they had seen something that might, maybe, have been evidence of a cold fusion reaction, but that it wasn't reproducable and didn't produce statistically significant results. Again, the media broadcast this all over the place as collobarative evidence.
Now, I'm not saying that cold fusion shouldn't be researched further. I'm not qualified to make that judgement. What bothers me about this is how frequently I hear this particular incident cited as an example of why we shouldn't trust the scientific method. The damage that was done to public perception of the scientific establishment, and the methods of scientific inquiry, was inexcusable.
The ignorant are always looking for an excuse to remain so.
This is the voice of World Control. I bring you Peace.
The obvious part of K-12 science education to cut is the teaching of evolution.
Don't forget the Big Bang and heliocentrism as well.
It's not enough that these subjects be taken out of the curriculum; they must be banned outright. The teaching of evolution needs to be criminalized immediately, and in order to give this legislation teeth, the Congress needs to authorize an expedited death penalty for anyone who is caught disseminating information on these topics. Along with this, we will need to incinerate any and all books related to these topics. I would recommend beginning a complete and total purge of the works of Darwin, Hawking, Einstein etc. from our society.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
gives a wonderful lecture that starts with the staement "Science runs on incompetance."
And yes, he is a scientist-- a systems-science approach botanist.
Ironicly, after showing how the scientific structures basically prevent most truely new dieas from gaining the wide audiance the need for acceptance, he concluded with the observation that this is necessary. Withotu such constraints science would be TOO creative and nothing woudl get explored in depth.
A moment of philosophy:
The world is what it is and is ultimately unmeasurable by us in any direct way. All we have are the inputs of our flawed senses and the arbitrary pattern matchign of our intellect. We are model builders and not Truth finders. Truth is unacessible.
What's left to judge our models by are just the dual criteria of utility and esthetics. (Predictive cability is a utility measure. Occam's razor is an esthetic measure.) All real scientists know this, unfortunately they usually aren't terribly good at communciating this to the common man.
The problem I have is this: traditional science is only set up to understand that which is easily and repeatedly observable under controlled conditions. Traditional science is unlikely to be able to investigate paranormal phenomena because many of these phenomena are transient and almost impossible to produce on demand. This doesn't mean such phenomena don't exist; it simply means that traditional science is ill suited to the study of such phenomena.
Another factor enters in at this point: ego. Traditional science is conducted by PhD's at universities and research institutions. Most of us have gone to college or are at least familiar with the academic environment. The egos, narrow-mindedness and short-sightedness of some of these experts is unbelievable! They're as dogmatic as the most fanatical religious fundamentalists. They worship knowledge rather than question it. If something doesn't fit their picture of how things work, it's discarded, ridiculed, and those who proposed the idea are ostracized and regarded as fools. Only the smallest, most obvious new ideas, or those with overwhelming evidence in their favor, are accepted by the traditional scientific community. The problem is that this leaves little or no room for quantum leaps forward in understanding.
I know a lot of you must think I'm full of shit by now, so let me give you an example most of you can relate to. Have you ever had a transient problem with a piece of equipment and the manufacturer/vendor/whatever refused to admit the problem existed? Most of us have. I remember having a problem with static on a phone line once. It was so bad that my modem wouldn't stay connected, and often couldn't connect at all. It wasn't always like this - some days it was almost okay, and others it was terrible. The telco insisted that there was nothing wrong with the line. They tested it from the central office - "looks okay from here!" They sent a tech out to my house. He hooked up some piece of equipment that tested the voltage, impedence, and other line characteristics. "They all look normal." They told me the problem was with my in-house wiring (even though the static was still there when I disconnected the indoor wiring and tapped in directly at the telco interface). After many days of calling and complaining I finally got a competant tech who started at the house and traced the line step-by-step back toward the central office. He found a bad splice a couple hops down the line, in a junction box on another street. Well, what do you know - I was right all along!
Sounds a lot like how the traditional scientific community works, doesn't it? Now, imagine if the telco worked even more like the scientific community. Imagine if, when I first called to report a problem, they not only denied the problem's existance but cancelled my phone service and refused to speak to me ever again on the grounds that I spoke heresy. I would have been right all along, but proving it would have been damn near impossible. That is how the scientific community works. It's roughly on a par with the Catholic church in open-mindedness.
Just because paranormal phenomena are difficult to observe under controlled conditions, that does not mean they don't exist. The explanations for them may be other than what people think (strange lights in the sky being aliens from outer space vs. secret military aircraft, for example), but the phenomena themselves are quite real and quite explainable for those who are willing to open their minds to possibilities and just look.
There really have been some cool experiments with spiders on drugs, and how that impacts their work. Check out this page. And this page, which includes a picture of a web spun by a spider on LSD -- it's more precise than the work done by a straight spider. Pretty damn weird.
"Research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing." -- Wernher von Braun
If you ask me the guys who came up with repeated reports of cold fusion after it had started being debunked should be dragged through the streets and forced to repay every penny of taxpayers' money that they got in grants. OK, the guys who did it initially made a mistake, you can only prush boundaries if you step outside them. I'm thinking of the bloody bandwagon that followed.
FP.
-- Real Men Don't Use Porn. -- Morality In Media Billboards
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
I think more interesting though are the examples of where science is manipulated in a more subtle way. Namely by emphasis of funding. A good example would be the maniuplation of entomology by the large agrochemical companies. By extreme selectivity of funding, science can be used to prove anything. I think that within my own field, the large scale commercial pressures are pushing things in the same way.
Phil
There were, however, some problems. First, the dinosaurs didn't die off in a few years; they became extinct over a period of millions of years. Second, there was never any palaeoecological evidence of such a "winter" found. Thus, although there definitely was a large impact around the time of the dinosaur extinction, the hypothesis that it's dust caused the extinction could not realistically have been true. Moreover, there's an alternative hypothesis: massive extended flood-basalt volcanism from the Deccan Traps, in India.
Alvarez, however, was a Nobel prize winner. He used the power that gave him to discredit anyone who questioned him. He launched major attacks in the media. And he pressured the chairpeople of academic departments to fire departmental researchers who tried to show the flaws in the hypothesis. Some careers were severely damaged. Read all about it, and the science, here.
The impact crater was eventually found, in Yucatan, Mexico. Research has shown, however, that the amount of dust injected into the atmosphere, by the impact, was far too small to have forced cosmic winter. With Alavarez dead, there is now at least some reasoned debate. Recent work by Sharpton at the U of Alaska speculates that the impact might have vaporized enough rock to make the atmosphere very acidic--and that this might have led to long-term ecological changes that forced dinosaur extinction. (This research was presented at last month's meeting of the American Geophysical Union; abstracts available online via http://www.agu.org/meetings/waisfm00.html.)
Maybe, in the end, it will turn out that Alvarez was right. Or maybe not. For the integrity of the scientific process, though, it makes no difference. A powerful scientist used his political power to squash any scientific debate.
__________________________________
"... the microkernel approach was essentially a dishonest approach aimed at receiving more dollars for research. I don't necessarily think these researchers were knowingly dishonest. Perhaps they were simply stupid. Or deluded." --Linus Torvalds on kernel research by Computer Scientists (in Open Sources)
"They laughed at Newton.
They laughed at Einstein.
But they also laughed at Groucho Marx."
--Carl Sagan
I demand a million helicopters and a DOLLAR!
I recall quite a bit of misinformation being spread around in the 60's when those scientests were exposing every creature under the sun to LSD.
IIRC, one scientist postulated that exposing spiders to LSD ruined their depth perception, when later is was realized that spiders have no depth perception. This was later made into an open source truism:
Many eyes makes bugs shallow.
And people like you and your colleagues are one of the biggest reasons why our citizens are so susceptible to people selling bad science. At every turn you oppose the teaching of any scientific fact that doesn't agree with your precious world view. The Jihad against the theory of natural selection is just the worst example, but across the board, Christian's intolerance of any disagreement with their dogma has stifled the science education of the average person to the point where they can't reliably sort out the wheat from the chaff when it comes to scientific claims.
And then you turn around and point at the resulting niches and cracks where pseudoscience has gained footholds and you use that to support your claim that science in general is unreliable and deceitful. THAT is the ultimate deceit. Those crackpots might just as well be your direct agents for all the mileage you get out of them.
Go away already and let us educate our people so that they can function in a modern society. God knows they can't even program their VCRs, and before long they will have to be able to program their refrigerators just to be able to eat.
I can see the fnords!