Should NASA Try To Refute Crackpots?

angkor writes "CNN has an interesting article on the dilemma faced by NASA: what is the proper way to deal with far-out theories given exposure (and legitimacy) by the media--ignore the crackpots or refute them?"

Comments

Why bother?

[SirTwitchALot]

You're probably not going to change the mind of someone who is CONVINCED the moon landing was a hoax. I don't see a need to spend money that could go toward research on trying to change people's minds.

That's what everyone else is for

[Boiling_point_]

Outsource it!

NASA's core business is delivering science and engineering, not education.

There are plenty of educated, credible and vocal people who don't work for NASA who can and will provide necessary refutations (word??) for pseudoscientific nonsense.

NASA could probably achieve the same goal (convincing swinging skeptics) to the same level of efficiency through a PR department staffed with a couple of researchers and the occasional "read this or ask them" press release.

As I said on a previous post....

[acehole]

It never ends with them, you can't please them.

You show them documents, they say they are fake.

Show them footage, they say it was done in a studio.

Show them the moon lander through a telescope, they say the telescope has been tampered with.

Take them to the moon and show them the lander in person, and they say it was planted.

Last time i posted this reply i got some replies suggesting that the crackpots be left on the moon.

It is NASA's business

[jesterzog]

NASA's core business is delivering science and engineering, not education.

One of Nasa's three stated mission objectives is "to inspire the next generation of explorers". Exactly how could the next generation be inspired if they think NASA was lying up-front about its most inspiring accomplishment?

wrong question

[g4dget]

Asking whether NASA should refute crackpots is the wrong question. Questions of whether the moon landing actually took place are symptomatic of a deeper problem. If NASA spends many billions of dollars on a project and all the average person gets out of it is a photo op that could have been staged at a Hollywood studio, it's no wonder that these questions come up. Refuting them at such a late point is too late.

NASA got itself into this problem by presenting itself as a frontier organization, a group of heroic explorers. And to maintain that image, they are wasting lots of money on useless projects like the space shuttle and the space station.

What should NASA do? They should present themselves as a scientific organization and forego the wild-west mentality. They should stop presenting astronauts as "heroes", reduce manned space travel to next-to-nothing, and instead go mostly with comparatively low-cost, unmanned probes. As you may have noticed, people don't generally ask whether unmanned probes are fake or not, and even if they did, nobody would really care very much.

And, of course, the other problem is that the US population isn't exactly up to speed on science, on average. Refuting a single crackpot is too little too late, but NASA should take its educational role in the sciences more seriously and they should get the funding to do it--they are trying, but they aren't making a dent.

If we had a scientifically literate population, and NASA stuck to doing science and didn't create a heroic mysticism around manned exploration, crackpots wouldn't stand a chance. The way it is, NASA is merely reaping what they sowed.

If Carl Sagan were still alive...

[bedessen]

If Dr. Sagan was around I'm sure he would point out that debunking crackpottery encourages critical thinking. That was pretty much the whole point of his book The Demon Haunted World, the idea that we are constantly bombarded by claims, arguments, and pitches. By taking on arguments logically rather than emotionally you can separate the legitmate claims from the pseudoscience. These sort of skills have wide relevance in our modern world. Every person that has ever been subjected to an infomercial, a verbal sales pitch, a car sales pitch, a print ad (or about a thousand other forms of persuasive speech) would benefit from logical, critical thinking. Additionally, you are much better at constructing valid arguments if you understand logic and reason, and aren't forced to make emotional appeals, ad hominem attacks, etc. to convince someone of your viewpoint.

There is one champion still alive

[bagsc]

A local hero of mine, Dr. Lawrence Krauss Chair of the Physics Department of Case Western University in Cleveland, Ohio, has taken up the call-to-arms to protect Ohioans and the rest of the world against crackpots. In our recent "Intelligent design" debacle, creationists attempted to hijack the science education curriculum, and, thanks in no small part to his efforts, were stopped. He has also made a bigger name for himself analyzing science fiction, and is best known for his book "The Physics of Star Trek." If you find a scientific cause that needs a real scientist to refute morons, he is your man.