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Seven Rules For Spotting Bogus Science
keynet writes "Robert L. Park is a professor of physics at the University of Maryland at College Park and the director of public information for the American Physical Society, wrote a list of warning signs to help federal judges detect scientific nonsense. (OK, so it hasn't worked and the Patent Office sure hasn't got a copy.) As he says, 'There is no scientific claim so preposterous that a scientist cannot be found to vouch for it'. What he doesn't say is that there are plenty more who will invest in it or base legislation on it."
With so many judges being appointed for purely ideological reasons, it may be a bit much to ask that they be expected to be concerned about scientific nonsense. Can you spell Creationism?
If you saw it on slashdot, there's a good chance it's a hoax.
Je t'aime Stéphanie
Is it too good to be true? That is pretty much the only thing you need to check. Simple antigravity? Too good to be true. Car that runs on water? Too good to be true. Honest politician? Too good to be true.
The big problem is that people are greedy, lazy, and generally lacking in common sense. Another set of rules isn't going to change that.
"This is your world. These are your people. You can live for yourself today, or help build tomorrow for everyone."
Why did he release these so called new "rules" direct to the media instead of having them peer reviewed first? I smell a rat :)
As he says, 'There is no scientific claim so preposterous that a scientist cannot be found to vouch for it'. What he doesn't say is that there are plenty more who will invest in it or base legislation on it."
From the article, the full paragraph of the quote is:
There is, alas, no scientific claim so preposterous that a scientist cannot be found to vouch for it. And many such claims end up in a court of law after they have cost some gullible person or corporation a lot of money. How are juries to evaluate them?
The very next sentence indicates that there are very many people who are willing to invest or base laws on bad science!
I have identified seven indicators that a scientific claim lies well outside the bounds of rational scientific discourse. Of course, they are only warning signs -- even a claim with several of the signs could be legitimate.
I just know the above disclaimer will be ignored by most. Which makes the whole thing a bit dangerous. Afterall, according to the rules, Quantum Physics could be considered bogus.
Do you mind, your karma has just run over my dogma.
....The Patent and Trademark Office recently issued Patent 6,362,718 for a physically impossible motionless electromagnetic generator....
For sale desgin for Flux capacitor, will pay shipping in US....
--My sig is bigger than your sig--
For judges that don't have time to read the whole article:
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." -- Carl Sagan.
"Too good to be true" is heavily related to the evaluator's background in the subject matter. That's part of the problem: judges are not steeped in the evidence they must weigh. They need a more thorough guideline of what "too good" would mean to a knowledgeable expert.
Sometimes I worry that I'll develop Alzheimer's disease, but no one will notice.
Why don't they just use the Crackpot Index to judge them?
"Question with boldness even the existence of a god." - Thomas Jefferson
This is just a shortened version of The physics Crackpot Index.
It's written for physics but seems to apply pretty well to any science...
+++ ATH0 +++
At university I was given several courses in Methodology, not all of them fun unfortunately, but all of them relevant. Certainly in my current work as a government employee I continuously see claims being made by government and private sector alike which are shaky at best. I still value what I learned in Methodology to judge those.
Methodology or anything that teaches kids to discern right from wrong should be taught in schools, so that we can protect ourselves from wrong ideas based in nothing. This could be by just explaining kids how you can know something is true and when something hasn't been proven yet, but might be true and when things are real BS. (BBC's Panorama had an illusionist who debunked the claims of homeopathy. Entertaining and educational)
I also have one fundamental rule I adher by: Never trust data given by the person that is going to benefit from the decision you make upon it.
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The only real exception to this is in new fields, such as computational biology; sometimes a whole new way of looking at the world comes along, and for a few years -- even decades -- the frontiers are wide open. Quantum physics was an example of this in its early years. At that moment, individuals and small groups and big organizations are roughly on a level playing field. But once the easy discoveries in the field have been made, the balance tilts back toward big science. That's just the way it is.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
I'm all for spotting bogus science. The problem with some of these rules is assuming:
A) That there's always a friendly attitude towards actual innovation in science.
B) That there's no corruption in "accepted" scientific communities.
The "respected" scientists of various fields can be manipulated and manipulating, have their own vested interests, and have their reasons to be questioned as well.
That being said, I think a lot of these are spot-on, and that people do need the knowledge to ask good questions and spot frauds.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
...should be: if it has a missing step before Profit!, it's probably bogus.
Warning sign number 2
>2. The discoverer says that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress
>his or her work.
Well, a member of the secret scientific establishment brotherhood would say that, wouldn't he?
I'd like to add another tell-tale sign
8. The scientific study was funded or conducted under the auspices of a media company.
Recently in the UK we've had a number of TV documentaries about controversial theories. One was an investigation into homeopathic medicine. The other was into the idea that otherwise very mild diseases might lead to obesity. In both cases the TV company funded a small scale test.
The problem was that the tests involved only about 100 subjects, far too small to have any statistical validity whatsoever. They said so in the show, but is that enough? Several people I've talked to afterwards recieved the impression that the tests in the show proved something.
Far from promoting an understanding of science, the shows succeeded in missleading the public not only as to the validity of the theories under examination, but also as to the value of such small scale tests.
I've never come across this kind of thing in the UK before, is this happening on TV in other countries too?
Simon Hibbs
You're right about one thing though: it did take a long time.
Most anti-evolution people are simply religious folks too afraid to face the facts. I suggest reading 29 Evidences for Macroevolution. I still do not see any objective evidence PERIOD for the existence of a supernatural deity. But objective evidence for evolution is abundant.
Think about it: man has invented various Gods all throughout history. The ancient Gods (Greek/Roman mythology, etc) were easy to disprove... (no Atlas dude holding up the Earth). The only reason the Christian God has hung around so long is because he is defined as untestable. News flash: You cannot invent something, make it untestable, and put the burden of proof on the opposing side to disprove it.
Afterall, according to the rules, Quantum Physics could be considered bogus.
By which of these rules, exactly? Even when it was first proposed, Quantum physics was NOT pitched directly to the media, was NOT claimed to be suppressed by the establishment, was NOT at the edge of detection, was NOT based on anecdotal evidence, was NOT based on centuries-old information, and was NOT developed by one person in isolation. Yes, it was a radically new theory that descriped new laws of nature, but atomic-scale physics was already known to be different, since Rutherford and before.
Yes, science is often weird and disturbing and hard to understand, but that's not a reason to confuse it with pseudo-science.
(Anti-disclaimer: IAAP)
Ho ! these laws can also be used to detect religeous bunk...
The "Darwin == Evolution" meme is so thoroughly imprinted in most people's brains that many creationist types seem to use it as evidence that Darwin produced the idea ex nihilo, and what had been a God-fearing, Creation-believing world suddenly turned atheist, evolutionist, and immoral as a result, leading over the next couple of centuries to world wars, eugenics, the Holocaust, and Bill Clinton. In fact, evolution was a theory that itself evolved, and continues to do so to this day; that's pretty much how scientific theories work. Darwin was an important step -- a major internal node in the phylogenetic tree, one might say -- but he wasn't the be-all and end-all, and has numerous "ancestors" and "descendants" in the history of the theory.
He did publish it in a book -- after several of the leading scientists of the day, with years of urging, persuaded him to do so. He was reluctant to do so both because he didn't want to be accused of stealing other people's ideas (kind of a Newton/Leibniz thing, only without the monstrous egos involved) and because he was well of the theological shitstorm he was going to unleash. In modern terms, his work was thoroughly peer-reviewed before On the Origin of Species came out.
Science is suppressed by ideological forces, governments and churches not least among them. What marks that crank is when he claims that this suppression is being done in secret. Real suppression -- from the Catholic church and Galileo to fundamentalist Protestantism and Darwin to Stalin and anyone whose science case doubt on Communist ideology -- tends to be very blatant.
Evolutionary biology is an observational science, not (in most cases, microbiology and some botany excepted) an experimental one. Do you consider the existence of other stars besides the Sun to be "anecdotal evidence" because no one can create a star in a lab? And yet we have just as much observational evidence for evolution, and in fact more laboratory evidence.
Darwin was not proposing a new law of nature; the idea of evolution had been around for decades. What he did was to take the hypothesizing of others in the field (e.g. Lamarck) and give it rigorous theoretical underpinnings, much as Einstein took the results of Maxwell's equations to their logical conclusion and explained contradictions in Newtonian mechanics that had bothered generations of physicists before him.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
However, more generally, making rules for evaluating innovation is a dangerous thing. Like art, there are no rules of what is art and what is not and creating rules for that can only be tyrannic. Who's to decide? There are plenty of scientists working alone in their backyard, UFO's might exist, and extrasensory comunication is not much more freaky than the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen distant-action paradox.
By the way, this list rules out the validity of religion as well on all seven points :-)
We have instinctual systems that make it hard to apply these seven rules, and it helps to be aware that people who seem to believe lies are mostly following their gut.
Judges and attorneys are quite cognizant of "junk science" in the courtroom. Keep in mind that there is (usually) an attorney on each side of a case. There is also a judge that doesn't want to look like a fool. To this end there is what is called the Daubert test for determining whether testimony of an expert witness is admissible in court. This, in a nutshell, looks essentially to whether the proposed expert testimony or opinion is based on good science.
Five criteria are used:
1. Is the expert qualified?
2. Is the expert's opinion supported by scientific reasoning and methodology?
3. Is the expert's opinion supported by reliable data?
4. Does the expert's opinion fit the facts of the case (relevance)?
5. Does the expert opinion qualify under general evidentiary rules of Federal Rule of Evidence 403?
Criterion 2, above, relies on determinations as to whether a scientific theory can or has been tested; what the error rates are; whether a theory has been subjected to peer review and publication (these are not dispositive, but they are certainly considered by the court and if they are missing, hackles are raised); whether a theory is generally accepted in the scientific community or whether it i ssubject to debate still; and whether the details of the case "fit" the theory.
A "Daubert" hearing is usually convened if any of the above are in question, and the judge rules on whether expert testimony should be permitted. The experts C.V. and the materials he relies upon in the case, as well as his expert report (prepared prior to trial) are all discoverable, so there are no surprises either at the Daubert hearing or at trial.
If a case has enough at stake to require an expert to testify, generally there will be a competing expert. This gives you a dueling experts scenario (cue the music from "Deliverance") where bought and paid for experts contradict each other, in whole or in part.
The primary issue usually then becomes credibility which unfortunately usually is not based on scientific validity, but is instead based on more subjective criteria. Qualifications also come into play -- the guy from Harvard usually beats the guy from Podunk State all else being equal. Fair? Not really, but it is reality.
The problem with legal disputes and science is that you cannot set up special courts for every case in which science is a key issue. It would fracture jurisdiction even further. Besides, specialization doesn't really help because every case involves different science.
There is no way a tribunal can be all-knowing. For some limited types of cases that recur frequently, there may be some benefit to setting up specialized courts. Unfortunately, after you get past the trial, at some point it is impossible to set up specialized appellate courts to hear appeals. Laymen will be involved in the process at some point.
GF.
Lots of petrified grits
Karl Popper has a hard nosed approach
If either of these don't apply then it isn't science.
Young Earthism attempts to make scientific statements, and fails the tests of observation. (ie, attempts to describe the history of the Universe, and is quite falsifiable). So Young Earthism is bad science, **not religion**.
Intelligent Design says that a Designer is behind the behavior of the universe, but makes no scientific statements, and can not be falsified observationally, so it is not science: it is Religion, **not science**. For the beliver in Intelligent Design, scientific observations about the behavior and history of the Universe tell about God's nature (since, by presumption, God exists). For the non-beliver, they do not (since, by presumption, there is no God). But science can make no (firm) statement about which is true.
Religious descisions (for both the believer and the non-believer) are descisions of faith and experience. No amount of science will (or can) ever change this.
I guess I was hoping for something a little more along the lines of a philosophy of science. Although I agree that bad science is usually accompanied by one or more (usually more) of these conditions, the conditions could just as readily be applied to certain particularly brilliant scientific breakthroughs. The conditions need fine-tuning to eliminate the false positives if we want to be sure to encourage the next Einstein, rather than mistakenly brand him a charlatan and run him out of town.
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
I'm not a scientfic historian, but couldn't points "2. The discoverer says that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress his or her work." and "7. The discoverer must propose new laws of nature to explain an observation" be used to discredit a scientist on the order of Galileo? Or, for that matter, couldn't 7 and "6. The discoverer has worked in isolation" be used against Einstein? I am sure to be corrected if wrong, but I always kinda thought Einstein worked pretty much in isolation.
So these aren't a litmus test--just a leaning.
--
$tar -xvf
Sadly, we need this common sense. A lot of people are living in what Carl Sagan called a "demon haunted world".
Just last week I was with some people, otherwise intelligent people in a book club, who turn out to believe in predestination and ghosts - one lady says she hears voices of dead friends and they tell her they are OK and they give her comfort.
What is scary is not so much that (we all need comfort when friends die, and whatever we choose to believe is at least understandable), but the fact that the entire group of people misunderstood science. "There must be types of radiation that are not yet known causing this", was the consensus. Everyone just took this lady at her word!
Last week on a radio show here in Canada a "shaman", Doctor Somethingorother, took questions. One went like this:
"Doctor: Fred here from Winnipeg. My question: When you are about to get in touch with your spirit self, do your electrons speed up their frequency? And does this mean I have a talent for communicating with the spirits? Because this happens to me weekly: first I suddenly feel like my inner electrons are speeding up their frequency and then I am unable to talk for what seems like a while, I am like a Zombie for a few minutes, and meanwhile I feel like I am in the spirit world and communicate with their mystery, and then I come back again". Doctor: "Yes! Exactly! And Yes! And Yes! You are talented in spirit communication, and indeed the frequency response of the electrons increases as we get near the spirit communication level, as the energy increase is a presurcor to this communication..." bla bla bla.
Now this poor caller was presumably an epileptic or narcoleptic. He should have been told to get (science-based) medical treatment. But no-one found it necessary to point this out: just because someone starts talking in an authoritative voice, he is believed.
Just now as I typed this message received a junk fax for "Marina, a Leading Psychic". Many people will pay for this stuff, in 2003. Not 1403! Weird.
This suspension of disbelief is dangerous. I think we need to be forceful in debunking myth. It seems to me that in the early 21st century we are a bit too apologetic.. "emotional correctness": it is seen as necessary to respect all beliefs. I think we do ourselves a discredit by that.
---
BDOS ERR ON A:>
... It crashed at 7 times as fast so I had to slow it down to 6 times as fast.
I agree that these seven rules are useful for judging bogus science, but I reject the implication that if it's not scientific, it is not true. Just because someone cannot point to a scientific reason, doesn't mean that various herbal or eastern medicines don't work. There is much about the workings of the human body that scientists cannot explain, so I'm not surprised that there are centuries-old non-scientific medical practices that cure millions of people every year.
In the same way, science is unable to deal with any reality that is not observable or verifiable. Theology and metaphysics are by definition unscientific, but that doesn't mean that they don't deal with truth; it just shows the limitations of science.
I'm not knocking science; I'm just saying that it's not ultimate truth.
The world of science is being affected by the media far more than the media is affected by science. If somebody comes up with an anti-gravity machine, for example, it is QUITE possible that they will try to secure their place in history by announcing it directly to the media, to prevent the news from leaking prematurely or other scientists from stealing the idea, or, heaven forbid, patenting it before the originator can claim "prior art". The other scientists can examine it to their hearts content, ONCE the originator has had his day in the sun. Look at Apple's secrecy with their products. News leaks KILL these people. The same psychological principles hold true for a scientist who comes up with something completely new. Look at the greatest invention of the 20th Century, the Segway [snicker].
2. The discoverer says that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress his or her work.
Yes, conspiracy theorists often seem like quackpots. But to discount the POSSIBILITY of establishment interference is to deny basic economic theories of self-preservation. Don't you think it's possible that oil companies would fight to stop alternative fuels from coming forth, or would they welcome their own doom joyously? Would Microsoft welcome a perfect disassembler that would reveal all their source code, or would they see this as a threat? Does Microsoft support Java for its cross-platform functionality? How about a pill that took the place of food, would MacDonalds say, "Sounds good, who cares about the bottom line and the millions of jobs we're going to lose?" If the establishment didn't want to preserve the status quo at all costs, FUD wouldn't exist. But it DOES exist, and I see it being used daily to kill small innovators (BeOS, anyone?). NOBODY welcomes a better product or idea if it's coming from a competitor.
3. The scientific effect involved is always at the very limit of detection. Alas, there is never a clear photograph of a flying saucer, or the Loch Ness monster. Thousands of published papers in para-psychology, for example, claim to report verified instances of telepathy, psychokinesis, or precognition. But those effects show up only in tortured analyses of statistics. The researchers can find no way to boost the signal, which suggests that it isn't really there.
Nice science - If we can't prove something exists, it doesn't. This ignores the reality that our scientific methods are still in their infancy. *Of course* we can't prove aliens exist in the billions of galaxies out there, we can't even make our own space shuttles work without exploding. And just because I've never been to China doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. There are enough people who claim to have been there, and many even have photographs of it, but I've never been there, so I wisely discount these "tourists" as quacks. Same goes for religious experiences, aliens, telepathy, precognition, etc. 100 years ago, Nuclear Power would have seemed insane, but not because it is "crazy", but because our own limitations prevented it from becoming reality for us. Everything is "at the very limit of detection" at one time or another.
4. Evidence for a discovery is anecdotal. If modern science has learned anything in the past century, it is to distrust anecdotal evidence. Because anecdotes have a very strong emotional impact, they serve to keep superstitious beliefs alive in an age of science. The most important discovery of modern medicine is not vaccines or antibiotics, it is the randomized double-blind test, by means of which we know what works and what doesn't. Contrary to the saying, "data" is not the plural of "anecdote."
See my last answer. Anecdotal evidence is not hard science, but it points toward science. The millions of people who speak in tongues should direct scientists toward examining the possibility and searching to explain and understand the phenomena. Scientists must keep their minds open, not closed.
5. The discoverer says a belief is credible because it has endured for centuries. There is a persistent myth that hundreds or even thousands of years ago, long before anyone knew that blood circulates throughout the body, or that germs cause disease, our ancestors possessed miraculous remedies that modern science cannot understand. Much of what is termed "alternative medicine" is part of that myth. Ancient folk wisdom, rediscovered or repackaged, is unlikely to match the output of modern scientific laboratories.
Acupuncture. Works.
And a lot of "old wives tales" have a logical scientific basis that was undiscovered until much later. But people recognized that certain things worked for them, for whatever reasons (like bread poultices, washing regularly to prevent illness, etc.) And I still think the Pyramids, the ancient batteries, and Captain Kidd's Island security system are pretty cool. Oh yeah, crop circles, Bermuda Triangle, blah blah blah. We don't understand everything, but we also shouldn't discount everything we don't understand, either. I personally don't understand wrestling, so it must be a hoax, too... No, wait, bad example...
6. The discoverer has worked in isolation.
Didn't ALL the great scientists work in isolation? It's hard to say "Nobody understands me" when everybody you know works at your lab 8 hours a day and is in total agreement with your seemingly insane ideas. Same with persecution. Persecution never happened, since everybody was on the same page. "You're right, dude, the world ISN'T flat!" "The world revolves around the WHAT?? Oh, yeah, right. Okay, cool. I'll change the history books." "God isn't smiting the sinners with the Black Plague, it's just a disease? Damn, shoulda known. Thanks for the update."
7. The discoverer must propose new laws of nature to explain an observation. A new law of nature, invoked to explain some extraordinary result, must not conflict with what is already known. If we must change existing laws of nature or propose new laws to account for an observation, it is almost certainly wrong.
That Einstein guy was a quack. Same with Newton. Same with Copernicus. Our knowledge of the world is full and complete and needs no revision. Thank you.
OK, you seem to be a little confused. What gets dated are the layers of deposition ON TOP of your cat, not the dirt under it. Geological deposition happens in layers of strata; go to the seaside and look at an eroded-out bank. You can see layers of clay, ash, sand, perhaps midden from some ancient group, and so forth.
Agreed, dating by strata is a bit uncertain at times - in the absence of any other evidence, all you can really say is "this is older than that, because this is underneath that." But the presence of dateable bits in the strata itself, or of well-known events (a layer of ash may correspond to some well-known volcanic eruption, for example) allows scientists to more accurately assign an absolute date range to the item at hand (your cat).
Read a first-year archeology textbook for more information, and then come to your own conclusion.
But science can make no (firm) statement about which is true.
Not quite. One of the most important parts of any theory is parsimony. Creationism violates this, and therefore science can discount it.
It boils down to a simple hypothetical conversation.
Creationist: Where did the universe come from?
Scientist: I can't say for certain.
Creationist: God created the universe.
Scientist: Where did God come from?
Creationist: I can't say for certain.
Basically, you add to the equation, but don't get any answers. The question of 'Where did X come from?' is posed, and saying 'X=Y' is unneccessary and unparsimonious. You can't bring 'Y' into the equation unless it will bring you closer to an answer. Creationists do so, with the claim that science cannot discount it, but science can, and does, say it is incorrect. True, science can't change your 'beliefs', but you can believe 2+2=5, but there's no reason for that to be taken seriously.
Creationism isn't outside the realm of science, but claiming it is is the only way to keep it around.
GL
One the whole, I think this article is solid, but one thing that troubles me is the urging to not listen to someone who cites an establishment that is opposed to their evidence. There are plenty of examples where scientific evidence was supressed in order to achieve a particular agenda (think tobacco and lung cancer, vehicle safety in the 70s, and drug safety to name only the biggest). The author should at least acknowledge this issue and suggest as a rule to be highly skeptical of evidence presented by someone who has billions of dollars in profit at stake.
So long, and thanks for all the Phish
"On December 18, 1953, Dr. Irving Langmuir gave a colloquium at the Research Laboratory that will long be remembered by those in his audience. The talk was concerned with what Langmuir called "the science of things that aren't so," and in it he gave a colorful account of several examples of a particular kind of pitfall into which scientists may sometimes stumble."
One of the best papers ever on this sort of thing is now, finally, on line here - N-Rays, Mitogenic Rays, Allison Effect and much more.
If it matches any of the baloney detection tests it's not just a wishy-washy might-be "warning sign", it's proof that some part of the claim is bogus.
And for the curious, please...
It's the rudest thing I've ever seen in my life, and does a horrible discredit to the memory of the man.-Rick
No, you're still not getting it - the layers on top of your cat are known to be younger than the cat. Now, if the layer was formed by some known event - say, ash from Krakatoa - then we know the cat is older than that, but younger than the previous event. If there is biological material embedded in the sediment, then that is dateable. And so forth. PLEASE read an introductory text on sediment dating; very interesting stuff. And, to counter your arguements about what "evolutionists" (scientists) ignore, keep in mind that dating is a scientific process that uses techniques drawn from physics, biology and chemistry - "evolutionists", then, are scientists trained in these disciplines.
Finally, we have excellent ideas about sediment deposition - there is an entire science dedicated to dirt and its formation. Just because you don't understand it, or it doesn't make sense to you/your church/your belief system, doesn't mean it's not a well-understood process. Please do some reading.
These are WARNING SIGNS. Not litmus tests.
If you saw a person waving a few of the aforementioned red flags, it would warrant closer investigation of the claims then might normally be required, not dismissal.
Dogmatism is bad no matter how you slice it; the author of the 7 rules was aware of this.
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
Here are some other good sources: Carl Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit http://www.uiowa.edu/~anthro/webcourse/lost/sagan. htm
Baloney Detection
How to draw boundaries between science and pseudoscience, Part I
By Michael Shermer
http://www.sciam.com/print_version.cfm?articleID=0 00D743A-CC5C-1C6E-84A9809EC588EF21
and
http://www.sciam.com/print_version.cfm?articleID=0 00ADC77-B274-1C6E-84A9809EC588EF21
Timex appealed to the government to block digital watch imports. When they lost, they decided to compete instead of complain, and have done very well since. But most times the entrenched old guard is displaced, which is why they fight so hard to keep the riffraff out.
The point here is simple: there is a tyranny of the status quo. Look at Microsoft - they are not trivial to displace from a monopolistic position; neither are corporations and universities that have a vested interest in gradual instead of rapid, massive change.
Gradualism is always more accepted by the powers that be than revolution. Remember the old adage: evolution not revolution. That's what the powers in place want to see, they do not want to see something that will displace them. And when they hold the power, they will act in their own interest the vast majority of the time. If a Star-Trek transporter were invented, imagine how the airlines and automobile manufacturers would fight it and would fund studies showing how dangerous or energy inefficient it was. Their survival would be at stake, and they'd fight to stay around. Yet their vigor in fighting would not be indicative of whether transporters were useful.
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