'55 Science Paper Retracted to Thwart Creationists

i_like_spam writes "The New York Times has up a story about a paper published in 1955 by Homer Jacobson, a chemistry professor at Brooklyn College. The paper, entitled 'Information, Reproduction and the Origin of Life', speculated on the chemical qualities of earth in the Hadean time, billions of years ago when the planet was beginning to cool down to the point where, as Dr. Jacobson put it, 'one could imagine a few hardy compounds could survive.' Nobody paid much attention to the paper at the time, but today it is winning Dr. Jacobson acclaim that he does not want — from creationists who cite it as proof that life could not have emerged on earth without divine intervention. So after 52 years, he has retracted the paper. 'Dr. Jacobson's retraction is in "the noblest tradition of science," Rosalind Reid, editor of American Scientist, wrote in its November-December issue, which has Dr. Jacobson's letter. His letter shows, Ms. Reid wrote, "the distinction between a scientist who cannot let error stand, no matter the embarrassment of public correction," and people who "cling to dogma."'"

Comments

Ironic curiosity

[JeanPaulBob]

The creationist zealots will likely take this bit of news, and embrace it as evidence that the scientific community is trying to be deceitful by withdrawing a "clearly correct" paper, for political reasons.

The amount of confirmation bias that people can exhibit when their passions are challenged is incredible.

Hmm. Out of curiosity, on what basis are you determining that such a slant would be incorrect? Obviously, you're right that confirmation bias would lead to that slant, but that doesn't say anything about whether it's correct--nor would your own biases to view such a slant as zealotry.

Where is your own opinion here coming from? Do you have the knowledge & understanding of the facts of the situation to know that such a slant would be wrong? Or does it just fit your own nice package of preconceived notions?

Re:People retract stuff all the time... so what!

[npsimons]

I received your letter of June 10th. I have never talked to a jesuit
priest in my life and I am astonished by the audacity to tell such lies
about me. From the viewpoint of a jesuit priest I am, of course, and
have always been an atheist.
-- Albert Einstein to Guy H. Raner Jr, July 2, 1945, responding to a
rumor that a jesuit priest had caused Einstein to convert from
atheism. Article by Michael R. Gilmore in Skeptic magazine, Vol. 5,
No. 2, 1997

. . . a doctrine which is able to maintain itself not in clear light
but only in the dark, will of necessity lose its effect on mankind, with
incalculable harm to human progress. In their struggle for the ethical
good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine
of a personal god, that is, give up that source of fear and hope which
in the past placed such vast power in the hands of priests . . . The
further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it
seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through
the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through
striving after rational knowledge.
-- Albert Einstein, address at the Princeton Theological Seminary,
May 19, 1939, published in _Out of My Later Years_, New York:
Philosophical Library, 1950.

I do not believe in the god of theology who rewards good and punishes
evil.
-- Albert Einstein, Personal memoir of William Miller, editor, Life,
May 2, 1955

I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal god is
a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the
crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due
to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious
indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility
corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of
nature and of our own being.
-- Albert Einstein to Guy H. Raner Jr., Sept. 28, 1949, from article
by Michael R. Gilmore in Skeptic magazine, Vol. 5, No. 2, 1997

It is quite clear to me that the religious paradise of youth, which [I]
lost, was a first attempt to free myself from the chains of the 'merely
personal,' from an existence which is dominated by wishes, hopes, and
primitive feelings.
-- Albert Einstein, as quoted in Einstein, history, and Other
Passions, p. 172

It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a
lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a
personal god and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly.
If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the
unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our
science can reveal it.
-- Albert Einstein

The idea of a personal god is an anthropological concept which I am
unable to take seriously.
-- Albert Einstein, letter to Hoffman and Dukas, 1946

The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the
fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true
science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer
marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the
experience of mystery -- even