Steven Dutch, Natural and Applied Sciences, Universityof Wisconsin - Green Bay
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CHAPTEK 12 RENT-AN-EXPERT In 1843 a schizophrenic named Baniel McNaghten shot andkilled the secretary to the Prime Minister of England. McNaghten had imagined that thePrime Minister was persecuting him, and killed the secretary by mistake. After asensational trial, McNaghten was found not guilty by reason of insanity. The verdict wasso explosive that the House of Lords asked the judges to account for their reasoning, andthe judges in reply formulated the so-called McNaghten Rules. A person is not criminallyresponsible for an act if he was "labouring under such a defect of reason, fromdisease of mind, as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing, or if hedid know it, that he did not know he was doing what was ) wrong." With modifications,the McSiaghten Rules form the core of the insanity defense to this day.
On March 30, 1981, as President Reagan was about to enter his limousine, John Hinckleywalked up and began firing. The President and three others were wounded, none fatally.After a trial that cost an estimated $2.5 million, Hinckley was found not guilty by reasonof insanity. Predictably, the public response was one of outrage. Generally liberalCalifornia Governor Jerry Brown denounced "a legal system that totally disregards theissue of guilt or innocence and instead relies on so-called psychiatric experts to tell uswhether a man who committed a deliberate attack ghould be acquitted because he \ watchedtoo mahy movies." The Hinckley trial points up one of the major public relationsproblems of science: the role of scientific and expert testimony in decision-making. Theproblem i8 an ironic one; when science has clear-cut answers to problems it is generallyleft in peace to do the job. Congress may debate how much money to spend on spaceexploration but the task of designing the missions is left to science. It is in just thoseareas where science lacks definitive answers that the need for scientific input into thepublic decision-making process is often most needed. Often the issue is one where scienceplays a role but the issues are ethical or moral, and two equally qualified experts maydisagree. Two competent physicists may have diametrically opposed opinions on whether todevelop nuclear power; they might well have identical information but very differentvalues and ethics. In other cases there may not be enough information, and subjectiveprofessional apprai- sals of the evidence come into play. Non-scientists often get veryimpatient with the ambiguity of such situations; Senator Edmund Muskie once lamented thathe wished there were more "one armed scientists" after hearing "on theother hand" so often in testimony before Angressional committees. There is awidespread and not altogether unfounded sus- picion that many expert witnesses are"for hire". There are, indeed, many experts who earn substantial incomes bytestify- ing for clients. In most cases the teBtimony i8 probably hon- est, but there area few cases, such as the scientists who work for tobacco companies looking for ways to"prove" that tobacco is not a health hazard, where the experts back positionsthat are simply preposterous. One can fall into a sort of sophistry in which the data areno longer tools for finding the truth but pieces in a sort of chess game. Scientists arealso just as prone to ideological bias as any one else. For example, it is axiomatic inthe social sciences that studies that attempt to link intelligence with race tell moreabout the politics of the tester than about the intelligence of races. Many of the areaswhere scientists are asked to furnish guidance are heavily polarized, or perhaps it ismore accurate to say that ideologists have learned the hard way to stick to topics wherescientists cannot provide definitive answers!
The legal process creates many problems involving the abuse of expert testimony. In thefirst place, with rare exceptions, witnesses are not neutral; they are recruited for oneside or the other. Secondly, the object of expert testimony is often not so much todetermine the truth as to raise doubt or legitimize some action; the testimony is designedto confuse as much as inform. An attorney who is suing a factory might not be asinterested in whether or not the factory's product really is dangerous as whether thereare reasonable grounds for believing the product to be dangerous. There are strict rulesgoverning evidence, but no such rules for reasoning. Faulty evidence can be excluded;faulty reasoning can be exposed but cannot be thrown out of court. Deliberately tellinglies on the witness stand is perjury; deliberately using false but persuasive arguments isnot.
This all sounds perfectly cynical, but for the life of me I cannot come up with analternative that cannot be perverted even more easily. It sounds marvelous to imagine asituation in which the court, the defense, and the prosecution all engage in a harmonioussearch for the truth, but what if our concept of "the truth" is colored byideological bias? If all parties in a court case agreed, as was widely believed not toolong ago, that blacks were more sexually active than whites, what chance would a blackdefendant in a rape case have? For all the evils of the present system, it is probablybest to have each side represented as forcefully as possible. At least then no one will beable to say that both sides did not get a thorough hearing. Nevertheless, the adversarialprocess that is used in American courts can often lead to confusion or worse. As aHinckley juror complained: "If the expert psychiatrists could not decide whether theman was sane, then how are we supposed to decide?"
A notorious legal abuse of technical reasoning took place in San Pedro, California in1964. A black man and his white wife were arrested for a mugging. There were no direct eyewitnesses who could positively identify the couple, but the couple matched the generaldescription of the actual robbers in five major details. The prosecuting attorneyestimated the probability of a given person matching each detail, multiplied theprobabilities together, and persuaded the Jury that the odds against any other couplebeing the robbers were 12,000,000 to one. Not until 1968 did the California Supreme Courtoverturn the conviction.
The chance that any given couple would match the description of the robbers might wellhave been 12,000,000 to one. The fallacy is this: there are perhaps ten million people inSouthern California, any one of whom might be seen with a large number of other persons.There could easily be fifty million possible "couples" in she region. What theprosecution should have calculated is the probability that none of these couples matchedthe description of the robbers. For any one couple the probability is .999999917. For allthe couples, the probability is .999999917 raised to the fifty millionth power, or aboutsixty to one odds that there was at least one other couple that could have committed therobbery! Granted, the couple may well have been guilty, but our legal system is notsupposed to send people to prison because they might well be guilty! What is so appallingis that the defense attorney and the jury failed to catch the error and that it took solong to find lawyers and judges who could. The prospect, in a nation where students oftentake as little science and mathematics as possible and where creationism and astrologyflourish, is for much more of the same.
It is not hard to find controversial issues where both sides muster scientific supportfor their conclusions: nuclear power, hazardous waste disposal, the hazards of tobacco,marijuana, saccharin, Agent Orange, or myriad other materials; abortion, or theeffectiveness of social programs. A good example of an issue on which the experts aredivided is the "yellow rain" controversy. There have been reports for a longtime that the Soviet Union has used poison gas in combat: in Yemen, Afghanistan, andSoutheast Asia. After villagers in Laos and Cambodia reported being sprayed by aircraft,samples from the area were obtained. The samples had high levels of mycotoxins: poisonsproduced naturally by some fungi but also eminently useful in chemical warfare. Thereinlies the problem: are the toxins natural or artificial? Those who claim a natural originpoint to the presence of pollen in the samples and claim the samples may be nothing morethan bee exerement; the bees ingested fungi along with nectar and excreted the toxins.(I'm omitting a lot of details for brevity; the position is not as silly as it sounds).Those who claim an artificial origin point to the eyewitness accounts, the high levels oftoxins in the samples, and the absence of pollen from some samples. Both sides accuse theother of ideological bias. How is a nonscientist to know? When we consider the very realpossibility that Soviet chemical forces may have sprayed fake materials expressly toconfuse the issue (as there is some evidence to suggest) the problem becomes hopeless.
Fortunately, there are a great many cases where it is easier to tell the real from thefake. We have considered real and fake evidence in past chapters. In this chapter let usturn to the touchy matter of telling real experts from fake ones. One of theleast-understood aspects of science is the matter of credentials; of telling whether ornot a person's training and accomplishments entitle his opinion to be given extra weight.
Credentials are simply a record of a person's professional trainlng, certification, andon-the-job accomplishments. Ideally, credentials should act as a guide to tell us howcompetent a person may be to function in a given field. Unfortunately, credentials can befaked, over-inflated, padded or misapplied. If someone claims to be a lawyer, physician orlaw-enforcement agent without proper credentials, that person may be liable to criminalpenalties. If someone claims to be a scientist without credentials, there are no penaltieswhat- ever. There certainly is no law against calling a run-of-the- mill scientist"famous" or "world-renowned". In today's global society, almost anyprofesslonal will have contacts outside the U.S. and therefore be able to claim, incomplete honesty, that he or she is "internationally known".
We must therefore be able to evaluate credentials and know what they can and cannottell us. It is a foregone conclusion that any attempt to evaluate the credentials of thepseudoscientist will be loudly denounced as a personal attack. Evaluating credentials isperfectly fair; the purpose of credentials is to persuade the public that some person'sopinion is entitled to special consideration. If the credentials do not support the claimsthat are based on them we have every right to say so.
The first point to remember is that credentials are guides, not guarantees. Experts canbe wrong, amateurs can be right. Scientists with brilliant records can blunder dismally,people with a dismal track record can perform brilliantly on occasion. Somebody canperform adequately in one particular topic and be a complete crank on some other issue. Aperson can be competent at some times in his life but not others, and so on. The majorityof scientists can be wrong. Bear in mind, though, that most of the cases of science beingwrong and changing its mind involved the collapse of some plausible but untested basicassumption such as the earth being stationary or the continents immobile. There are nocases of science rejecting a once-accepted belief, adopting a new position after muchtravail and testing, and then reverting back to the old idea. The chance of a wrong ideasurviving the worst beating its opponents can give it and winning general acceptance isvery low. Not zero, but very, very close. The chance of a challenger like Velikovsky orHenry Morris being wrong is immeasurably greater.
The second point to remember is that credentials are not magical. No credentials,however good, will make a bad theory work. If your mechanic fails to repair your car, thenumber of recommendations he has hanging on his wall is irrelevant. As a matter of fact,if the mechanic botched the job badly enough we would start to wonder if he was really ascompetent as his credentials suggested. Most of the theories we have considered in thisbook have been so far outside the realm of respecta- bility that no scientistts testimony,no matter how renowned, would save them. Instead, we would have good cause to wonder aboutthe scientist's continued competence. New evidence would be another matter entirely, butcredentials will not improve bad evidence, either. Creationists are fond of citing thespeculations of Fred Hoyle as evidence that the conventional theory of evolution is wrong.Unfortunately, Hoyle's evidence is little more than a rehash of shopworn creationistarguments. Not even Hoyle's reputation can save them.
Creationist Henry Morris laments in the October, 1982 issue of Acts and Facts that,"In an astonishing admission of ignorance, one Episcopal bishop said that he did notknow of a single reputable Biblical scholar who believed in the recent, direct creation ofmankind!" Unfortunately for Morris, the bishop is right. The evidence for thecreationist view is so flimsy and that for the antiquity of man so strong that a Biblicalscholar who insists on recent creation is providing evidence of his own incompetence, notsupport for creationism. Like so many other things in pseudo science, credentials are usedin a one-sided manner. The credentials of a few supporters of a theory is evidence for thetheory, but the credentials of the people opposed to the theory never seem to count asevidence against it. Even a working scientist is not equally qualified in all areas. Theastute reader will perhaps have noted that most of my analysis has been directed at pseudoscience in the physical sciences. This is the realm where I am most qualified. In thetopics related to the life sciences or social sciences I rely more heavily on the opinionof other scientists who are considered most reliable by the scientific community. Thereare subjects I could explain briefly to non-scientists but not teach a college class on;Subjects I could teach undergraduates but not advanced students, and finally subjects Ican handle at advanced levels. A scientist's qualifications vary with time; a scientistcan acquire expertise in a new area or become out of touch with a topic he or she onceknew well.
One of the most misunderstood aspects of scientific reasoning is the role ofspeculation. Speculation means making plausible guesses before all the evidence is in. Wemight make an analogy with a group of people following a trail of marked trees in thewoods. Some people can see marks several trees ahead and these people tend to lead thegroup. It is permissible to leave the trail and try to find a short cut. A few people mayhave this talent; if they are successful they become leaders among the leaders, but ifthey fail, they simply lose time. If they fail repeatedly, they risk losing theircredibility entirely. All too often, speculations are used as evidence forpseudoscientific theories even after the speculations have long since been disproven. Inother cases, theories are introduced with a few perfunctory remarks about"speculation", but the ideas are treated thereafter as if they were solidlyproven.
Fred Hoyle, whose recent works on creation have so delighted creationists, is along-time scientific speculator. For many years, he championed the"steady-state" theory of the Universe. Now Hoyle is both a good astronomer and agood popular science writer. If he wrote a new book on astronomy I would recommend it tolaymen; is he formulated a theory on the formation of the Solar System I would give itserious consideration. But in my view, Hoyle is simply not a very good speculator; hisspeculative ideas have too often been wrong.
Sometimes unsound speculation creeps into even the most respectable publications. Idoubt if there is a scientist alive who has not encountered n article in some professionaljournal and wondered how in the world it ever got accepted. One of the worst examples Iknow of is an article by H.C. Dudley called The Ultimate Catastrophe in the November, 1975issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Dudley has some highly unorthodox ideas onnuclear physics, and his theories are commonly cited in creationist attacks on radiometricdating, though Dudley himself is not a creationist.
Dudley's theme is a concern that plagued scientists on the Manhattan Project: was itpossible that a nuclear explosion might cause atoms in the air to undergo fusion, possiblyturning the atmosphere into a giant thermonuclear bomb? The scientists agreed to halt workif the chance of such an event exceeded three in a million -- .000003. The odds turned outto be less and the rest is history. Dudley's theme is simple: if we set off enough nukes,we'll hit the three in a million jackpot someday! Unfortunately, Dudley completelymisunderstood the problem. How could one possibly estimate the chances of a phenomenonthat had never been observed? The scientists knew what the measured values for variousnuclear constants were, and what the uncertainties in the values were. They also knew whatthe values would have to be for fusion to occur. What were the odds that their acceptedvalues were so far off the mark that fusion might be possible after all? Put another way,if we had data of comparable quality, and we based a decision on the data (not necessarilysuch a momentous decision!) how often would we expect to be wrong? The answer, less thanthree times out of a million. The detonation of the first nuclear bomb settled the matter:it was not possible -- period. for a journal of the caliber of the Bulletin of the AtomicScientists to run such an article as serious commentary on nuclear safety is a lapse ofeditorial judgement as inexcusable as it is inexplicable.
What about people who have no formal training at all in science, or scientists who moveinto an area outside their original area of expertise -- say, a geologist who decides towrite a book on science and pseudoscience? It is perfectly possible to achieveprofessional competence without formal training. After all, every science was started bypeople who had no formal training in the subject! Probably no science has benefited morefrom skilled amateurs tin the sense that Olympic athletes are amateurs) than astronomy andspace science. Almost every major technological concept used in space exploration wasdeveloped by amateurs in the Interplanetary Societies of the U.S., England, Germany andthe U.S.S.R., mostly before World War II. Amateur astronomers, especially those linked toorganizations, do much of the routine surveillance work in astronomy: monitoring variablestars, searching for comets, and so on. Many of these people have equipment that wouldhave been the envy of any observatory in~the world a century ago.
Generally, amateurs excel at routine observations over large areas or extended periodsof time. Bird censuses are a good example. In the People's Republic of China there are alarge number of amateurs who collect data related to possible warning signs ofearthquakes. Amateurs are also good at detailed identification. It is not at all uncommonto find rockhounds who are better at identifying rocks and minerals than professionalgeologists. There should be more ways to put the talents of knowledgeable amateurs towork. I wonder how many of the people who read Pate might be far happier participating insome research project if only there were more ways of allowing amateurs to participate.
It is extremely unusual for amateur scientist to work at the very forefront ofresearch, principally because doing research at an advanced level is a full-time job thatrequires time for reading, reflection, and doing the research itself, as well as access toscientific journals, equipment, and the opinions of other scientists. It is considerablyeasier for a scientist to move across disciplines because a trained scientist will alreadyhave basic skills in mathematics, physics and chemistry, will know what standards areexpected, how to find information, and how to publish the results. For instance, AlfredWegener, the scientist who developed the theory of continental drift, was not a geologistbut a meteorologist. In all cases, the final decision of whether a person, trained oruntrained, is competent to speak on a scientific topic must be based on the quality of theperson's ideas.
Pseudoscientists often claim that, being outsiders, they are not hampered by thepreconceptions that keep specialists from seeing the forest for the trees. While anoutside perspective is sometimes just what is needed, more often than not the outsider ishampered by an inability to tell important details from unimportant ones. Catastrophistscertainly take the broad view! Unfortunately, Velikovsky chooses to focus on the wrongdetails; catastrophe myths as opposed to the chronological evidence that disproves hiscatastrophe theories.
Taking the broad view is not a license to omit, gloss over or ignore inconvenientdetails. The outsider actually is under a special obligation to be sure he knows whichdetails are relevant and which are not. The dividing line is not be- tween those who takethe broad view and those who specialize, but between those who pay attention to detail andthose who are superficial. It is perfectly legitimate to explore whether a catastrophemyth describes a real event, but Velikovsky is not entitled to ignore the details ofgeology just because he is dealing with mythology as well. It is impossible to be trulyinterdisciplinary without a good grasp of all the relevant fields one has to deal with.Being half-knowledgeable in two fields is not the same as being knowledgeable in one.
Distortion of credentials is part and parcel of pseudo- science. Most non-scientistshave little idea how the various branches of science interrelate, what constitutesscientific training, or what the limitations of a scientist's training are. As a result,many people accept almost anyone with any sort of technical background as a"scientist", and pseudo- scientists take full advantage of this weakness. Forthe rest of the chapter, let us examine some fields that are commonly but erroneouslythought to be populated by scientists. There are members of all these professions who are,or could be, scientists, but merely being in one of these fields, by itself, does not makea person a scientist. A competent professional in any field will recognize the limitationsof his or her
training and exercise restraint in claiming expertise outside his or her professionalcompetence. To begin with, engineers and physicians are not necessar- ily scientists. Manyare; they are involved in research, publish research findings, and are firet-ratescientists. Others are not scientists but could easily perform that role if the situationcalled for it. Both physicians and engineers receive a great deal of scientific training,but that training of itself does not make them scientists, and certainly does not qualifythem to pose as experts on subjects completely unrelated to engineering or medicine. Whencreationists pre- sent Henry or John Morris, both of whom are engineers, or A EWilder-Smith, who is a professor of pharmacology, as examples of "famousscientists" who oppose evolution, the claim is simply worthless.
Lawyers are not qualified to decide on scientific theories, even though they aretrained in the use of evidence. Begal evidence differs considerably from scientificevidence. Evi- dence that may not be admissible in court might very well be admissible inscience, and evidence that i9 admissible in court may be totally irrelevant to thescientific issues. When an ancient-appearing map, the so-called "Vinland map"turned up in the late 1960's, it seemed to offer striking new evidence that the Vikingsreached America before Columbus. One writer to a ma30r news magazine protested, sayingthat as a judge he considered the evidence for the authenticity of the map to beinadmissible in court. Interestingly, the judge had an Italian surname! Not only did HisHonor fail to realize there were many cases in which valid evidence i9 inadmissible and in valid evidence admissible, but he also forgot the ancient legal principle that ajudge who has a personal interest in a case should disqualify himself! By the way, theconsensus of most historians is that the Vinland map is probably a forgery. We need onlyrecall the case mentioned earlier in which a couple was sent to prison on the basis offaulty sta t tistical reasoning to see how different the legal concept of t evidence isfrom scientific evidence. Almost all scientists would agree that a sound education in thehumanities is essential for a scientist. Even at schools like M.I.T. or Caltech, studentsspend at least a quarter of their time studying the humanities. Very few students in thehumanities spend a quarter of their time studying science! ) Nevertheless, education inthe humanities does not qualify a person to nudge scientific theories. The most famouscase of humanists attempting to do so was the case of the humanists who supportedVelikovsky, but there have been many others. A list of literati who have backed cranktheories at some time or other reads like a Who's Who. John Dewey, Aldous Huxley, UptonSinclair, socialist leader Eugene Debs and George Bernard Shaw were all devotees of somemedical cult or other. Debs died as a result of his naturopathic "treatments".H~xley, who suffered from cataracts, became a champion of a crank optometrist named Bateswho claimed that eye exercises could cure almost any eye ailment. The episode endedpainfully when Buxley gave an address without his glasses, flawlessly at
) first. Later on he faltered, brought the paper up to within
a few inches of his eyes, and finally resorted to a magnify- ing glass. It was obviousto everyone that he had simply mem- orized his speech.
Believers in ESP have included Sinclair, Huxley, William James, H.G. Wells, and SirArthur Conan Doyle. Conan Doyle fell for perhaps the most pathetic cult of all. Hebelieved in the literal existence of fairies and accepted purported photographs of them.The photos have long been known to be of cardboard cutouts, and even the children'^ bookfrom which the fairies were copied has been located. Conan Doyle wrote a book, The Comingof the Fairies, in which he wrote, "that with fuller knowledge and with fresh meansof vision, these people are destined to become just as solid and real as theEskimos." Variants of this argument, which we might call the "boy, won't we looksilly" fallacy, are common in paranormal literature: when all is said and done, ESPwill be just as real as gravity or electricity, so believe now and avoid the rush. ConanDoyle also believed that Houdini could perform his escapes by dematerializing, and noamount of denial by Houdini could dissuade him
Arthur Koestler stands out as the literary figure who in recent years has been thechampion of unorthodox theories. Koestler is deservedly famous for his chilling novel ofthe Stalin era, Darkness at Noon, and for such works on the history of science as TheSleepwalkers and The Watershed. But he has also championed some highly unsound ideas. Forexample, he argued in The Gase of the Midwife Toad that biologist Paul Kammerer, who wasthe last major biologist to believe in the Lamarckian theory of evolution, was a man oftoo sincere a personality to have faked his specimens. Instead, Eoestler paints Kammereras the stock persecuted maverick, though the "persecution" that Koestler citesseems more like sound and routine scientific questioning than persecution. Koestler's mostcontroversial work resurrected one of Eammerer's other theories, the "Law ofSequence". In the Roots of Coincidence Koestler collected a large number ofcoincidences and concluded that there were presently unknown laws that caused similarphenomena to occur together far more often than one would expect by chance. Koestler, whodied in 1981, also was very impressed by the psychic talents of Uri Geller. It's a pitythat he never drew a connection between Geller, Kammerer, and his sympathy for both,because these connections are not a coincidence. There is a strong anti-establishmentcurrent in pseudo science, and Koestler, who detested dictatorships, may well have seenthe scientific Establishment in the same light.
Science teachers are not necessarily qualified to pass judgement on scientifictheories. Being able to describe established results in the classroom is not the samething as being able to determine whether a new idea is true or false. The Institute forCreation Research reported the dismissal of a South Dakota biology teacher for teachingcreationism, and noted that the teacher had been named South Dakota Outstanding BiologyTeacher of the Year. Unfortunately, even fine teachers are often ill-equipped to spotfallacious reasoning, and non-creationist teachers are woefully inadequate at spotting thefallacies of creationism. The sad reality is that training in educational techniquesrather than science is the criterion most used in hiring teachers, and often scienceteachers are recruited from other areas and used to fill slots for which they have littleor no training.
Science writers range from superb to totally inept. The best known popular sciencewriters, like Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Nigel Calder, and Carl Sagan are first-rate.The output of other writers is more variable. John Gribbin has written some rather goodmaterial, but was also a co-author of The Jupiter Effect. John G. Fuller wrote thecompetent book Fever!, about the discovery of a new disease, Lassa Fever, but he has alsowritten a whole raft of abysmal pot-boilers: Arigo: Surgeon of the Rusty Knife, TheInterrupted Journey, Incident at Exeter, and The Ghost of Flight 401. This matter would beunimportant if it were not for the fact that Fuller also wrote We Almost Lost Detroit,about a partial meltdown in the Fermi nuclear power plant in Michigan. How seriouslyshould a non-scientist take this book? Is it on the level of Fever! -- or The Ghost ofFlight 401? There is simply no way for a layman to be sure.
Detroit Edison, the utility that owns the Fermi reactor, went to the unusual length ofwriting a lengthy rebuttal called We Did NOT Almost Lose Detroit which summarized Fuller'sbook in such terms as these:
The unique aspect of the work is that considerable detail is provided of both a technical and documentary nature tending to add credibility to the views of the author as perceived by the average lay reader. In some quarters the book is being cited as some sort of technical authority. Herein lies the major danger of the book because the treatment of much of the source information is distorted such that the average reader without technical background could easily be misled to agree with the anti-nuclear stance of the author.
We Almost Lost Detroit is an interesting combination of historical fact, colorful adjectives, a few mistakes, and extremely carefully chosen excerpts cleverly combined to lead the reader inexorably to the conclusion that nuclear power is too dangerous to be handled by fallible man, and that the government knows this, but is unwilling to admit it. ... A mood of impending disaster is created by the simple use of well chosen modifiers and phrases sprinkled throughout the book.
The term "meltdown" conveys the image of the core of a reactor turning into awhite-hot glob of molten metal that melts its way into the earth, but the actual Fermimeltdown involved 40 pounds of fuel in one fuel assembly. Fuller leads the unwary readerto believe that a "Class I Emergency" that was announced was tantamount tonuclear holocaust when actually Class I was the least serious class of emergency, implyinga purely local problem that did not even extend throughout the plant. He builds up thetension when one of six control rods sticks, as if failure to insert that rod mightvaporize Detroit, when actually any one of the control rods alone would have stopped thechain reaction. He implies that a study called WASH-740 attempted to calculate theprobability of a reactor accident, and when the study failed to show reactors"safe" the Government suppressed it. Actually the WASH-740 study was a"worst case" study that ignored probability entirely and estimated what the veryworst outcome of a reactor accident, no matter how unlikely the circumstances, would be.Fuller states baldly that some types of breeder reactor can become "superpromptcritical", or, "this technical terminology translated into layman's language isan atomic bomb." Well, there is superprompt, and then there is superprompt!Superprompt in a reactor might be less than one second; nuclear bombs must initiate achain reaction and run it largely to completion in a few millionths of a second. In sum,all the evidence suggests that We Almost Lost Detroit belongs on the same levelas Arigo.
It is sobering to see how many leading critics of nuclear power were impressed byFuller's book and wrote glowing (figuratively!) reviews. Paul Ehrlich said the book had"the tension and immediacy of a fine novel". As we have seen, there is everyreason to believe the book was a novel! Dr. John Gofman noted, "This book points outsimply how the government has steadfastly endeavored, using tax dollars, to keep any butthe most laundered information from the public." The obvious implication is that anyinformation that disagrees with Gofman's position must have been "laundered".
Given Fuller's track record for accepting the most absurd nonsense uncritically, wecertainly cannot say, as Henry Kendall of the Union of Concerned Scientists did, that"Mr. Fuller's book is a careful and thoughtful contribution to the nuclear powercontroversy." All the evidence indicates that Fuller, not the Government,"laundered" the information, using his finely-honed skills in writing popularpseudoscience to turn out a book that was guaranteed to reinforce the beliefs ofanti-nuclear advocates. And here lies the most ominous development on the modernpseudoscience scene: the very real possibility that pseudoscience may insinuate itselfinto public decision-making, and be all but impossible to refute because any attempt to doso will be dismissed as a "cover-up". Weapons of this sort can be just as easilyused by the enemy as by one's own side. Any anti-nuclear advocate who is prone to excuseFuller should give careful thought to the ways their opponents could use pseudoscience.There are fundamentalist writers, for example, who argue that environmentalism is part ofa plot to cripple the U.S. energy industry and pave the way for the global economiccontrol of the Antichrist. I would sooner let a rattlesnake loose in my house than attemptto control the forces of irrationalism.
Science reporting in the media varies widely in quality. The traditional format of anewspaper article is the "inverted pyramid": essential facts in the leadparagraph, major details in the second paragraph, successively smaller details in laterparagraphs. This format has the virtue that a reader in a hurry can read only part of thearticle, and that an editor cramped for space can cut paragraphs. Some stories, like theeruption of Mount Saint Helens, fit this format ideally. Generally, once reporters gottheir bearings, the media coverage of the eruption was excellent. Space exploration isanother topic the media generally do well.
When the story does not fit the inverted pyramid format, the results are not sofortunate. For example, an Associated Press story in 1980 was headlined "ScientistsHalve age of Universe." and begins, "Three astronomers say the discovery of amistake in the way distances in space are measured means that the Universe is only abouthalf as old and half as big as they previously thought."
This is a good example of how not to cover a science story. The headline itselfsuggests that scientists, by fiat, changed the age of the Universe: "Move we cut theage of the Universe in half ... Second ... All in favor? ... Opposed? ... Abstentions? ...Motion carries. Now let's move on to deciding how many paper clips to buy." The storyactually deals with a quantity called the Hubble Constant. The farther away a galaxy is,the faster it is receding from us. Until 1980, there was no way to tell if our own Galaxywas moving in any particular direction, and if so, how fast. If we ourselves are moving,obviously our estimate of how fast other galaxies are moving will be affected. There wasnot, as the story implies, a "mistake", but an unknown piece of information. In1980, a way was found to get the needed information and the effect was to change ourestimate of the Hubble Constant (Creationists, of course, were elated, as if cutting theestimated age of the Universe from 20 billion to 10 billion years somehow supported thenotion that the actual age was only 10,000 years!)
This is a story the non-scientist cannot possibly comprehend without massive backgroundinformation; incomplete information in this case is the same as no information, and theonly cure is for editors to be willing to scrap the inverted pyramid format on occasion.When the same story ran in Sky and Telescope, the "lead" item, the changein the Hubble Constant, did not appear until after a full page of background information!A story of this nature is valueless unless the reader understands it completely. If theeditor cannot run the full story, or the reader read the entire story, it is better toomit it entirely.
Pseudoscience often appears in the media, often cloaked in a Constitutional mantle.Scientists who have protested to the TV networks about ridiculous"documentaries" have been told in no uncertain terms that the networks wouldshow whatever they thought the public wanted to see. Martin Gardner was in the finalstages of negotiating a book contract when the publisher brought out a crank medical work.Gardner cancelled his contract. The publishers were genuinely amazed that anyone would seea moral issue involved. After all, doesn't the Constitution guarantee Freedom of thePress?
In the wake of the Jupiter Effect, Sky and Telescope (July, 1982) printed ablistering critique of a news series that was run by at least 100 stations, going so faras to urge readers to write letters of protest to the station that produced the series andthe news service that distributed it. In the November, 1982 issue, the reporter whonarrated the series replied:
You dismiss out of hand positions of experts who assisted me simply because you don'tagree with their stance. Shame on you. In a society in which the free exchange of ideas isso integral a part, your intolerance is inexcusable ... I stand by every word in all threesegments of "The Jupiter Effect" and regret only that the effort was lost onviewers as narrow and pedestrian as yourselves. I am disappointed, appalled, and disgustedat the gross intolerance of nontraditional ideas by thinkers who allegedly are in thevanguard of scientific thought.
The editors responded: "Like poker players with royal flushes, Gary Mechler(public relations officer for Kitt Peak National Observatory) and I stand pat on allpoints of substance . . . Readers can judge the issues for themselves.
There is a weird idea going around that criticism is censorship and that theConstitution somehow guarantees immunity from criticism. The First Amendment gives thereporter, Howard Joffe, every right to produce his series. It just as forcefully gives Skyand Telescope the right to say the series is balderdash. The principal reason forvaluing the "free exchange of ideas" is so that good ideas may flourish and badideas be exposed so that they die out. A "free exchange" that does not allow usto call worthless concepts worthless is not a "free exchange". In recent years anumber of slick, lavishly produced science and science-fiction magazines have come out.Some, like Discover and Science 83, are generally reliable. Others, like Omniand Science Digest, mix reliable science with some fairly awful speculation. Recallthat Science Digest published Thomas van Blanderen's Exploding Planets(Chapter 3) and Larry Arnold's Human Fireballs (Chapter 9). The unwaxy reader mightassume that these articles are on the same level as the more reputable articles by seriousresearchers. Mixing good and bad science generally has only the effect of givingcredibility to the bad science. Science Fiction writers as a general rule, are notqualified to speak out on scientific issues, apart from those who have actually worked asresearch scientists themselves. Often a science fiction writer will not wrlte aboutscience as it is, but as it might be in the future. In other cases the story has ascientific setting but the story itself involves the actions of the characters. The moviesE.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind are science fiction in the senseof having a scientific setting, but their actual scientific content is very small. Ascience fiction writer must know enough science to keep from writing absurdities, but neednot have a very great level of expertise. (Special effects are another matter!)
It is probably true that quite a few people get their scientific understanding fromscience fiction. Reading any sort of fiction requires what has been called "a willingsuspension of disbelief". Author and reader make an informal contract; the authorwill do his best to tell a plausible story and the reader will agree not to probe too hardfor accuracy. If the writer violates the contract, he loses a reader. In most novels, theonly suspension of disbelief required is a willingness to believe, for the duration of thestory, that the characters exist; that there really is a Captain Ahab, a ship called thePequod, and a great white whale, for example .
In science fiction, we are asked not only to believe that the characters exist, butoften that the laws of nature are different. A viewer of Star Wars must notonly accept the existence of Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, but also the ability totravel faster than light. If Luke Skywalker had
to travel across the galaxy at sub-light speeds, Darth Vader would be dead and theEmpire long since fallen by the time he got where he was going! Many people have gottenthe idea through science fiction that it is possible to travel faster than light, travelthrough time, devise anti-gravity devices and force fields of all kinds, and thatpsychokinesis, clairvoyance and other psychic phenomena are well established. In reality,there is no scientific basis at all for any of these concepts; they are literaryconventions whose sole purpose is to make the story more interesting. It's easy to seethat many readers of science fiction are not aware of the fine print in the contracts theymake with authors. It's also easy to see that a person can be a staunch believer in somevarieties of pseudoscience and still be a successful science-fiction author.
Science fiction stories where the hero triumphs over a pig-headed establishment, wherethere are remarks by future scientists wondering how the Twentieth Century could have beenso obtuse as not to accept psychic research, and the like are common enough to suggestthat something more is involved than mere literary device. It is more than likely thatsome authors use science fiction as a vehicle for denouncing science and extolling thevirtues of unorthodox theories.
One of the more obvious examples of this use of science fiction is D. L. Hughes' shortstory Local Effect, published in Analog ( April , 1968). The plot lineinvolves some aliens who travel to earth to deactivate the space drive of a derelict ship,lest it provide a signal for hyperspace marauders known as Starkbeasts. The plot, however,turns out to have nothing whatever to do with most of the story! Once the aliens are underway, the whole second half of the story is a running dialog on terrestrial science. Itseems that the space drive distorts space and creates the effects that we call relativity.The aliens recapitulate the history of the Michelson-Morley Experiment (Chapter 8) andeven comment on the failure of a scientist named D.C. Miller to replicate the experiment.(In all probability, Miller was simply another victim of the threshold effect.) The alienscomment that scientists "must, for their own peace of mind, feel that conditions ontheir planet are representative of the rest of the universe." Earth scientists"were not really pragmatists, or instrumentalists; many of them despise the idea thatthe function of theories is to enable one to manipulate one's environment in some way.They, therefore, had no objection to a theory... which would bar them from reaching thestars. We would inevitably reject such a theory because it had no pragmatic value..."
There's an almost Marxist tone in this insistence on "pragmatism". Theoverall message is that if a theory has un-palatable implications we should scrap it infavor of one that does tell us what we'd like to hear. The aliens conclude by noting thatthere are two kinds of scientific activity: creative and institutional, and that"Institutional science is hostile to creative science."
Pretty clearly, the plot line in this story is secondary and the primary purpose of thestory is to deliver a lengthy sermon on the obtuseness of the scientific establishment.The riddle is how a story like this could slip into a major science fiction magazine like Analog.The riddle becomes a lot clearer if we recall that John C. Campbell, whom we met inChapter 5, was then editor of Analog. In all likelihood, Campbell approved thisclunker not because of the story but because he sympathized with its resentment of thescientific establishment.
Astronauts and Military leaders, finally, are not necessarily scientists.Jim Irwin of Apollo 15 and Charles Duke of Apollo 16 have both spoken out on behalf ofcreationist topics, but going to the Moon does not make a person an expert on evolution,nor does it make Edgar Mitchell of Apollo 14 an expert on the paranormal. A letter to mylocal paper extolling the virtues of scientific creationism cited the qualifications ofDr. Walter Brown, director of the Institute for Creation Research Midwest Center:"Dr. Brown's impressive academic background includes graduation from West Point and aPh. D. from Massachusetts institute of Technology. His most recent assignment was Chief ofScience and Technology Studies at the Air War College. Eight years ago Dr. Brown was athorough evolutionist. Today he is a zealous, qualified, well-informed creationist".Ignoring for the moment whether that last sentence is a contradiction in terms, is thereanything in Brown=s admittedly impressivecredentials that suggests he is an expert on evolution and earth history, any more than myPh. D. in geology suggests that I am qualified to command a fighter wing?
It is easy to find past examples of military men who have fallen for pseudoscience.There was Captain John Symmes, retired from the U.S. Army, who championed a hollow-earththeory in n the early 19th century. There was Major General Alfred Wilkes Drayson,professor at the British Royal Military Academy, who propounded a theory that the ice ageswere caused by tilting of the earth's axis. And there was Donald Keyhoe, former Marinepilot and one of the first major UFO writers. And let's not forget the attempt to usedowsing rods to locate Viet Cong tunnels in Vietnam. There are, surprisingly, few studiesof the psychology of incompetence, and one major study is Norman Dixonts 9n The Psvehologyof M ~ IncomPetence. I stress, as did Sixon, that these remarks are "not an attackupon the armed forces nor upon the vast majority of senior military commanders, who, intime of war, succeed in tasks which would make the running n of a large commercialenterprise seem childts play by compari son." The traits Dixon finds in the militarybungler have 80 many parallels among pseudoscientists that they probably will do for apsychological profile of the incompetent in any field. Some of the traits Dixon finds are:"A fundamental conser vatism and clinging to outworn tradition, an inability to profit from past experience (owing in part to a refusal to admit
past mistakes) ... A tendency to reject or ignore information which is unpalatable ofwhich conflicts with preconceptions ... Obstinate persistence in a given task despitestrong contrary evidence ... Tendency to underestimate the enemy and overes timate one'sown capabilities ... Failure to engage in adequate reconnaissance ... Undue readiness tofind scapegoats for fail ure ... Preference for frontal assaults."
Ehe parallels with the personality of the pseudoscientist )are uncnnny. There is thereactionary attitude, the tendency to deny contrary evidence, the egoism and tendency toput the blame on others (the scientific establishment), the total lack of originalthinking, and the failure to check things out. Last but not least among the traits Dixonlists is one that scarecely needs comment: "A belief in mystical forces".Perhaps the best way to examine the abuse of scientific 0 credentials is to reverse theprocess. I have a Ph.D. in V geology and solid training in the physical sciences ingeneral. If I am not qualified to write literary criticism, how are l literary criticslike Horace Kallen qualified to proclaim Veli kovsky a genius? If I am not automaticallyqualified to build a bridge, how is engineer Henry Morris qualified to pass for )an experton evolution? If I cannot automatically fly an Apollo spacecraft, what qualifies Jim Irwinto lead expeditions in search of Noah's Ark? There are several principles to keep in mindin evaluating credentials. First, the credentials of the people most closely concernedwith the theory count the most. Second, if the cre dentials of someone who supports anunorthodox theory count for the theory, the credentials of the people who oppose thetheory count just as heavily against it. Third, nobody is immune to pseudoscience; eventhe best mind can fall for a bad idea. Fourth, there is no idea on this earth that is socrazy it can't find a few expferts to support it. Finally, cre dentials are only a guide.No credentials can make a bad idea good. The essential issue is always: Does the theorywork?
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