John Grant - Corrupted Science: Fraud, Ideology and Politics in Science

C ORRUPTED S CIENCE

J OHN G RANT

C ORRUPTED S CIENCE

J OHN G RANT

D EDICATION

For Keith Barnett (19382006), the best big bro any little bro could have hoped for. Oh, Keith, that you might have lived to see this book complete... and to find my errors in it.

Acknowledgements

First of all, again The Spammers: Randy M. Dannenfelser, Bob Eggleton, Gregory Frost, Neil Greenberg, Jael, Stuart Jaffe, Karl Kofoed, Todd Lockwood, Aaron McLellan, Lynn Perkins, Ray Ridenour, Tim Sullivan and Greg Uchrin; between them they sent me more material than I could possibly hope to use. Ian Johnson likewise sent me items of note; thanks, ol buddy. John Dahlgren graciously permitted me a months-long extension on another deadline so I could finish this. Cameron Brown had faith in the project and commissioned the book, while Malcolm Couch created, yet again, an excellent design; the level of my gratitude to both is embarrassing. Lynn Perkins, out of the goodness of her heart, gave me the astonishingly helpful present of a subscription to New Scientist. Joyce Barnett gave me an extremely valuable volume from the collection of her late husband, my brother Keith; evengreater was the gift thereby of his involvement with this book. Pamela D. Scoville monitored various newspapers and online sources for new data I might have missed, but far more significantly continued living with the general intolerability of the husband who was writing this book: Je tadore, ma cherie.

A few paragraphs of this book first appeared in different form in my A Directory of Discarded Ideas (1981) and Discarded Science (2006).

C ORRUPTED S CIENCE

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ISBN 13: 9781904332732

Cover Design: Stefan Nekuda

Content Design: Malcolm Couch

Printed in Malaysia by Imago Publishing

T here is, it appears, a conspiracy of scientists afoot. Their purpose is to break down religion, propagate immorality, and so reduce mankind to the level of the brutes. They are the sworn and sinister agents of Beelzebub, who yearns to conquer the world, and has his eye especially upon Tennessee.

H.L. Mencken reporting on the Scopes Trial, Baltimore Evening Sun, July 11, 1925

T hey think that differential equations are not reality. Hearing some colleagues speak, its as though theoretical physics was just playing house with plastic building blocks. This absurd idea has gained currency, and now people seem to feel that theoretical physicists are little more than dreamers locked away in ivory towers. They think our games, our little houses, bear no relation to our everyday worries, their interests, their problems, or their welfare. But Im going to tell you something, and I want you to take it as a ground rule for this course. From now on I will be filling this board with equations.... And when Im done, I want you to do the following: look at those numbers, all those little numbers and Greek letters on the board, and repeat to yourselves, This is reality, repeat it over and over...

Jos Carlos Somosa (trans Lisa Dillman), Zig Zag, 2007

INTRODUCTION

T HE F ALSIFICATION OF S CIENCE

Science is a set of rules that keep the scientists from lying to each other.

Kenneth S. Norris, cited in False Prophets (1988) by Alexander Kohn

I T SEEMS HARDWIRED into the human brain that people in general believe what theyre told by other people. One can understand why this should be so: verbal communication was presumably fostered initially as a means of exchanging vital information among tribal members (the foods over there) and to members of other tribes (if you try to take my food Ill kill you). Speech would have little survival value for the tribe and indeed little purpose unless the information it contained were true. We can guess that the invention of the lie followed some little while after speech was in widespread use and a devastating invention it must have been. Even today we naturally tend to believe what were told scepticism is an educated response, not an instinctive one, as demonstrated by the ease with which parents can fool small children with tall tales. Similarly, most of us tell the truth almost all of the time.

For the most part its essential for the smooth functioning of society that this twinning of truth-telling and belief continue. Consider the simple social interaction in which you ask a passing stranger for directions. Society would soon crumble if strangers habitually gave false directions, or if tourists habitually disbelieved the directions given to them by strangers. Of course, sometimes strangers do quite deliberately give false directions, either because they dont know the answer and have an infantile dislike for displaying ignorance or in the misguided belief that its funny. (Sometimes, likewise, travellers disbelieve the genuine directions theyve been given because they dont make sense.)

The deliberate giving of false directions might be regarded as a small-scale demonstration of the inherent flaw in our natural assumption of truth-telling/belief. If one party, almost always the teller, disobeys the tacit rules of the game, the other is exceedingly vulnerable. Hence the effectiveness of false propaganda, as exemplified today by broadcasters such as Rush Limbaugh (see

The same vulnerability in our social structure is of course exploited alike by the hoaxer, the forger, the con artist, the trickster, the prankster, the dissembling politician, the religious fundamentalist (and indeed the self-styled prophet), the television evangelist, the propagandist, and the straightforward liar. Often the efforts of these assorted crooks are to harmless and/or humorous effect but sometimes, as per the Protocols, they have enormously damaging consequences; various political and media denials concerning imminent catastrophic climate change, for example, may spell the collapse of human civilization.

Most hoaxes and frauds are outwith the purview of this book, in which were concerned only with the sciences, but that still leaves us plenty to play with. Well start with scientists themselves scientists who for one reason or another have felt driven to fake things. In the second half of the book well look at those whove corrupted science not from within but from the outside.