Michael Crichton debunks the "consensus science" of Dr. Carl Sagan

www.crichton-official.com ^ | January 17, 2003 | Michael Crichton

[Moonman62]

I liked Carl Sagan. He began by making science elegant and beautiful to the common folk. He went too far when he went political and started to believe his own press releases.

Sagan was awsome in his early career. Sadly, toward the end, he was pathetic -- more interested in smoking pot and impressing his ultra liberal third wife, than getting it right.

[Zuben Elgenubi]

This is not the way science is done, it is the way products are sold."

I'm surprised he didn't include the tort lawyers who benefit from the junk science.

[elbucko]

But he obviously used his position to perpetrate fraud and that is unacceptable. I wish he were here to debate Crichton.

Yes so do I. "Cosmos" was an opus of the beauty of science. Sagan should have left it at that or stayed on the subject of pure science. He was an atheist, but I like to think that God whispered to him with science. I hope Carl was pleasantly surprised after his death and he got to meet the Creator of the Universe.

[Moonman62]

I'm relieved to see Feynman made it through the speech unscathed.

[Faraday]

Excellent, excellent article. This should be required reading in the high school science curriculum.

One nit I will pick has to do with the Drake equation, and such like. While it is not "scientific," the interplay of theory and experiment in science is not strictly a "scientific" exercisize. Two brief examples. The breakthrough in the discovery of the structure of benzene was made as the result of a dream involving a snake eating its own tail. Did the brain synthesize a lot of experimental data, put it in a blender with inate fear and sexual components, and spit out the resultant dream? Who can say? Nevertheless, the basic intuition proved correct--that benzene is a "flat" molecule with a high degree of symmetry. Another example of "unscientific" science would be the development of quark theory as simply an accounting method for quantum phenomena. It was ultimately recognized to have a physical reality.

This kind of creative freedom is important to the scientific process. Science advances in fits and starts by various methods. The danger of political and ideological contamination of the scientific enterprise is certainly as great as Crighton says, maybe more so.

One final point regarding "consensus science." To some extent this arises because of the need for science to interact with society, especially the "justice" system, in ways which have great financial and social effect. For example, silicone breast implants were driven from the market, and companies destroyed, over a lot of bad science. Part of the problem was that liablility attorneys could find many willing "scientists" that would make unsubstantiated claims regarding the science of these devices. Others strenuously disagreed. The courts said that they had to have some standard to descriminate between competing "expert testimony." Consensus is the criterion they have established. Not ideal, but understandable as a legal principle. But, as Crighton points out, consensus has no standing as to the validity of scientific truth.

[bootless]

Thank you!

[bootless]

That's the one. He gave that speech last year, I believe. Maybe they're just getting around to posting it.

I wish I had seen it ... AND the expressions of the attendees!

[Eala]

Excellent read, thanks!!!

Of course, any scientist can be charged as Galileo was charged. I just never thought I'd see the Scientific American in the role of mother church.

Having observed the decline of "Scientific" American since the 60s, I am not at all surprised.

[Williams]

Also, unless I'm mistaken, the discovery of lots of planets around "nearby" stars has significantly altered the number that would represent the percent of stars with planets.

[seowulf]

They would need to study politicians first. Try to determine what turns 98% of them into worthless dregs who feed off of their constituents instead of serve them as they are supposed to.

I already know the answer to that. Politicians suffer from the fault of being human (just like scientists, one of which I happen to be). It is the basest human nature to want to take the easy path, to get something for nothing, or to take what doesn't belong to them. Everyone also likes to be right (or at least to make most people agree that they are right) and to go along to get along.

The only way to counter this nature is by having a code of moral behavior, a set of rules that one lives by and everyone around you expects to be followed with certain consequences for when they are not followed. For politicians this might be a religious moral code (the Ten Commandments might be a good start) and for scientists it is the Scientific Method. Neither of these moral codes are emphasized enough today.

[dennisw]

Not only is Crichton a great writer, he also pretty much nails environmentalism. Great speech........

I read all his books when they come out. The last one about rouge nano-bots was very good. Here's one I must re-read.


http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0060509058/102-9379793-5270529?v=glance

[attiladhun2]

Carl Sagan had political agendas of his own. I believe he was pretty far to left politically. He opposed the Gulf War and so came up with this bullcrap about the Kuwaiti oil fires. Anyone with half a brain knows that heavy concentrations of particulates in the air will soon draw condensation and fall to the gorund as rain or snow.

[Constantine XIII]

Yeah, SA has mutated into a monthly package of political screeds with a little science thrown in for flavor. I switched to Physics Today and Astronomy to get my science fix. Good stuff!

[gcruse]

Even to a child, the contrast was clear between the world of politics-a world of hate and danger, of irrational beliefs and fears, of mass manipulation and disgraceful blots on human history.

This 'child' didn't have much of a childhood, did he? Not that I believe  for a minute he believed all of that at such a tender age.

Faith is defined as the firm belief in something for which there is no proof.

I believe I will be alive tomorrow.  I have faith in that. 
That does not make it a religion.

SETI is a religion.

That does not follow.  Faith does not equal religion.
The rest of the article/speech is great.  Injecting religion
into the debate, though, just sounds like ranting.

[NewRomeTacitus]

Crichton, like many of us, evolved from the 60's era of fads and knee-jerk liberalism to today's thoughtful conservative who questions not just authority but everything else included. For his latest book "Prey" he studied nanotechnologies, predator-prey behavior studies, distributed intelligence of hives and (as usual) our government's interests in these fields. That he is slammed for deviating from his usual path of science-thriller ("Disclosure") is unfair, because it was a study of how people can use indoctrinated assumptions as weapons when a society never questions those assumptions. Any good father trying to gain custody of his children from a bad mother in a U.S. court would tell you.
Mr.Sagan, on the other hand, became too famous too quickly to withstand the BS that accompanies that phenomenon.
Fame and money have been the downfall of too many talented souls who one would hope to have known otherwise.

RadioAstronomer, people are wary of the SETI project because of the Twighlight Zone episode "To Serve Man".

[Williams]

I enjoyed the Crichton article, but his reasoning becomes rather circular. He wants to reduce unsubstantiated scientific "speculation," but he seems to miss his own point that many of the out of step theories of the past were dismissed as just that and later proved to be true. He thinks this can be avoided with a purely objective approach but he then fails to see his own observation that science has always been infected with "politics." The "consensus" would use his double blind studies approach to stifle new discoveries.

And on the Drake equation, it just recognized what variables would go into calculating current extraterrestrial civilizations, and then plugged in some conservative numbers to observe that in a vast universe even a tiny percentage of star systems with civilizations would amount to a lot. But the equation also illustrates (as I believe Carl Sagan often observed - he was NOT a fan of UFO's, the likelihood of contacting aliens, or even of manned space exploration) that even with a lot of civilizations spread around, the universe would remain a pretty lonely place because of its vastness across time and space. In other words, even if we are not alone, we may never find any neighbors.

I think Crichton went too far because what he really wanted to do was point out that global warming is unsubstantiated and is similar to some earlier "popular" assumptions. But is it really worthwhile to insist that science can't predict anything 100 years in advance, and that we shouldn't try? That seems rather short sighted and fatalistic.

[RadioAstronomer]

RadioAstronomer, people are wary of the SETI project because of the Twighlight Zone episode "To Serve Man".

I almost missed this. SETI is a receive only endeavor.

[RadioAstronomer]

as I believe Carl Sagan often observed - he was NOT a fan of UFO's, the likelihood of contacting aliens

Agreed. Mention SETI and invariably the topic of UFOs crops up. Sigh.

[paulklenk]

Great article, and well worth the read.

[Allan]

Bump