CCNet EXTRA: MICHAEL CRICHTON ON THE CRISIS OF SCIENCE
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Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do
with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science,
on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to
be right, which means that he or she has results that are
verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus
is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results.
The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because
they broke with the consensus.
There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus,
it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period.
--Michael Crichton, The Caltech Michelin Lecture, 17 January 2003
ALIENS CAUSE GLOBAL WARMING
A lecture by Michael Crichton
http://www.crichton-official.com/speeches/speeches_quote04.html
Caltech Michelin Lecture, 17 January 2003
ALIENS CAUSE GLOBAL WARMING
My topic today sounds humorous but unfortunately I am serious. I am going to
argue that extraterrestrials lie behind global warming. Or to speak more
precisely, I will argue that a belief in extraterrestrials has paved the way, in
a progression of steps, to a belief in global warming. Charting this progression
of belief will be my task today.
Let me say at once that I have no desire to discourage anyone from believing in
either extraterrestrials or global warming. That would be quite impossible to
do. Rather, I want to discuss the history of several widely-publicized beliefs
and to point to what I consider an emerging crisis in the whole enterprise of
science-namely the increasingly uneasy relationship between hard science and
public policy.
I have a special interest in this because of my own upbringing. I was born in
the midst of World War II, and passed my formative years at the height of the
Cold War. In school drills, I dutifully crawled under my desk in preparation for
a nuclear attack.
It was a time of widespread fear and uncertainty, but even as a child I believed
that science represented the best and greatest hope for mankind. 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. In contrast, science held different values-international
in scope, forging friendships and working relationships across national
boundaries and political systems, encouraging a dispassionate habit of thought,
and ultimately leading to fresh knowledge and technology that would benefit all
mankind. The world might not be avery good place, but science would make it
better. And it did. In my lifetime, science has largely fulfilled its promise.
Science has been the great intellectual adventure of our age, and a great hope
for our troubled and restless world.
But I did not expect science merely to extend lifespan, feed the hungry, cure
disease, and shrink the world with jets and cell phones. I also expected science
to banish the evils of human thought---prejudice and superstition, irrational
beliefs and false fears. I expected science to be, in Carl Sagan's memorable
phrase, "a candle in a demon haunted world." And here, I am not so pleased with
the impact of science. Rather than serving as a cleansing force, science has in
some instances been seduced by the more ancient lures of politics and publicity.
Some of the demons that haunt our world in recent years are invented by
scientists. The world has not benefited from permitting these demons to escape
free.
But let's look at how it came to pass.
Cast your minds back to 1960. John F. Kennedy is president, commercial jet
airplanes are just appearing, the biggest university mainframes have 12K of
memory. And in Green Bank, West Virginia at the new National Radio Astronomy
Observatory, a young astrophysicist named Frank Drake runs a two week project
called Ozma, to search for extraterrestrial signals. A signal is received, to
great excitement. It turns out to be false, but the excitement remains. In 1960,
Drake organizes the first SETI conference, and came up with the now-famous Drake
equation:
N=N*fp ne fl fi fc fL
Where N is the number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy; fp is the fraction with
planets; ne is the number of planets per star capable of supporting life; fl is
the fraction of planets where life evolves; fi is the fraction where intelligent
life evolves; and fc is the fraction that communicates; and fL is the fraction
of the planet's life during which the communicating civilizations live.
This serious-looking equation gave SETI an serious footing as a legitimate
intellectual inquiry. The problem, of course, is that none of the terms can be
known, and most cannot even be estimated. The only way to work the equation is
to fill in with guesses. And guesses-just so we're clear-are merely expressions
of prejudice. Nor can there be "informed guesses." If you need to state how many
planets with life choose to communicate, there is simply no way to make an
informed guess. It's simply prejudice.
As a result, the Drake equation can have any value from "billions and billions"
to zero. An expression that can mean anything means nothing. Speaking precisely,
the Drake equation is literally meaningless, and has nothing to do with science.
I take the hard view that science involves the creation of testable hypotheses.
The Drake equation cannot be tested and therefore SETI is not science. SETI is
unquestionably a religion. Faith is defined as the firm belief in something for
which there is no proof. The belief that the Koran is the word of God is a
matter of faith. The belief that God created the universe in seven days is a
matter of faith. The belief that there are other life forms in the universe is a
matter of faith. There is not a single shred of evidence for any other life
forms, and in forty years of searching, none has been discovered. There is
absolutely no evidentiary reason to maintain this belief. SETI is a religion.
One way to chart the cooling of enthusiasm is to review popular works on the
subject. In 1964, at the height of SETI enthusiasm, Walter Sullivan of the NY
Times wrote an exciting book about life in the universe entitled WE ARE NOT
ALONE. By 1995, when Paul Davis wrote a book on the same subject, he titled it
ARE WE ALONE? (Since 1981, there have in fact been four books titled ARE WE
ALONE.) More recently we have seen the rise of the so-called "Rare Earth" theory
which suggests that we may, in fact, be all alone. Again, there is no evidence
either way.
Back in the sixties, SETI had its critics, although not among astrophysicists
and astronomers. The biologists and paleontologists were harshest. George
Gaylord Simpson of Harvard sneered that SETI was a "study without a subject,"
and it remains so to the present day.
But scientists in general have been indulgent toward SETI, viewing it either
with bemused tolerance, or with indifference. After all, what's the big deal?
It's kind of fun. If people want to look, let them. Only a curmudgeon would
speak harshly of SETI. It wasn't worth the bother.
And of course it is true that untestable theories may have heuristic value. Of
course extraterrestrials are a good way to teach science to kids. But that does
not relieve us of the obligation to see the Drake equation clearly for what it
is-pure speculation in quasi-scientific trappings.
The fact that the Drake equation was not greeted with screams of outrage-similar
to the screams of outrage that greet each Creationist new claim, for
example-meant that now there was a crack in the door, a loosening of the
definition of what constituted legitimate scientific procedure. And soon enough,
pernicious garbage began to squeeze through the cracks.
Now let's jump ahead a decade to the 1970s, and Nuclear Winter.
In 1975, the National Academy of Sciences reported on "Long-Term Worldwide
Effects of Multiple Nuclear Weapons Detonations" but the report estimated the
effect of dust from nuclear blasts to be relatively minor. In 1979, the Office
of Technology Assessment issued a report on "The Effects of Nuclear War" and
stated that nuclear war could perhaps produce irreversible adverse consequences
on the environment. However, because the scientific processes involved were
poorly understood, the report stated it was not possible to estimate the
probable magnitude of such damage.
Three years later, in 1982, the Swedish Academy of Sciences commissioned a
report entitled "The Atmosphere after a Nuclear War: Twilight at Noon," which
attempted to quantify the effect of smoke from burning forests and cities. The
authors speculated that there would be so much smoke that a large cloud over the
northern hemisphere would reduce incoming sunlight below the level required for
photosynthesis, and that this would last for weeks or even longer.
The following year, five scientists including Richard Turco and Carl Sagan
published a paper in Science called "Nuclear Winter: Global Consequences of
Multiple Nuclear Explosions." This was the so-called TTAPS report, which
attempted to quantify more rigorously the atmospheric effects, with the added
credibility to be gained from an actual computer model of climate.
At the heart of the TTAPS undertaking was another equation, never specifically
expressed, but one that could be paraphrased as follows:
Ds = Wn Ws Wh Tf Tb Pt Pr Pe... etc
(The amount of tropospheric dust=# warheads x size warheads x warhead detonation
height x flammability of targets x Target burn duration x Particles entering the
Troposphere x Particle reflectivity x Particle endurance...and so on.)
The similarity to the Drake equation is striking. As with the Drake equation,
none of the variables can be determined. None at all. The TTAPS study addressed
this problem in part by mapping out different wartime scenarios and assigning
numbers to some of the variables, but even so, the remaining variables were-and
are-simply unknowable. Nobody knows how much smoke will be generated when cities
burn, creating particles of what kind, and for how long. No one knows the effect
of local weather conditions on the amount of particles that will be injected
into the troposphere. No one knows how long the particles will remain in the
troposphere. And so on.
And remember, this is only four years after the OTA study concluded that the
underlying scientific processes were so poorly known that no estimates could be
reliably made. Nevertheless, the TTAPS study not only made those estimates, but
concluded they were catastrophic.
According to Sagan and his coworkers, even a limited 5,000 megaton nuclear
exchange would cause a global temperature drop of more than 35 degrees
Centigrade, and this change would last for three months. The greatest volcanic
eruptions that we know of changed world temperatures somewhere between .5 and 2
degrees Centigrade. Ice ages changed global temperatures by 10 degrees. Here we
have an estimated change three times greater than any ice age. One might expect
it to be the subject of some dispute.
But Sagan and his coworkers were prepared, for nuclear winter was from the
outset the subject of a well-orchestrated media campaign. The first announcement
of nuclear winter appeared in an article by Sagan in the Sunday supplement,
Parade. The very next day, a highly-publicized, high-profile conference on the
long-term consequences of nuclear war was held in Washington, chaired by Carl
Sagan and Paul Ehrlich, the most famous and media-savvy scientists of their
generation. Sagan appeared on the Johnny Carson show 40 times. Ehrlich was on 25
times. Following the conference, there were press conferences, meetings with
congressmen, and so on. The formal papers in Science came months later.
This is not the way science is done, it is the way products are sold.
The real nature of the conference is indicated by these artists' renderings of
the the effect of nuclear winter.
I cannot help but quote the caption for figure 5: "Shown here is a tranquil
scene in the north woods. A beaver has just completed its dam, two black bears
forage for food, a swallow-tailed butterfly flutters in the foreground, a loon
swims quietly by, and a kingfisher searches for a tasty fish." Hard science if
ever there was.
At the conference in Washington, during the question period, Ehrlich was
reminded that after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, scientists were quoted as saying
nothing would grow there for 75 years, but in fact melons were growing the next
year. So, he was asked, how accurate were these findings now?
Ehrlich answered by saying "I think they are extremely robust. Scientists may
have made statements like that, although I cannot imagine what their basis would
have been, even with the state of science at that time, but scientists are
always making absurd statements, individually, in various places. What we are
doing here, however, is presenting a consensus of a very large group of
scientists..."
I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of
what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an
extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks.
Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it
is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled.
Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other,
reach for your wallet, because you're being had.
Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus.
Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only
one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results
that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is
irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in
history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.
There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't
science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period.
In addition, let me remind you that the track record of the consensus is nothing
to be proud of. Let's review a few cases.
In past centuries, the greatest killer of women was fever following childbirth .
One woman in six died of this fever. In 1795, Alexander Gordon of Aberdeen
suggested that the fevers were infectious processes, and he was able to cure
them. The consensus said no. In 1843, Oliver Wendell Holmes claimed puerperal
fever was contagious, and presented compellng evidence. The consensus said no.
In 1849, Semmelweiss demonstrated that sanitary techniques virtually eliminated
puerperal fever in hospitals under his management. The consensus said he was a
Jew, ignored him, and dismissed him from his post. There was in fact no
agreement on puerperal fever until the start of the twentieth century. Thus the
consensus took one hundred and twenty five years to arrive at the right
conclusion despite the efforts of the prominent "skeptics" around the world,
skeptics who were demeaned and ignored. And despite the constant ongoing deaths
of women.
There is no shortage of other examples. In the 1920s in America, tens of
thousands of people, mostly poor, were dying of a disease called pellagra. The
consensus of scientists said it was infectious, and what was necessary was to
find the "pellagra germ." The US government asked a brilliant young
investigator, Dr. Joseph Goldberger, to find the cause. Goldberger concluded
that diet was the crucial factor. The consensus remained wedded to the germ
theory. Goldberger demonstrated that he could induce the disease through diet.
He demonstrated that the disease was not infectious by injecting the blood of a
pellagra patient into himself, and his assistant. They and other volunteers
swabbed their noses with swabs from pellagra patients, and swallowed capsules
containing scabs from pellagra rashes in what were called "Goldberger's filth
parties." Nobody contracted pellagra. The consensus continued to disagree with
him. There was, in addition, a social factor-southern States disliked the idea
of poor diet as the cause, because it meant that social reform was required.
They continued to deny it until the 1920s. Result-despite a twentieth century
epidemic, the consensus took years to see the light.
Probably every schoolchild notices that South America and Africa seem to fit
together rather snugly, and Alfred Wegener proposed, in 1912, that the
continents had in fact drifted apart. The consensus sneered at continental drift
for fifty years. The theory was most vigorously denied by the great names of
geology-until 1961, when it began to seem as if the sea floors were spreading.
The result: it took the consensus fifty years to acknowledge what any
schoolchild sees.
And shall we go on? The examples can be multiplied endlessly. Jenner and
smallpox, Pasteur and germ theory. Saccharine, margarine, repressed memory,
fiber and colon cancer, hormone replacement therap6y...the list of consensus
errors goes on and on.
Finally, I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus is invoked.
Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough.
Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the
consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to
anyone to speak that way.
But back to our main subject.
What I have been suggesting to you is that nuclear winter was a meaningless
formula, tricked out with bad science, for policy ends. It was political from
the beginning, promoted in a well-orchestrated media campaign that had to be
planned weeks or months in advance.
Further evidence of the political nature of the whole project can be found in
the response to criticism. Although Richard Feynman was characteristically
blunt, saying, "I really don't think these guys know what they're talking
about," other prominent scientists were noticeably reticent. Freeman Dyson was
quoted as saying "It's an absolutely atrocious piece of science but...who wants
to be accused of being in favor of nuclear war?" And Victor Weisskopf said, "The
science is terrible but---perhaps the psychology is good." The nuclear winter
team followed up the publication of such comments with letters to the editors
denying that these statements were ever made, though the scientists since then
have subsequently confirmed their views.
At the time, there was a concerted desire on the part of lots of people to avoid
nuclear war. If nuclear winter looked awful, why investigate too closely? Who
wanted to disagree? Only people like Edward Teller, the "father of the H bomb."
Teller said, "While it is generally recognized that details are still uncertain
and deserve much more study, Dr. Sagan nevertheless has taken the position that
the whole scenario is so robust that there can be little doubt about its main
conclusions." Yet for most people, the fact that nuclear winter was a scenario
riddled with uncertainties did not seem to be relevant.
I say it is hugely relevant. Once you abandon strict adherence to what science
tells us, once you start arranging the truth in a press conference, then
anything is possible. In one context, maybe you will get some mobilization
against nuclear war. But in another context, you get Lysenkoism. In another, you
get Nazi euthanasia. The danger is always there, if you subvert science to
political ends.
That is why it is so important for the future of science that the line between
what science can say with certainty, and what it cannot, be drawn clearly-and
defended.
What happened to Nuclear Winter? As the media glare faded, its robust scenario
appeared less persuasive; John Maddox, editor of Nature, repeatedly criticized
its claims; within a year, Stephen Schneider, one of the leading figures in the
climate model, began to speak of "nuclear autumn." It just didn't have the same
ring.
A final media embarrassment came in 1991, when Carl Sagan predicted on Nightline
that Kuwaiti oil fires would produce a nuclear winter effect, causing a "year
without a summer," and endangering crops around the world. Sagan stressed this
outcome was so likely that "it should affect the war plans." None of it
happened.
What, then, can we say were the lessons of Nuclear Winter? I believe the lesson
was that with a catchy name, a strong policy position and an aggressive media
campaign, nobody will dare to criticize the science, and in short order, a
terminally weak thesis will be established as fact. After that, any criticism
becomes beside the point. The war is already over without a shot being fired.
That was the lesson, and we had a textbook application soon afterward, with
second hand smoke.
In 1993, the EPA announced that second-hand smoke was "responsible for
approximately 3,000 lung cancer deaths each year in nonsmoking adults," and that
it " impairs the respiratory health of hundreds of thousands of people." In a
1994 pamphlet the EPA said that the eleven studies it based its decision on were
not by themselves conclusive, and that they collectively assigned second-hand
smoke a risk factor of 1.19. (For reference, a risk factor below 3.0 is too
small for action by the EPA. or for publication in the New England Journal of
Medicine, for example.) Furthermore, since there was no statistical association
at the 95% coinfidence limits, the EPA lowered the limit to 90%. They then
classified second hand smoke as a Group A Carcinogen.
This was openly fraudulent science, but it formed the basis for bans on smoking
in restaurants, offices, and airports. California banned public smoking in 1995.
Soon, no claim was too extreme. By 1998, the Christian Science Monitor was
saying that "Second-hand smoke is the nation's third-leading preventable cause
of death." The American Cancer Society announced that 53,000 people died each
year of second-hand smoke. The evidence for this claim is nonexistent.
In 1998, a Federal judge held that the EPA had acted improperly, had "committed
to a conclusion before research had begun", and had "disregarded information and
made findings on selective information." The reaction of Carol Browner, head of
the EPA was: "We stand by our science....there's wide agreement. The American
people certainly recognize that exposure to second hand smoke brings...a whole
host of health problems." Again, note how the claim of consensus trumps science.
In this case, it isn't even a consensus of scientists that Browner evokes! It's
the consensus of the American people.
Meanwhile, ever-larger studies failed to confirm any association. A large,
seven-country WHO study in 1998 found no association. Nor have well-controlled
subsequent studies, to my knowledge. Yet we now read, for example, that second
hand smoke is a cause of breast cancer. At this point you can say pretty much
anything you want about second-hand smoke.
As with nuclear winter, bad science is used to promote what most people would
consider good policy. I certainly think it is. I don't want people smoking
around me. So who will speak out against banning second-hand smoke? Nobody, and
if you do, you'll be branded a shill of RJ Reynolds. A big tobacco flunky. But
the truth is that we now have a social policy supported by the grossest of
superstitions. And we've given the EPA a bad lesson in how to behave in the
future. We've told them that cheating is the way to succeed.
As the twentieth century drew to a close, the connection between hard scientific
fact and public policy became increasingly elastic. In part this was possible
because of the complacency of the scientific profession; in part because of the
lack of good science education among the public; in part, because of the rise of
specialized advocacy groups which have been enormously effective in getting
publicity and shaping policy; and in great part because of the decline of the
media as an independent assessor of fact. The deterioration of the American
media is dire loss for our country. When distinguished institutions like the New
York Times can no longer differentiate between factual content and editorial
opinion, but rather mix both freely on their front page, then who will hold
anyone to a higher standard?
And so, in this elastic anything-goes world where science-or non-science-is the
hand maiden of questionable public policy, we arrive at last at global warming.
It is not my purpose here to rehash the details of this most magnificent of the
demons haunting the world. I would just remind you of the now-familiar pattern
by which these things are established. Evidentiary uncertainties are glossed
over in the unseemly rush for an overarching policy, and for grants to support
the policy by delivering findings that are desired by the patron. Next, the
isolation of those scientists who won't get with the program, and the
characterization of those scientists as outsiders and "skeptics" in quotation
marks-suspect individuals with suspect motives, industry flunkies,
reactionaries, or simply anti-environmental nutcases. In short order, debate
ends, even though prominent scientists are uncomfortable about how things are
being done.
When did "skeptic" become a dirty word in science? When did a skeptic require
quotation marks around it?
To an outsider, the most significant innovation in the global warming
controversy is the overt reliance that is being placed on models. Back in the
days of nuclear winter, computer models were invoked to add weight to a
conclusion: "These results are derived with the help of a computer model." But
now large-scale computer models are seen as generating data in themselves. No
longer are models judged by how well they reproduce data from the real
world-increasingly, models provide the data. As if they were themselves a
reality. And indeed they are, when we are projecting forward. There can be no
observational data about the year 2100. There are only model runs.
This fascination with computer models is something I understand very well.
Richard Feynmann called it a disease. I fear he is right. Because only if you
spend a lot of time looking at a computer screen can you arrive at the complex
point where the global warming debate now stands.
Nobody believes a weather prediction twelve hours ahead. Now we're asked to
believe a prediction that goes out 100 years into the future? And make financial
investments based on that prediction? Has everybody lost their minds?
Stepping back, I have to say the arrogance of the modelmakers is breathtaking.
There have been, in every century, scientists who say they know it all. Since
climate may be a chaotic system-no one is sure-these predictions are inherently
doubtful, to be polite. But more to the point, even if the models get the
science spot-on, they can never get the sociology. To predict anything about the
world a hundred years from now is simply absurd.
Look: If I was selling stock in a company that I told you would be profitable in
2100, would you buy it? Or would you think the idea was so crazy that it must be
a scam?
Let's think back to people in 1900 in, say, New York. If they worried about
people in 2000, what would they worry about? Probably: Where would people get
enough horses? And what would they do about all the horseshit? Horse pollution
was bad in 1900, think how much worse it would be a century later, with so many
more people riding horses?
But of course, within a few years, nobody rode horses except for sport. And in
2000, France was getting 80% its power from an energy source that was unknown in
1900. Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and Japan were getting more than 30% from
this source, unknown in 1900. Remember, people in 1900 didn't know what an atom
was. They didn't know its structure. They also didn't know what a radio was, or
an airport, or a movie, or a television, or a computer, or a cell phone, or a
jet, an antibiotic, a rocket, a satellite, an MRI, ICU, IUD, IBM, IRA, ERA, EEG,
EPA, IRS, DOD, PCP, HTML, internet. interferon, instant replay, remote sensing,
remote control, speed dialing, gene therapy, gene splicing, genes, spot welding,
heat-seeking, bipolar, prozac, leotards, lap dancing, email, tape recorder, CDs,
airbags, plastic explosive, plastic, robots, cars, liposuction, transduction,
superconduction, dish antennas, step aerobics, smoothies, twelve-step,
ultrasound, nylon, rayon, teflon, fiber optics, carpal tunnel, laser surgery,
laparoscopy, corneal transplant, kidney transplant, AIDS... None of this would
have meant anything to a person in the year 1900. They wouldn't know what you
are talking about.
Now. You tell me you can predict the world of 2100. Tell me it's even worth
thinking about. Our models just carry the present into the future. They're bound
to be wrong. Everybody who gives a moment's thought knows it.
I remind you that in the lifetime of most scientists now living, we have already
had an example of dire predictions set aside by new technology. I refer to the
green revolution. In 1960, Paul Ehrlich said, "The battle to feed humanity is
over. In the 1970s the world will undergoe famines-hundreds of millions of
people are going to starve to death." Ten years later, he predicted four billion
people would die during the 1980s, including 65 million Americans. The mass
starvation that was predicted never occurred, and it now seems it isn't ever
going to happen. Nor is the population explosion going to reach the numbers
predicted even ten years ago. In 1990, climate modelers anticipated a world
population of 11 billion by 2100. Today, some people think the correct number
will be 7 billion and falling. But nobody knows for sure.
But it is impossible to ignore how closely the history of global warming fits on
the previous template for nuclear winter. Just as the earliest studies of
nuclear winter stated that the uncertainties were so great that probabilites
could never be known, so, too the first pronouncements on global warming argued
strong limits on what could be determined with certainty about climate change.
The 1995 IPCC draft report said, "Any claims of positive detection of
significant climate change are likely to remain controversial until
uncertainties in the total natural variability of the climate system are
reduced." It also said, "No study to date has positively attributed all or part
of observed climate changes to anthropogenic causes." Those statements were
removed, and in their place appeared: "The balance of evidence suggests a
discernable human influence on climate."
What is clear, however, is that on this issue, science and policy have become
inextricably mixed to the point where it will be difficult, if not impossible,
to separate them out. It is possible for an outside observer to ask serious
questions about the conduct of investigations into global warming, such as
whether we are taking appropriate steps to improve the quality of our
observational data records, whether we are systematically obtaining the
information that will clarify existing uncertainties, whether we have any
organized disinterested mechanism to direct research in this contentious area.
The answer to all these questions is no. We don't.
In trying to think about how these questions can be resolved, it occurs to me
that in the progression from SETI to nuclear winter to second hand smoke to
global warming, we have one clear message, and that is that we can expect more
and more problems of public policy dealing with technical issues in the
future-problems of ever greater seriousness, where people care passionately on
all sides.
And at the moment we have no mechanism to get good answers. So I will propose
one.
Just as we have established a tradition of double-blinded research to determine
drug efficacy, we must institute double-blinded research in other policy areas
as well. Certainly the increased use of computer models, such as GCMs, cries out
for the separation of those who make the models from those who verify them. The
fact is that the present structure of science is entrepeneurial, with individual
investigative teams vying for funding from organizations which all too often
have a clear stake in the outcome of the research-or appear to, which may be
just as bad. This is not healthy for science.
Sooner or later, we must form an independent research institute in this country.
It must be funded by industry, by government, and by private philanthropy, both
individuals and trusts. The money must be pooled, so that investigators do not
know who is paying them. The institute must fund more than one team to do
research in a particular area, and the verification of results will be a
foregone requirement: teams will know their results will be checked by other
groups. In many cases, those who decide how to gather the data will not gather
it, and those who gather the data will not analyze it. If we were to address the
land temperature records with such rigor, we would be well on our way to an
understanding of exactly how much faith we can place in global warming, and
therefore what seriousness we must address this.
I believe that as we come to the end of this litany, some of you may be saying,
well what is the big deal, really. So we made a few mistakes. So a few
scientists have overstated their cases and have egg on their faces. So what.
Well, I'll tell you.
In recent years, much has been said about the post modernist claims about
science to the effect that science is just another form of raw power, tricked
out in special claims for truth-seeking and objectivity that really have no
basis in fact. Science, we are told, is no better than any other undertaking.
These ideas anger many scientists, and they anger me. But recent events have
made me wonder if they are correct. We can take as an example the scientific
reception accorded a Danish statistician, Bjorn Lomborg, who wrote a book called
The Skeptical Environmentalist.
The scientific community responded in a way that can only be described as
disgraceful. In professional literature, it was complained he had no standing
because he was not an earth scientist. His publisher, Cambridge University
Press, was attacked with cries that the editor should be fired, and that all
right-thinking scientists should shun the press. The past president of the AAAS
wondered aloud how Cambridge could have ever "published a book that so clearly
could never have passed peer review." )But of course the manuscript did pass
peer review by three earth scientists on both sides of the Atlantic, and all
recommended publication.) But what are scientists doing attacking a press? Is
this the new McCarthyism-coming from scientists?
Worst of all was the behavior of the Scientific American, which seemed intent on
proving the post-modernist point that it was all about power, not facts. The
Scientific American attacked Lomborg for eleven pages, yet only came up with
nine factual errors despite their assertion that the book was "rife with
careless mistakes." It was a poor display featuring vicious ad hominem attacks,
including comparing him to a Holocust denier. The issue was captioned: "Science
defends itself against the Skeptical Environmentalist." Really. Science has to
defend itself? Is this what we have come to?
When Lomborg asked for space to rebut his critics, he was given only a page and
a half. When he said it wasn't enough, he put the critics' essays on his web
page and answered them in detail. Scientific American threatened copyright
infringement and made him take the pages down.
Further attacks since have made it clear what is going on. Lomborg is charged
with heresy. That's why none of his critics needs to substantiate their attacks
in any detail. That's why the facts don't matter. That's why they can attack him
in the most vicious personal terms. He's a heretic.
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.
Is this what science has become? I hope not. But it is what it will become,
unless there is a concerted effort by leading scientists to aggresively separate
science from policy. The late Philip Handler, former president of the National
Academy of Sciences, said that "Scientists best serve public policy by living
within the ethics of science, not those of politics. If the scientific community
will not unfrock the charlatans, the public will not discern the
difference-science and the nation will suffer." Personally, I don't worry about
the nation. But I do worry about science.
Thank you very much.
---------
Michael Crichton. American. Born in Chicago, Illinois, October 23, 1942.
Educated at Harvard
University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, A.B. (summa cum laude) 1964 (Phi Beta
Kappa). Visiting
Lecturer in Anthropology at Cambridge University, England, 1965. Henry Russell
Shaw Travelling
Fellow, 1964-65. Entered Harvard Medical School, M.D. 1969; spent one year as a
post-doctoral
fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences, La Jolla, California
1969-1970.
Visiting Writer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1988. Michael Crichton
is an author
of science fiction novels and producer of films and television programs. He is
perhaps best
known for writing Jurassic Park (1991), Sphere (1987), and The Andromeda Strain
(1969), but
has written several other books with a scientific theme, as well as being the
creator and
executive producer of the hit television drama ER.
http://www.crichton-official.com/aboutmc/biography.html
---------
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