Good-Humored Adventure in the Congo

savior of Soviet agriculture. They pro- couraged as a plot by the bourgeoisie to Today, we find an American public ever moted him, disguised his failures, and enslave the peasant class. All question- more leery of the promise of science silenced his opponents. ing of method was deemed politically and technology to provide solutions to Lysenko brazenly declared that suspect. Academic inquiry and analysis complex global problems. The public, modern, Mendelian genetics was bunk were insults to the great Soviet people woefully ill-informed on the means, and propounded a theory that plants and consequently stifled. All progress in structure, and method of scientific and their unique genetic characteristics genetics, agriculture, and biology inquiry, readily embraces philosophies could be quickly "trained" to serve achieved in the West was dismissed as a and ideologies that seem to offer easy Soviet agricultural interests. Lysenko fraud. All independent biology and solutions. Unfortunately, the public's postulated that, through a process called genetics in the Soviet Union halted misguided acceptance—for example, "vernalization," plants could "learn" to unless it had Lysenko's approval. of the promises of untested alternative grow in any fashion that the Marxist At the peak of his power, Lysenko medicines and parapsychology—has state needed in its effort to revolutionize controlled the Soviet Academy of made it easy prey for those who, like Soviet agriculture. Where traditional Science and served as one of the chair- Lysenko, posit solutions without proof biologists and geneticists argued that men of the Supreme Soviet—the titular and who argue that Western scientific many generations and many years were rulers of the country. He commanded methods and standards cannot be necessary to change basic plant charac- the car of Stalin and later Khrushchev applied to the intangible universal truth teristics and develop new varieties, with impossible promises of the quick they seek to reveal. Lysenko asserted that progress could be and vast expansion of Soviet agriculture Soyfer's book makes a compelling achieved with the breakneck speed of that would demonstrate the superiority argument for standing up and engag- one or two generations. of Soviet science while burying the ing in vigorous debate with those who Thus, for instance, spring wheat West. In the end, the Soviet state would bedazzle the public with scien- could be transformed in a mere genera- ordered the adoption of Lysenko's tific and logical sleight of hand. More tion into winter varieties. Elm trees method on a huge scale. The result was important, it underscores the need for could be trained to be hickory trees. an unprecedented, manmade agricul- the community of skeptics to patiently Nonliving matter could be transformed tural disaster causing untold human and without condescension engage the into living matter. Lysenko, in short, suffering and environmental damage public in a continuing national dia- strove to relegate Mendelian biology that continues to plague Russia today. logue about what science is and what it and proved agricultural practices to the Lysenko and the Tragedy of Soviet can and cannot do. waste-bin of history as the dying rem- Science provides a rare, firsthand insight nant of an immoral capitalist science. into how a terrorist state uses and abus- Graydon J o h n Forrer is a confidential assis- Through all his years of dominat- es public trust and ignorance to under- tant to the Undersecretary of Agriculture, ing Soviet biology, Lysenko and his mine freedom. It is also a stern warning Food and Consumer Services, U.S. cronies never offered any tangible proof for those who believe that some form of Department of Agriculture, Washington, for his theories. Peer review was dis- Lysenkoism could not happen here. DC 20250. Good-humored Adventure in the Congo JOHN H. ACORN ^ Drums Along the Congo: On the Trail of Mokele-Mbembe, the Last ^^^^^H^^^^^M ^^ Living Dinosaur. By Rory Nugent. Houghton Mifflin, Boston, Mass., 1993. 243 pp. Paper, $10.95. nlike claims for die existence of port. The 1985 Disney movie Baby, took the underlying idea seriously. Udie Loch Ness Monster or the Secret of the Lost Legend brought the After all, it's a silly idea. Sasquatch, the idea of a living sauro- "Mokele-Mbembe" to a wide audience, Cryptozoologists, on the other pod dinosaur in the Lake Tele region of but in my judgment, based on work hand, are often incapable of grasping the Congo Basin of Africa has never with educational books, films, and the extent of their own silliness, and as quite captured its share of popular sup- exhibits about dinosaurs, few people a casual observer of cryptozoology I get 46 SKEPTICAL INQUIRER • MAY/JUNE 1995 the impression that the Mokele- photographs, footprints, hair samples, perfectly well that he won't come back Mbembe is now one of their favorite and die like, are used to argue that (1) with a dinosaur, but by that point it beasts. In his preface to Roy Mackal's the animal exists, (2) it will be captured doesn't much matter. This is a book book A Living Dinosaur? the father of soon, and (3) the zoological orthodoxy about die Congo, its people, and one cryptozoology, Bernard Heuvelmans. is ignoring both (1) and (2). For zool- of the last remaining tracts of more or referred to the Mokele-Mbembe as die ogists, and skeptics in general, two less undisturbed rainforest on the "zoological craze of the 1980s." If responses are appropriate. First, one African continent. It has but 243 indeed this was the case, which in ret- can investigate the evidence for oneself pages, leaving only 71 for his expedi- rospect it wasn't, the impact of and attempt to distinguish fraud and tion proper. Mokele-Mbembe was no doubt also misinterpretation from real empirical Of course that doesn't mean Nugent fueled by the recent dinosaur craze, corroboration. Second, one can con- is off die hook. After all, he did set out which seems to have peaked with struct alternative hypotheses that arc to prove the existence of a living sauro- Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park. consistent with and explain the evi- pod, and as skeptics we can't forget that Popular interest in this subject dence, but which have the advantage of fact, even if he is a nice guy. Nugent's began with expeditions in 1980 and greater parsimony by virtue of being credentials ate never disclosed, 1981 led by Chicago's Roy Mackal. less encumbered by poorly supported although he does (p. 124) claim to have Mackal's book, A Living Dinosaur? assumptions. Herein lies the difficulty been part of a group of journalists. The became a cult favorite among my biol- for untrained or poorly trained book is liberally spiced with natural his- ogist friends. To pass away die time we observers: judging parsimony requires tory notes, however, and these allow us used to read parts of the book aloud, breadth of both experience and educa- to judge his credibility in a general howling with laughter at the sorry tion, and is more than just a matter of sense. 1 have not taken the time to excuses for evidence offered in support following a formula for die "scientific check on all his claims, but a number of of the Mokele-Mbembe hypothesis. method." For most zoologists, the idea problematic items popped out at me as We especially enjoyed Mackal's ac- that such things as Mokele-Mbembe I read. For example, the lizard photo- count of a supposed sauropod foot- exist is far less parsimonious than the graph in the insert between pages 152 print (invisible in his photograph) that, suggestion that they are mythical, and and 153 clearly corresponds with the for reasons that completely escaped us, in the absence of definitive proof parsi- text on page 213. In the text, the lizard could not possibly have been made by mony is not just die best reasoning tool is described as a "two-foot long reptile. an elephant. The idea that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof available but the only one as well. It has a triple-horned snout and stubby seems never to have occurred to Returning to the matter at hand, tail. ." The photo shows neither of Mackal, although he more or less this is an enjoyable book. Nugent is a these features, but is readily identifiable admits that he really hasn't established talented, intelligent writer with a sense as a monitor lizard in the genus die existence of anything. of humor. Whatever prob- Varanus, These lizards do lems he may have with not have horns on their Well, the good news is that the foot- credulity are compensated snouts, and possess long, print is still there, visible for a fee, and for by his admirable spirit whiplike tails, not stubby that a much better writer than Mackal of adventure. One quickly ones. Another obvious gaffe recently made the trip to see it. gets the impression that he appears on page 183, where Cryptozoologists seem to me to be a really could not have cared he refers to Lord Derby harmless bunch, with no particular less whether he saw a squirrels as "the best flyers political or social agenda, and for Mokele-Mbembe, which of among mammals," presum- "fringe-watchers" their adventures and course he didn't. He gives ably unaware of the fact rationalizations make for entertaining no indication that he dial bats, which fly very fare. So, when I picked up Rory intends to follow up on his well, are also mammals. Nugent's Drums Along the Congo: On quest, and in that sense alone he sets These examples are not alone, and they the Trail of Mokele-Mbembe, the Last himself apart from just about every serve to underscore the need for a Living Dinosaur, I expected another cryptozoological writer in print.

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