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Winter 11-2016

Pseudoscience versus

Hans Christian von Baeyer College of William and Mary, [email protected]

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Recommended Citation von Baeyer, Hans Christian, versus science (2016). PHYSICS TODAY, 69(11). 10.1063/PT.3.3345

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Arts and Sciences at W&M ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Arts & Sciences Articles by an authorized administrator of W&M ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Pseudoscience versus science Hans Christian von Baeyer

Citation: Physics Today 69, 11, 11 (2016); doi: 10.1063/PT.3.3345 View online: https://doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.3345 View Table of Contents: http://physicstoday.scitation.org/toc/pto/69/11 Published by the American Institute of Physics

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Commentary: The dangerous growth of pseudophysics Physics Today 69, 10 (2016); 10.1063/PT.3.3151 the passionate claims of pseudoscientific was well-packaged: “Well, there’s a book beliefs, it’s our duty to dust off our ne - for that!” Ham’s audience vibrantly ap- glected tools of scientific rhetoric. plauded. Nye’s were met with un- To constructively counter pseudo- wavering silence. Behind Ham’s curtain science, I suggest, first, that we not den- is the false narrative that science is di- igrate or belittle its merchants or con- vided into “observational” and “histori- sumers, and second, that we take time to cal” knowledge. In his consumers’ minds, understand perspectives of the pseudo- events of the past cannot be known if we Laboratory science and audience. were not there to witness them firsthand, Belittling others with names like and the Bible represents the firsthand Cryostats “idiot” and “kook” as found on the infor- account. We could exclaim, “Well, there mational website suggested by Hassani is the universe for that!” but what com- 1.5 W @ 4.2 K contributes nothing to any conversation. pelling narrative does it support? It feeds into the “they don’t respect us” We must counter the rising tide of narrative of pseudoscience purveyors. destructive pseudoscience by engaging Each person comes to us as they are. They in penetrating scientific rhetoric in pub- may ask, “How does a photon know lic spaces. there’s only one slit and not two?” in the Tim LaFave Jr double-slit experiment. If we snicker at ([email protected]) their apparent notion of sentient photons, Southern Methodist University we miss the that they’ve visualized Dallas, Texas themselves riding alongside photons as  did in his famous gedanken experiments. We earn respect as lthough I completely agree with educators by treating questions as cata- Sadri Hassani’s warning, I think the lysts of intelligent conversations and by A philosophical questions that moti- empathizing with each person. vate scientists are universal. As physi- Most pseudoscience consumers be- cists, we should respect and celebrate the lieve that they’ve adequately applied the asking of questions, even as we point out scientific method and that their intuition how science and pseudoscience differ in is subsequently correct. Many are simply arriving at the answers. misled by rhetorical use of colloquial The notion of conscious photons, for language. Rather than worrying about example, has a long and fascinating his- misuse of the word “” as Hassani tory. One example of a rational question does, I’d worry more about the word and an answer that we might mock “wavefunction.” The fact that nearly Probe Stations today stands out for its utter charm. everything in quantum theory derives French encyclopedist Denis Diderot from this purely nonphysical entity will for Nanoscience (1713–84) supported the Greek concep- eventually go viral. We must clearly em- tion of invisible, indivisible, inert atoms. phasize that because the physical world However, he reasonably pointed out, “To is complex and difficult to comprehend, suppose that by placing next to a dead our models and theories shouldn’t be carelessly misconstrued. particle one, two, or three other dead Let’s fine-tune our rhetoric skills. I particles, one can form the system of a recommend reading ’s lively dialog living body amounts, it seems to me, to Gorgias, in which he concludes that a flagrant absurdity, or I am grievously bare rhetoric serves no educational pur- mistaken”(reference 1, page 148). pose—it merely persuades. Pseudo- Modern scientists still struggle with scientists are talented rhetoricians ex- the solution to his problem. Diderot took ploiting natural human frailties such as the bull by the horns and simply en- the desire to be right. Rhetoric cuts to the dowed the atoms themselves with a quick. In the arsenal of pseudoscientists quality he called sensitivity, on which he it opens floodgates to dangerously mis- based a complicated story of the emer- leading beliefs. Our rhetoric as scientists gence of . He explained one conse- must be based on meaningful facts and quence of his theory in a letter to his feed into natural human instincts, such lover Sophie Volland: as curiosity. Those who loved each other dur- In the 2014 “debate” between Bill Nye, ing their life and have themselves the Science Guy and CEO of the Planetary interred side by side are perhaps Society, and Ken Ham, president of not as foolish as one might think. Answers in Genesis, Ham’s rhetoric Perhaps their ashes come into con-

NOVEMBER 2016 | PHYSICS TODAY 11 READERS’ FORUM

tact, mingle and unite! Who am I mind is integrated into modern Mysteries always exist in science, and to know? Perhaps they have not atomic physics.... The only “ob- there are two ways to deal with them. lost all feeling, all memory of their server” which is essential in ortho- One is to wait and give science a chance past state; perhaps they retain a dox practical quantum theory is to resolve them. The other, the age-old remnant of warmth and life, which the inanimate apparatus . . . once strategy of pseudoscience, is to exploit they enjoy in their own way at the the apparatus is in place, and func- the limitation of science and inject spec- tioning untouched, it is a matter of bottom of the cold urn that holds ulative and unproven conjectures as an- them. ...O dear Sophie, I thus complete indifference . . . whether swers. While biologists have abandoned cling to the hope that I may touch the experimenters stay around to , the idea has not died out. It has you, feel you, love you, seek you, watch, or delegate such “observ- unite with you, and meld into you ing” to computers.1 been disguised and taken up by modern when we no longer are . . . if the pseudoscientists: Consciousness is the Experiments that demonstrate our molecules of your erstwhile lover new face of vitalism! were destined to become inspired, mental ability to influence physical ob- Tim LaFave raises a good point re- aroused, and to seek yours scat- jects would be as revolutionary as exper- garding debates between science and tered in nature! Allow me this iments that demonstrated the existence pseudoscience. Unfortunately, the out- reverie, so sweet to me; it would of the electron, the atomic nucleus, and come of such debates would be enor- assure me eternity in you and with gravitational waves. Why don’t the au- mously in favor of pseudoscience, as the you (reference 1, page 151). thors submit their results to mainstream Nye–Ham debate demonstrated. When journals so that the larger community of After this last quote, the late learned the listeners are scientifically illiterate, experimenters could verify them? Yes, and humane quantum chemist Bernard the snake oil vendor wins. That’s why, in mainstream journals—that is where all Pullman added laconically: “After ani- my Commentary, I proposed that pseudo- the aforementioned experiments were mate, sensitive, and intelligent atoms, science be challenged in the classroom, published and where all science revolu- here now are atoms in love. And why where science is not drowned in the tionaries disseminate their ideas. not, indeed?” rhetorical charm of pseudoscience. There are essentially three categories , despite “its utter charm,” Reference of scientists: mainstreamers; those main- as Hans Christian von Baeyer suggests, 1. B. Pullman, The Atom in the of streamers who bend the mainstream; has been at odds with science ever since Human Thought, A. Reisinger, trans., Ox- and those who leave the mainstream and their separation. Democritus, the ancient ford U. Press (1998). become pseudoscientists. scientist, said about philosophy: “Noth- Hans Christian von Baeyer All true scientists are in the first cate- ing exists except atoms and empty space; ([email protected]) gory. If they are exceptionally creative, everything else is opinion.” Modern College of William and Mary they may end up in the second category. physicist Richard Feynman was more Williamsburg, Virginia Pseudoscientists, being rejected by the blunt: mainstreamers, misinform the public with assertions that “science revolutionaries Here’s this great Dutch philoso- ‣ Hassani replies: Mario Beauregard, pher [Spinoza], and we’re [Feyn- have also been rejected by mainstreamers, Gary Schwartz, and Natalie Trent associ- man and his son] laughing at as we have.” Nothing is further from ate several notable physicists with the him.... You can take every one of the truth. , Isaac , integration of consciousness in quantum Spinoza’s propositions, and take Albert Einstein, Erwin Schrödinger, and the contrary propositions, and theory. History is filled with great scien- other great scientists were mainstream- tists who held unscientific, even anti - look at the world and you can’t tell ers who made it to the second category.2 which is right. Sure, people were scientific beliefs. Lord Rayleigh believed Larry Dossey calls consciousness awed because he had the courage in ; J. J. Thomson believed in dows- “science’s greatest mystery.” For cen- to take on these great questions, ing and psychics; William Shockley and turies, biology was “science’s greatest but it doesn’t do any good to James Watson sponsor racialism and eu- mystery” because of the manifestation of have the courage if you can’t get genics. But these ideological mistakes, life in living organisms. Many biologists anywhere with the question.... sometimes referred to as Nobel disease believed in vitalism, the idea that a “vital [Philosophers] seize on the possi- (see PHYSICS TODAY, September 1998, page force” regulated the activity of animate bility that there may not be any ul- 29), are not made right because of the sci- objects but could not “be derived from timate fundamental particle, and say that you should stop work . . . ence of their makers, and the science is not matter and reduced to anything more [because] “You haven’t thought made wrong because of the ideological basic,” as the “Manifesto for a post- deeply enough, first let me define mistakes of its discoverers. It is the mes- materialist science” states about mind.3 sage that counts, not the messenger. the world for you.” Well, I’m going However, with the discovery of DNA, to investigate without defining it!4 One person who can authoritatively “vital force” is no longer needed to ex- judge the role of mind in quantum the- plain the electrochemical reactions tak- References ory is John Bell, who proved its non - ing place at the subcellular level. Since 1. J. Bell, Speakable and Unspeakable in Quan- locality—a concept that pseudoscientists the source of consciousness is the brain, tum Mechanics: Collected Papers on Quantum have deformed into their own commod- the scientific answer to its nature will Philosophy, Cambridge U. Press (1987), ity. Bell stated, p. 170. come only from the molecular investi- 2. S. Hassani, 39(5), 38 I think it is not right to tell the pub- gation of neurons, not from near- (2015). lic that a central role for conscious “experiments.” 3. M. Beauregard et al., Explore 10, 272 (2014).

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