Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science Martin Gardner
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Scanned & Proofed by Cozette FADS AND FALLACIES IN THE NAME OF SCIENCE MARTIN GARDNER Dover Publications, Inc., New York Copyright © 1952 by Martin Gardner. Copyright © 1957 by Martin Gardner. All rights reserved under Pan American International Copyright Conventions. and Published in Canada by General Publishing Company, Ltd., 30 Lesmill Road, Don Mills, Toronto, Ontario. Published in the United Kingdom by Constable and Company, Ltd., 10 Orange Street, London WC 2. This Dover edition, first published in 1957, is a revised and expanded edition of the work originally published by G. P. Putnam's Sons in 1952 under the title In the Name of Science. Standard Book Number: 486-20394-8 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 57-14907 Manufactured in the United States of America Dover Publications, Inc. 180 Varick Street New York, N.Y. 10014 To MY MOTHER AND FATHER Preface to Second Edition THE FIRST EDITION of this book prompted many curious letters from irate readers. The most violent letters came from Reichians, furious because the book considered orgonomy alongside such (to them) outlandish cults as dianetics. Dianeticians, of course, felt the same about orgonomy. I heard from homeopaths who were insulted to find themselves in company with such frauds as osteopathy and chiropractic, and one chiropractor in Kentucky "pitied" me because I had turned my spine on God's greatest gift to suffering humanity. Several admirers of Dr. Bates favored me with letters so badly typed that I suspect the writers were in urgent need of strong spectacles. Oddly enough, most of these correspondents objected to one chapter only, thinking all the others excellent. Some readers, however, liked the entire book and were kind enough to call my attention to occasional errors and to suggest new material that might be worth mentioning if the book were ever revised. Thanks to Hayward Cirker, president of Dover Publications, such a revision has now become possible. I have left the text unaltered save for corrections of unimportant errors, and added as much as I could in the way of documentation and fresh material in a lengthy appendix. One new chapter has been written to cover the recent Bridey Murphy mania and to discuss further the difficult question of when a reputable publisher is justified in bringing out a work of "unorthodox" science. THE AUTHOR 1956 VH Preface NOT MANY BOOKS have been written about modern pseudo-scientists and their views. I found only two general surveys that provided leads or useful material— Daniel W. Hering's Foibles and Fallacies of Science, 1924, and The Story of Human Error, 1936, edited by Joseph Jastrow. David Starr Jordan, the first president of Stanford and a renowned authority on fish, wrote in 1927 a book called The Higher Foolishness. In it, he coined the word "sciosophy" (meaning "shadow wisdom") to stand for what he termed the "systematized ignorance" of the pseudo-scientist. The book is infuriating because although Jordan mentions the titles of dozens of crank works, from which he quotes extensively, he seldom tells you the names of the authors. Most of my research was done in the New York Public Library, which has a magnificent collection of crank literature. Unfortunately, only a tiny portion of it is identified as such (under headings like "Science— curiosa," "Impostors," "Quacks," "Eccentric Persons," etc.). Consequently it had to be exhumed by devious, obscure, and often intuitive methods. Friends too numerous to mention have in various ways aided this research, but I wish specifically to thank Everett Bleiler, Prof. Edwin G. Boring, and Mr. and Mrs. David B. Eisendrath, Jr. for suggestions and favors relating to the book as a whole; and the following individuals for assistance on certain chapters: Dr. Alan Barnert, John Boyko, Arthur Cox, Charles Dye, Bruce Elliott, James H. Gardner, Thomas Gilmartin, Zalmon Goldsmith, Gershon Legman, Dr. L. Vosburgh Lyons, Robert Marks, Prof. H. J. Muller, and Allen W. Read- I also wish to express thanks to Paul Bixler, editor of the Antioch Review, for permission to use in the first chapter portions of my article "The Hermit Scientist" (Antioch Review, Winter, 1950-51), and to my literary agent, John T. Elliott, for his insistence that this article could be expanded into a book. And special thanks to Charlotte Greenwald for help in proofing and revising. THE AUTHOR viii Preface Contents CHAPTER PAGE 1. In the Name of Science 3 2. Flat and Hollow 16 3. Monsters of Doom 28 4. The Forteans 42 5. Flying Saucers 55 6. Zig-Zag-and-Swirl 69 7. Down with Einstein! 80 8. Sir Isaac Babson 92 9. Dowsing Rods and Doodlebugs 101 10. Under the Microscope 116 11. Geology versus Genesis 123 12. Lysenkoism 140 13. Apologists for Hate 152 14. Atlantis and Lemuria 164 15. The Great Pyramid 173 ix CHAPTER PAGE 16. Medical Cults 186 17. Medical Quacks 204 18. Food Faddists 220 19. Throw Away Your Glasses! 230 20. Eccentric Sexual Theories 242 21. Orgonomy 250 22. Dianetics 263 23. General Semantics, Etc. 281 24. From Bumps to Handwriting 292 25. ESP and PK 299 26. Bridey Murphy and Other Matters 315 Appendix and Notes 325 Index of Names 357 Contents FADS AND FALLACIES IN THE NAME OF SCIENCE CHAPTER 1 In the Name of Science SINCE THE BOMB exploded over Hiroshima, the prestige of science in the United States has mushroomed like an atomic cloud. In schools and colleges, more students than ever before are choosing some branch of science for their careers. Military budgets earmarked for scientific research have never been so fantastically huge. Books and magazines devoted to science are coming off the presses in greater numbers than at any previous time in history. Even in the realm of escape literature, science fiction threatens seriously to replace the detective story. One curious consequence of the current boom in science is the rise of the promoter of new and strange "scientific" theories. He is riding into prominence, so to speak, on the coat-tails of reputable investigators. The scientists themselves, of course, pay very little attention to him. They are too busy with more important matters. But the less informed general public, hungry for sensational discoveries and quick panaceas, often provides him with a noisy and enthusiastic following. In 1951, tens of thousands of mentally ill people throughout the country entered "dianetic reveries" in which they moved back along their "time track" and tried to recall unpleasant experiences they had when they were embryos. Thousands of more sophisticated neurotics, who regard dianetics as the invention of a mountebank, are now sitting in "orgone boxes" to raise their body's charge of "orgone energy." Untold numbers of middle-aged housewives are preparing to live to the age of 100 by a diet rich in yoghurt, wheat-germ, and blackstrap-molasses. Not only in the fields of mental and physical health is the spurious scientist flourishing. A primitive interpretation of Old Testament miracle tales, which one thought went out of fashion with the passing of William Jennings Bryan, has just received a powerful shot in the arm. Has not the eminent "astrophysicist," Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky, established the fact that the earth stopped rotating precisely at the moment Joshua commanded the sun and moon to stand still? For fifty years, geologists and physicists have been combining forces to perfect complex, delicate instruments for exploring underground structures. They've been wasting their time according to Kenneth Roberts, the well-known novelist. All you need is a forked twig, and he has written a persuasive and belligerent book to prove it. Since flying saucers were first reported in 1947, countless individuals have been convinced that the earth is under observation by visitors from another planet. Admirers of Frank Scully's Behind the Flying Saucers suspect that the mysterious disks are piloted by inhabitants of Venus who are exact duplicates of earthlings except they are three feet tall. A more recent study by Gerald Heard makes out an even stronger case for believing the saucers are controlled by intelligent bees from Mars. In the twenties, newspapers provided a major publicity outlet for the speculations of eccentric scholars. Every Sunday, Hearst's American Weekly disclosed with lurid pictures some outlandish piece of scientific moonshine. The pages of the daily press were spotted with such stories as unconfirmed reports of enormous sea serpents, frogs found alive in the cornerstones of ancient buildings, or men who could hear radio broadcasts through gold inlays in their teeth. But gradually, over the next two decades, an unwritten code of science ethics developed in the profession of news journalism. Wire services hired competent science writers. Leading metropolitan dailies acquired trained science editors. The American Medical Association stepped up its campaign against press publicity for medical quackery, and disciplined members who released accounts of research that had not been adequately checked by colleagues. Today, science reporting in the American press is freer of humbug and misinformation than ever before in history. To a large extent, the magazine and book publishing firms shared in the forging of this voluntary code. Unfortunately, at the turn of the half-century they began to backslide. Astounding Science Fiction, until recently the best of the science fantasy magazines, was the first to inform the public of the great "Dianetic Revolution" in psychiatry. True boosted its circulation by breaking the news that flying saucers came from another planet. Harper's published the first article in praise of Velikovsky's remarkable discoveries, and similar pieces quickly followed in Collier's and Reader's Digest. The Saturday Evening Post and Look gave widespread publicity to Gayelord Hauser's blackstrap-molasses cult during the same month that the Pure Food and Drug Administration seized copies of his best-seller, Look Younger, Live Longer.