Science: the Good, the Bad, the Gullible1

SCIENCE: THE GOOD, THE BAD, THE GULLIBLE1

A U.F.O. Granny Eve had kindly not told the nurse that the UFO in question was a tiddlywink. -Cassie Beasley

When I was in Junior High School, I had a friend whose oldest brother had procured a weather balloon. The balloon was silvery and even looked impressive in the box. I believe that I was invited to the launch of the balloon because I had a car. Because I was a spectator, I don’t remember many details except that we went to the banks of the Arkansas River. The sun had just set and there was a heavy, humid sweetness in the air. That meant that the breeze was blowing toward the oil refineries across the river. In preparation for the launch, someone had made a platform that hung from the balloon and held several (4, I think) flares. The balloon was inflated, the flares were lit and the balloon rose quickly with its silvered sides reflecting the flares so that it appeared to have blinking lights on its sides. We were wrapped in awe at our accomplishment and stood in silence as the shining object danced in the darkening sky. Suddenly, a man came driving up, jumped out of his car and ran down the sand path toward us. He was pointing and shouting. At first, we thought that he was angry with us, and then we realized that the balloon was the focus of his attention. When he was close enough, I heard him shout, “Boys! Boys! Look at that. Up there. That’s a U.F.O. I know. I’m a pilot.” We said nothing that would convince him otherwise. All of us watched the “U.F.O.” as it moved over the city of Tulsa. It seemed to circle the tallest building and then vanish into the clouds. The pilot cursed his luck at not having a camera. He left convinced that he had witnessed a close encounter with space aliens. We were wild with delight at our good fortune. In our zeal to make some wonderful contrivance, we created a U.F.O. and a mystery. What was better, only we knew the answer to the mystery. Now, I reflect on that event of many years ago. I am surprised that the pilot was so gullible. Why did he assume that the object was an alien spaceship? Why didn’t he assume a more rational explanation? I consider the same question as I flip through the channels on cable TV. Consider serious documentaries about lake monsters, big foot, and alien abductions. Why are more rational explanations not even considered? For example, if a large Plesiosaur is in Loch Ness, it must exist in a population of such creatures. Now, if the species breathes air, it would be impossible for it to remain hidden. Anyway, why would such a large aquatic animal be so reclusive? But the Loch Ness monster is a mystery, and we love mysteries...even if there is a more rational and simple explanation. Sometimes it is just fun to be gullible.

ALTERNATE REALITIES You’re saying it’s a falsehood. And they’re giving — Sean Spicer, our press secretary, gave alternative facts to that. -Kellyanne Conway

That the pilot had been duped by what he saw can be understood. He saw an unexplainable object in the sky and fell back on the only explanation for which that science fiction and cable UFO ‘documentaries’ had prepared him to believe that any strange object flying in the sky could only be the craft of a space alien. The comment by Kellyanne Conway was much less understandable or explainable. Her use of the phrase ‘alternative facts’ in 2017 seemed astounding because it was not made in jest. We had all seen photographs of the crowd on the day of Donald Trump’s inauguration. The images were clear, that crowd was much smaller than that of his predecessor. Sean Spicer’s emphatic statement that Donald Trump’s was the largest of any presidential inauguration seemed preposterous at the time he made it, and Kellyanne Conway’s support of it by a phrase which could only mean that it was a lie added its Orwellian doublespeak quality. However, a lie is still a lie no matter how emphatically or often it is stated. Could her viewers be so gullible? Sadly, it is human nature to search for support of deeply held truths or fictional explanations. We want magic in our lives; we want to be special. This is the basis of pseudoscience in which the beliefs and methods are not appropriate to scientific research programs. That is, evidence is loosely applied, and the explanations are not necessarily consistent with the laws of chemistry and physics. See Table 2-15 for a short list of currently accepted pseudoscientific beliefs. Carl Sagan described our penchant to accept irrational solutions as our demon-haunted world in a book about pseudoscience, particularly nonsense about alien abductions. As we accept irrational solutions, our

1 This is a major revision of an essay called Pseudoscience, The Science of the Gullible.

1 universe is ruled more and more by demons of the imagination and by those who benefit by perpetrating such fictions. In more recent days, consider the QAnon disaster. Scientists are trained to be skeptics2. They are trained to look for alternative explanations. The real danger of pseudoscience is that it blunts the effectiveness of scientific skepticism in the eyes of the public. Particularly when wild claims like the Loch Ness monster and alien abductions are explained by phrases like: ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE. Any practicing scientist knows that anything is not possible. Well, if scientists are skeptics, how can they accept any explanations? They follow a set of methods that are based on the observation of the phenomenon. Then, they consider explanations and alternative explanations, all of which connect the phenomenon to natural law (a major shortcoming in most pseudoscientific explanations). Those ideas or hypotheses that seem most likely are tested by experiment (or some other test). Thus, scientists can reject or eliminate possibilities and thus provide stronger support for the hypotheses that remain. Sometimes the pseudoscientist tries to appear in the disguise of the skeptical scientist. Consider the problem that many public school districts have faced regarding evolution. Some schools have been required to say that evolution is only a theory and that alternative explanations should be considered. In particular, the schools require that Creation Science3 be given equal time. The truth of the matter is that the theory of Creation Science was considered as an explanation, and it was rejected more than 150 years ago. Indeed, it is intellectually dishonest to present evolution (the unifying principle of the science of biology) and creation science as alternative explanations.

TABLE 2-15. This is a short list of currently accepted pseudoscientific beliefs.

THE WAGES OF GULLIBILITY As amusing as some of pseudoscience may seem, as confident as we may be that we would never be so gullible as to be swept up by such a doctrine, we know it’s happening all around us. -Carl Sagan

The erosion of public trust in science and a general misunderstanding of how science works is not new. Because science works by inductive discovery, it is not possible that any explanation can be proven. Those who seek to abuse science for their own ends understand this attribute and prey upon it. Consider the research that showed the links between cigarette smoking and lung cancer. In 1953 (the same year that Watson and Crick published the structure of DNA), the first report that made the connection between cigarette tar and cancer was published. The work was simple. All mice in the study had a patch of

2 Read more about the philosophy of skepticism in Succession in a Skeptic’s Garden. 3 Creation Science is now presented in the guise of Intelligent Design.

2 hair shaved from their backs. Half of the mice were painted with cigarette tar and the other half (the control group) were untreated. The untreated group showed no tumors while the treated group showed a very high rate of malignancies. Of course, tumors on the backs of mice are very different from tumors in the lungs of people. In a series of publications in the 1960’s, British researcher Richard Doll confirmed the connection between smoking cigarettes and lung cancer. The tobacco companies countered with a campaign to cast doubt on the results (while their own researchers were confirming Doll’s research and hiding the evidence). Their alternative explanation was that people who are compelled to smoke also have a genetic weakness that induces lung cancer (thus, tobacco smoke does not cause cancer, and the companies are blameless). Although the scientific community rejected such a convoluted hypothesis, the tobacco companies preyed upon the gullibility of the public and kept this alternative explanation alive in the halls of congress. By 1997, even the most conservative researchers estimated that nearly 400,000 deaths per year were attributed to cigarette smoking in the United States alone. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization, 2020 estimates for tobacco-related mortality increased to nearly 7 million deaths world-wide. In the words of Carl Sagan, “Gullibility kills.”

INTO THE GREENHOUSE Twenty-five years ago people could be excused for not knowing much, or doing much, about climate change. Today we have no excuse. -Desmond Tutu4

The question of global warming5 is much more complex than that of smoking. This assumes that the atmosphere and its constituent gasses determine how much heat the earth’s surface traps. Thus, the atmosphere acts like a blanket and helps to trap heat. How can the atmosphere work that way? Well, the gasses in the air are mostly clear so that little light coming from the sun is absorbed. However, after the light hits objects on the earth’s surface, some of it is reflected as light and can escape back into space. The absorbed light is reemitted from the surface as heat or infrared radiation which is absorbed by certain gasses in the atmosphere. As gasses absorb energy, they warm up. So, the atmosphere warms up just like a greenhouse or a car with its windows rolled up in bright sunlight (see Figure 2-26).

FIGURE 2-26. A diagram that illustrates the Greenhouse mechanism (by US EPA see http://www.epa.gov/globalwarming/climate/index.html ).

4 Desmond Tutu said this in 2014. 5 I wrote this essay in 1996. Since then, the evidence for climate change has been mounting and discussed in other essays: Gaia: Science, Pseudoscience , or Fruitful Error; Red Planets and Microbes; and Clouds: The Keys to Understanding Climate, Weather, and the Hydrologic Cycle.

3 The gasses that most effectively absorb heat are carbon dioxide, water vapor, methane, and CFC6’s. Most of the atmosphere is made of nitrogen and oxygen, gasses that do not function in the “greenhouse effect.” Thus, most heat absorption is by a few, relatively rare gasses. Even so, the planet would be about 60F (-20C) cooler than it is if there were no greenhouse gasses. Water vapor is the most abundant greenhouse gas and accounts for more than 70% of the trapped heat. You can observe its influence directly. Consider the temperature on a clear, calm night in mid-winter. Without a cloud layer to trap and hold heat, much of it radiates to space and the night cools rapidly. However, if there is a cloud cover, the night does not cool as quickly. Carbon dioxide accounts for about 10-12% of the greenhouse effect. That would seem minor compared to water, but water varies according to relative humidity and readily evaporates into the atmosphere from the oceans and other reservoirs (recall the hydrologic cycle). Thus, we can have little impact on the amount of water in the atmosphere, but we do have an impact on the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Estimates are that the atmosphere contained about 280 parts per million (ppm) carbon dioxide prior to the industrial revolution. In 1995, the atmosphere contained about 360 ppm carbon dioxide, and by 2020 that had grown to 440 ppm. It seems that the extra 160 ppm carbon dioxide is a consequence of burning fossil fuels like coal, natural gas, and gasoline. Stephen Schneider was one of the earliest atmospheric scientists to sound the alarm connecting rising atmospheric carbon dioxide and an increased temperature of about 0.6C over the past 100 years. Indeed, Klaus Hasselmann, director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology claims that there is a 95% chance that the temperature rise over the past 100 years is due to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide. If this is correct, continued burning of fossil fuels could have an even greater impact on climate in the next 100 years. The Paris Climate Agreement goal for climate change mitigation is to limit global temperature rise to 1.5C by mid century at which point technology should be in place to allow for zero net carbon emissions. This should allow for less than 2C temperature rise by the end of the century (see Figures 2-27 A&B).

A B FIGURE 2-27. Graphs of inferred temperatures and projected temperatures. A. This is the so-called hockey stick graph by Mann et al. (1999). It shows inferred and measured temperatures from 1000 to 1998 in the northern hemisphere. It suggests a gradual decline until after the beginning of the industrial revolution when temperatures began to rise rapidly. Temperature is plotted relative to the 1902-1980 calibration period. B. This is a graph from Collins et al. (2013) showing possible trajectories for global temperature if there are constant levels of greenhouse gas emissions and the impact of zero emissions.

For every temperature rise of 1C, a global line of equal temperature will move north about 200 miles. That means that the climate in Selinsgrove will be about like that of Richmond, Virginia. The current computer-generated scenarios predict a global temperature rise of 0.8-3.5C by 2150 (see Figure 2-27B). The fossil fuel lobby and fossil fuel exporting countries played on the general misunderstanding of science just as the tobacco companies had with the connection between cigarettes and lung cancer. In this case, the fossil fuel industry and the politicians whom they had convinced of their scientific competence by

6 Chlorofluorocarbons, now banned for most uses.

4 large donations to their election campaigns tried to cast doubt on the complex aspects of climate science, on the integrity of the climate researchers. This came to a head when in 2009, more than 1,000 emails belonging to researchers at the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, UK. So-called climate skeptics (climate change deniers) focused on the derisive tone of the emails and took some of the statements out of context to make it appear that the climate researchers had fabricated data. This blew up into a controversy that they called Climategate. They tried to use the emails to call all climate projections into question, but, despite the rude and dismissive tones of some of the emails, the data many leading scientific societies, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, confirmed the integrity of the data. Certainly, some of these observations can be explained by alternate hypotheses. However, these are not “Just So” stories. In the decade of the 1980s presentations of global warming theories were made in a very cautious way. By 2000 I began to be alarmed at the almost matter-of-fact certainty with which the scientists present scenarios of climate change. Now, 20 years later, the scientific community is firmly in agreement as is the political and popular will of much of the planet. Like the scientific community, insurance companies are becoming interested in the question of global warming. The risks of economic and political instability due to extreme weather event, rising sea levels, droughts, etc. are too great to ignore. It is curious that the strongest recent evidence for the connection between rare atmospheric gasses and global climate came from a cooling event. In June 1991 Pinatubo, a volcano in the Philippines, erupted explosively and sent 25-30 million tons of sulfate aerosol into the upper atmosphere. Jim Hansen, head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, predicted that the eruption would cause a cooling of 0.5C compared with the year before Pinatubo. Satellite-measured temperatures of the lower atmosphere confirmed a depression of 0.6C compared with 1991.

BAD SCIENCE Nothing is more irredeemably irrelevant than bad science. -John Charles Polanyi

We have considered pseudoscience in which unscientific ideas are pursued as though they were scientific. They push back against the scientific establishment with claims of conspiracy and short- sightedness with supporting evidence based on anecdotes, fake histories, and unfalsifiable hypotheses. In this case the scientific community does not allow bogus ideas and methods to become part of the grand conversation contained in the scientific literature. In other cases, strong external forces (e.g. governments, economic interests, etc.) interfere with and attempt to manipulate the findings of good scientific work. There are other categories of bad science aside from pseudoscience, which include junk science and fraudulent science. Junk science is sloppy science. That is, sample sizes are small or inconsistent and methods, though appropriate to the scientific program are often influenced by conformational bias or the search for confirming data and ignoring that which does not fit a preconception. Fraudulent science typically is the result of fabricated data and undisclosed financial support. Sometimes, both junk science and fraudulent science are manifest in the same extended program. To illustrate these two forms of bad science, consider the claims of cold fusion and the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine-autism connection. In 1989 Martin Fleishmann and Stanley Pons made a startling announcement. They presented evidence for the production of energy through a nuclear fusion reaction. The importance of this claim is the possibility of almost unlimited energy with little or no environmental impact. Nuclear fusion is the energy that drives the sun and other stars. In the case of the sun, though, hydrogen nuclei have to be compressed by the gravitational mass of the sun and heated to many millions of degrees to overcome the mutual repulsive force of positively charged nuclei to bind and release energy. We have been successful at generating uncontrolled fusion reactions, but those are called thermonuclear bombs. The safe and controlled release of fusion- generated energy would seem to require the creation of a mini solar core. Fleishmann and Pons claimed to have devised a method to create nuclear fusion at room temperature. Other laboratories immediately jumped on the cold fusion bandwagon, but the results of Fleishmann and Pons could not be repeated. The flash of research lasted only about a year. By 1990, few papers were published on the topic, and the scientific community began to question the line of cold fusion research. It appeared that Fleishmann and Pons had been seduced by wishful thinking which biased their interpretations of the results. New papers on cold fusion soon were refused by editors of physical journals. Andrew Wakefield and his collaborators published their results in 1998, in the prestigious British medical journal, Lancet. Their conclusions purported to provide evidence that there was a connection between MMR vaccine and autism. Because of the conclusions their paper was widely received but with

5 little skepticism. The press took the concept and ran with it. It then called into question all vaccines and their safety. What did Wakefield et al. (1998) actually present and what methods were employed to generate their conclusions? First, they showed that MMR vaccine and the onset of autism were correlated. The difficulty is that the MMR vaccine is typically administered soon after birth and autusm begins to manifest itself early in life. In other words, this is a case of correlation but not necessarily causation. Their work would have been strengthened if they had a large sample size, but their sample size was only 12, hardly large enough to establish the basis of causation much less the wholesale rejection of MMR and other vaccines as valuable therapeutic tools. Other researchers were not able to establish a link between MMR and autism. Then, in 2004, 10 of the 12 authors on the paper retracted their interpretation saying that there was no causal link. That was swiftly followed by the discovery that Wakefield had been funded by lawyers for parents who had filed suit against pharmaceutical companies. If that is not enough, evidence was uncovered that suggested Wakefield had intentionally removed or falsified data to satisfy his funders. Lancet finally retracted the paper in 2010. In the case of cold fusion, the scientific community did what it was supposed to do. The extraordinary claim was tested and found wanting. They seem to have been led astray by confirmation bias, and their line of research disappeared quickly when it could not be repeated. There was no real impact on physics. The same cannot be said for the damage inflicted by Andrew Wakefield. Not only was his research junk science (low numbers of subjects, inconsistent methodology), but he engaged in fraud when he falsified, distorted, and eliminated data. Somehow, he appealed to some who took up the cause very vocally and have perpetuated an antivaxxer movement which has led to outbreaks of measles in the UK and the USA. Clearly, the Andrew Wakefield saga is not over. His rejection by the academic community as well as the scientific community has brought on cries of coverup and conspiracy theories involving big pharma. The gullible antivaxx supporters have moved Wakefield from bad science (both junk science and fraud) to pseudoscience.

THE MENTAL TOOL KIT Debunking bad science should be constant obligation of the science community, even if it takes time away from serious research or seems to be a losing battle. One takes comfort from the fact there is no Gresham's laws in science7. In the long run, good science drives out bad. -Martin Gardner

In The Demon-Haunted World Carl Sagan gives many examples of pseudoscience and bad science. He also attempts to provide a set of rules to be followed when evaluating claims. He called his eight rules the Baloney Detection Kit which he created to use in evaluating various claims made by the pseudosciences. Among his rules the most important one is the requirement for independent confirmation of the facts. The connections between smoking and lung cancer as well as the growing body of support for anthropogenic climate change and been supported independently again and again. This is the role of the scientific community. External interference in the science by the tobacco industry or fossil fuel interests can have an impact for a time. The gullible can be persuaded for a time, but nature is what it is and does not care what anyone thinks. It is the purpose of science to explain, not to invent nature. The independent examination of cold fusion led to its rapid elimination from the great conversation except as a cautionary footnote. The Wakefield debacle should be most alarming. Here is a researcher who broke all the rules for a scientific research program. As far as science goes, he has become irrelevant except for those who have to debunk the claims made by his followers who also hold some responsibility for those who have become ill or died of measles, a very preventable disease. When I consider novel claims about nature, I have to keep asking myself, “Am I looking at a weather balloon or a U.F.O? Am I gullible when it comes to a particular claim? Is that claim an appropriate, rational explanation for the phenomenon in question? If I am to be turned to a novel explanation, it will be by rational argument and appropriate interpretation of observations. It is only by this way of thinking that I can protect myself from a demon-haunted world. -1996, revised 2021

7 Gresham’s law is a principle in economics which, simply stated is bad money drives out good money.

6 References: Carroll, R.T. 2003. The Skeptic’s Dictionary. John Wiley and Sons, Inc. New York. Collins, M., R. Knutti, J. Arblaster, J.-L. Dufresne, T. Fichefet, P. Friedlingstein, X. Gao, W.J. Gutowski, T. Johns, G. Krinner, M. Shongwe, C. Tebaldi, A.J. Weaver and M. Wehner, 2013: Long-term Climate Change: Projections, Commitments and Irreversibility. In: Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Stocker, T.F., D. Qin, G.-K. Plattner, M. Tignor, S.K. Allen, J. Boschung, A. Nauels, Y. Xia, V. Bex and P.M. Midgley (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA. Easterbrook, G. 1995. A Moment on the Earth, the Upcoming Age of Environmental Optimism. Penguin Books. New York. Flavin, C. 1996. Facing Up to the Risks of Climate Change. In: L. Brown et al. State of the World 1996. W.W. Norton and Co. New York. pp 21-39. Fleishmann, M. and S. Pons. 1989. Electrochemically induced nuclear fusion of deuterium. Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry. 261:301-308. Gilovich, T. 1991. How We Know What Isn’t So. The Free Press. New York. Goody, R. 1995. Principles of Atmospheric Physics and Chemistry. Oxford University Press. New York. Kerr, R.A. 1993. Pinatubo Global Cooling on Target. Science 259: 594. Hazen, R.M. and J. Trefil. 2009. Science Matters. 2nd edition. Anchor Books. New York. Mann, M.E., R.S. Bradley, and M.K. Hughes. 1998. Global-scale temperature patterns and climate forcing over the past six centuries. Nature. 392: 770-787. Mann, M.E., R.S. Bradley, and M.K. Hughes.1999. Northern Hemisphere temperatures during the past millennium: inferences, uncertainties, and limitations. Geophysical Research Letters. 26(6): 759-762. Novella, S. 2018. The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe. Grand Central Publishing. New York. Paulos, J.A. 1995. A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper. BasicBooks. New York. Pendick, D. 1996. Hurricane Mean Season. Earth 5(3): 24-32. Pigliucci, M. 2010. Nonsense on Stilts, How to Tell Science from Bunk. University of Chicago Press. Chicago. Randi, J. 1982. Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns and Other Delusions. Prometheus Books. Lanham, MD. Sagan, C. 1995. The Demon-Haunted World, Science as a Candle in the Dark. Random House. New York. Sathyanarayana Rao, T.S. and C. Andrade. 2011. The MMR vaccine and autism: sensation, refutation, retraction, and fraud. Indian Journal of Psychiatry. 53: 95-96. Trefil, J. and R. Hazen. 1995. The Sciences, An Integrated Approach. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. New York. Wakefield A.J., S.H. Murch, A. Anthony, J. Linnell, D.M. Casson, M. Malik, M. Berelowitz, A.P. Dhillon, M.A. Thomson, P. Harvey, A. Valentine, S.E. Davies, and J.A. Walker. 1998. Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children. Lancet. 351:637– 641. Zimmer, C. 1995. El Grande. Discover 16(1): 68. Zimring, J.C. 2019. What Science is and How it Really Works. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge.

7 Questions to Think About

1. What is pseudoscience? Why is it more like a religion?

2. Why is UFology a pseudoscience?

3. How are pseudoscience, junk science, and fraudulent science different? How can each one be dangerous?

4. Why is fraudulent science difficult to detect?

5. What is the most effective greenhouse gas in the atmosphere?

6. What evidence exists for climate change due to anthropogenic greenhouse gasses?

7. How did the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991 serve to confirm some of the predictions concerning global warming?

8. In what ways are scientists skeptics?

9. How did the work of Andrew Wakefield ‘break all the rules of science’?

10. Why was the work of Pons and Fleishmann not considered to be pseudoscience?