Michael Crichton is a doctor, a best-selling author, and unfairly good-looking. He also gets to make a fortune both writing science fiction horror novels and at the same time debunking science “fact” horror stories. Backword Dave calls the Drake Equation “crack cocaine”. It is. Crichton breathed its vapours deeply before he made this famous public attack on junk research.
01Aug04 — 4
Well, um, thanks for the link. I went to bed really mad, having read all of Crichton’s spiel (though I had enough sense not to fire off some emotional response).
I definitely think that the post you linked to was one of my weaker efforts. I couldn’t just say “This is a cool story about sheep.” Oh no, I had to give some background. (Now I understand how Norm could use ‘reductionist’ pejoratively.) OTOH, I really am fascinated by the Drake Equation because I think it touches on scientific explanations for problems which are called, loosely, “existential” or “theological.”
Now if I ran a university (fortuneately I don’t), I’d insist on at least a module of science for theology students, and I’d base it around the Drake Equation. Not because I expect the search for aliens to animate most students, but because the questions about ‘how did we get here?’ ought to be at least known to them. And if you’re going to call something ‘miraculous’ you ought to attempt to discount banal explanations.
The Drake Equation is not, in itself, bad science. When Paul Dirac proposed a particle he dubbed the ‘neutrino’ in 1932, purely as a way to account for a missing factor in the equations, there was no evidence of such a thing, and no reason to suppose, given the oddness of quantum physics, that conservation of “spin” was in any way like conservation of known physical properties like charge of momentum.
As it happened, Dirac was right. I found a very robust experiment in a volume of papers in the dust-covered archive of Cardiff University’s Science Library when I had a part-time job there as an undergrad. But that wasn’t performed until the mid-1950s.
Damian, I don’t think you’re mocking me, but whether you are or not, I should clarify what I think, and why I think Crichton’s a wally, in a post sometime soon. I doubt I’ll do that tonight. But before I go, I’ll guess that you read Crichton’s speech somewhere, and then looked it up on Google when you read my post. I often do something similar: find a hint of something half-forgotten, and then dredge up a reference. However, please read the home page of the link you gave to Crichton, and the red type at the top of the page, which says: ‘”As far as we know, Michael Crichton, author of Jurassic Park, is an evolutionist, however many of his crticisms of mainstream science and it’s political, bullying nature are the same ones we’ve tried to make on these pages…webmaster’ [punctuation, including the unclosed quote, in original].
I’m glad to see that speech didn’t go entirely un-noticed. One aspect he fails to mention is ego. Having been around quite a few research engineers, I can say that ego is quite a large part of it. “What? I can’t be wrong! I’m a scientist!”
He’s right, regardless of whether or not their conclusions are correct, the global warming theory proponents base their entire argument on junk research. Post hoc, ergo propter hoc is the best they can come up with. Extraordinarily complex climate models that predict the global fate and transport of CO2…..that somehow completely ignore the fluxuation of Sol’s output. OR heat island effects. Definitely a case of searching for data to prove your conclusions, instead of looking at data to form a conclusion. Hmmmm, and a report camne out just the other day, something about the sun being at its highest determined radiative output in over a thousand years…… I think that study hit the memory hole in record time, not a word on CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC……
Dave, thanks for the long and thoughtful comment.
You’re right, I just googled up the first readable link I could for the Crichton speech. I should have checked that it wasn’t being hosted by cranks first, but, as I warned PooterGeekers, I’ve been too busy over the past couple of weeks to do long or properly checked posts. I’ll change the link.
I wasn’t mocking you, but I was trying to flag the dangers of the Drake equation. Crichton rightly complains that the kind of superficial rigour it exemplifies is a bigger problem in science. The expression is “like cocaine” in that it makes you feel a lot smarter than you are (or are entitled to be) and in that such approaches are addictive—they offer a big buzz in return for very little actual work. Crichton makes other points too, not all of which I agree with, but, again, I haven’t got time for a proper analysis. And, again, you’re right: the speech is worth one because the questions Crichton discusses are some of the most important we face.
One further thing: peer pressure is one of the most powerful forces known to man. Even scientists are susceptible. I have witnessed consensual illusions take hold of research communities and they are frightening—whether or not the mass beliefs underlying them turn out to be supported by sound data obtained later. WMD anyone?
I don’t think anyone working in military intelligence would refer to it as scientific research. The whole problem of intelligence work is that you have to draw conclusions from very small amounts of very vague data mixed in among huge amounts of immaterial and false data, all in a totally uncontrolled environment, while loads of people try to mislead you. That’s pretty much the opposite of scientific research.
Amazing, when you come to think of it, that they’re correct so often.