-Caveat Lector-
Weird Science
-- Special to ABCNEWS.com
While surfing the Net a few days ago, I
chanced upon the Hume and Bacon
Institute for Alternative Science just
outside Edinburgh, Scotland.
This low-profile research facility has
just published some of its recent findings
in the British science journal Languet
(Vol. 233, 1999). As the details of the
article become known, they will prove
quite startling to many.
In a news conference, Paul A.
Yiannis, the institute’s shy yet
pugnacious director, stated that his staff
had convincingly verified a number of
controversial claims.
UFOs and ESP
The first involves a strange piece of metal
found in Roswell, N.M., where many
believe an alien spacecraft crashed in
1947.
The fragment has quite an amazing
property: It exerts a faint physical
attraction on every information-processing
instrument so far tested. Moreover, this
attraction is nine times as strong one foot
away from the metal as it is one yard
away.
What to make of the fragment’s effect
is open to differing interpretations, but it
can no longer be denied. Yiannis
maintains that the relation of this
phenomenon to the new physics of string
theory will be an active area of research in
the 21st century.
The institute’s article also deals with
psychic readings. It concludes that labs
all over the globe have demonstrated that
psychics are indeed frequently correct in
their assessments of others.
Moreover, there are documented
cases where they have correctly
described the characteristics and life
experiences of dead relatives of subjects.
Yiannis also pointed to the literally
thousands of cases of dreams prefiguring
events that occurred the next day and
mentioned the counterintuitive laws of
quantum mechanics. Determining the
consequences of these laws, he referred
to puckishly as “walking the Planck” —
after the German physicist Max Planck.
Toward the end of the news
conference, Yiannis showily popped a pill
and enthused, “And while I’m at it, I can
state with certainty that the taking of
homeopathic remedies and countless
other alternative remedies is followed
many times by complete remission. This
is especially so after the patient has had
a serious medical crisis. The dismissal of
these claims of remission would be the
act of a closed mind.”
Again the paper contains copious
documentation and personal testimonials.
Math Behind the Miracles?
The institute’s 83-page Languet survey of
alternative science also refers to a report
on the trigonometry and calculus that
practitioners need for astrological and
biorhythmic predictions. Sometimes it’s
considerable, and the claim is made that
many equations and theorems used in
astrology and biorhythmic analysis are
universal truths.
Related to these phenomena, there’s
a brief discussion of the strange
numerological properties of the numbers
23 and 28. The numbers, some believe,
are the periods for a metaphysical male
and a female principle, respectively. They
have the special property that by adding
and subtracting appropriate multiples of
them, one can express any whole number
whatsoever. That is, any number at all
can be written as 23X + 28Y for suitable
choices of X and Y. For example, 6 = (23
x 10) + (28 x -8).
The institute’s paper is evasive on
some issues as, for example, when it
underscores that UFOs are indeed
unidentified flying objects but doesn’t
address the issue of alien abductions.
And some areas of alternative science are
deemed invalid by the institute’s staff.
One of these is phrenology, the belief
that head shape helps determine
personality. Yiannis, however, seemed a
bit self-conscious when answering a
reporter’s question on phrenology.
Onlookers couldn’t help but notice his
small, lumpy, asymmetric head.
The reaction of the scientific
community to Yiannis’ claims in Languet
has been muted so far. I, for one, endorse
his assertions — with a few qualifications
listed below.
A professor of mathematics at Temple
University, John Allen Paulos is the
author, most recently, of Once Upon a
Number. His column for ABCNEWS.com
appears the first day of each month.
Copyright 1999 ABC News Internet
Ventures
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