Readers here hardly need to be reminded, but the New Scientist has
not always been kind to cold fusion. Here is the text from another
article they published. As far as I know, they did not publish a
single one of the many letters from cold fusion advocates that
criticized this article.
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Magazine section: This Week
Forum: When the lights of reason go out - Francis Slakey ponders the
faces of fantasy and New Age scientists
New Scientist vol 139 issue 1890 - 11 September 93, page 49
Reason suffered a dramatic suicide five months ago. When the smoke
cleared in Waco, Texas, on 20 April, it became apparent that the
victims all had one thing in common: intelligence. The intellectual
profile of the typical Branch Davidian - or the average cult member
for that matter - is college educated and has an above average IQ. It
was the US nation's accountants, lawyers and scientists who burned
that day in Waco. The nation's shoeshiners just watched the flames on
television. Intelligent people lit that match - reason went up in
smoke that day.
Reason suffers an anticlimactic death nearly every day. A recent
survey found that in Britain, one in two people believe in faith
healing and one in three consult astrology charts. In the US, one in
three believes that he or she has spoken with a dead relative and one
in five believes that a rabbit's foot will bring them good luck. And
in Denver, Colorado, 150 people are counselled each day on the Mystic
Quest Psychic Center's phone line.
With each fantastical belief, objectivity is dulled and science is
discarded. But these are not the fantasies of a vacuous popular
culture. These antiscience fantasies invade the halls of academe,
even the halls of science. Some university professors believe in 'the
power of the pyramid' and even some astrophysicists believe that the
Universe is only a few thousand years old. But there are more
sophisticated and insidious forms of antiscience.
According to John Lukacs, author of The End of the Twentieth Century
and the End of the Modern Age, 'it is not given to humans to explain
everything'. Scientists simply cannot squeeze all the energy of the
Universe into a single formula. In Lukacs view of history, Democritus
failed in the 5th century; Goethe admonished scientists for trying in
the 18th century; and in the 21st century people will laugh over our
attempts today. Ignorance, it seems, is our destiny - it is not given
to us to explain the Universe any more than it is given to us to
explain the hole in a doughnut. And with observations like that, one
wonders what Lukacs would would be like as a food critic.
To some antiscience intellectuals, traditional science is more likely
a path to an abyss than a path to the truth. Vaclav Havel, the Czech
president and an eloquent postmodern philosopher, gave an inspired
rejection of objectivity and science in The End of the Modern Era:
'Modern thought - based on the premise that the world is objectively
knowable, and that the knowledge so obtained can be absolutely
generalised - has come to a final crisis. This era has created the
first technical civilisation, but it has reached the point beyond
which the abyss begins. Soul, individual spirituality, and above all,
trust in his own subjectivity as his principal link with the world -
these are the qualities that politicians should cultivate.'
This is the elegant and modern fashion in thought: reject objective
reason and question the value of science, embrace subjectivity and
trust your feelings. According to antiscience intellectuals,
contemporary science has taken us maddeningly close to the edge of
the abyss and it will take us over the edge if we aren't careful.
But it is the abandonment of objectivity, not the practice of
science, which leads to the abyss. The idiosyncratic element of
thought that Havel should doubt is the element he trusts - sentiment.
The element of thought that Havel should rigorously apply is the
element he rejects - objective reason. His advice is to look to your
own feelings and emotions, your own soul and spirit. And this is the
thought that stops all thought. In trying to free humanity's head
from what he considers to be the bonds of objective reason, Havel
pulls the head clean off. What Havel's philosophy overlooks is that
the bonds of reason are precisely what keep the head in place.
So Havel has unwittingly become a kind of philosophical Jack
Kevorkian - the American doctor who advocates helping terminally ill
patients to commit suicide. But Havel's brand of help is for all who
would rely on astrologers and psychics or icons and cult figures. He
tells them that it is all right to switch off reason and trust
feelings. He offers a slow and painless brain death by serenading
objectivity to lasting sleep. However, Havel wasn't the first to
promote subjectivity over objective reason and science:
'We stand at the end of the Age of Reason. A new era of the magical
explanation of the world is rising. There is no truth, in the
scientific sense. That which is called the crisis of science is
nothing more than that the gentlemen are beginning to see on their
own how they have gotten onto the wrong track with their
objectivity.' This quotation is from Gesprache mit Hitler by Herman
Raschning. The theme, even many of the words, are identical to
Havel's. And the consequences of Hitler's words are well known. His
minions, captivated by the fantasy of superiority, shut down their
reason and objectivity and took Europe to the edge of the abyss.
And what about Koresh and the Branch Davidians? They were reasonable
people who were persuaded to dispense with reason. Koresh won their
faith using rhetoric similar to Havel's. Koresh warned of a 'decaying
society' and predicted an 'end to the world'. Havel warns that our
corrupted 'technical civilisation' stands at 'the abyss', and he
predicts an 'end of the modern age as a hole'. Koresh offered the
individual spiritual salvation of the 'new light'; Havel suggests
that 'individual spirituality' and a 'new face' will be our
salvation. Koresh incited a band of 'Mighty men'; Havel is enkindling
a group of 'Postmodern politicians'.
The scientists, lawyers and accountants were captivated by Koresh's
ideas. They become Davidians and switched off their reason. The
lights went out. All that remained was faith in Koresh and the dark
fantasies he preached. Then they lit a match to guide them to where
they were going.
Sometimes the faithful don't completely turn off their reason. They
become captive to a fantasy they hear in one ear, but listen for
science with the other ear. So begins a deterioration that dims the
wits but leaves a zealous heart beating - the result is a cult of
fervent halfwits. Some of them believe the Universe is only 6000
years old. Some sing praises to satellites. Some claim to fuse
hydrogen in a jar.
Cloistered in southern France are the cold fusion team of Martin
Fleischman and B. Stanley Pons. While every result and conclusion
they publish meets with overwhelming scientific evidence to the
contrary, they resolutely pursue their illusion of fusing hydrogen in
a mason jar. They warn of fireballs that will be hurled from
closed-cell experiments. They promise to produce an energy source by
the end of the year that can power a home for 10 000 years. And a few
scientists, captivated by the team's fantasy and exile, pursue cold
fusion with Branch Davidian intensity.
Some of the antiscience faithful don't require a human leader, a
photograph does just fine. Recently, scientists reported the results
of their investigation of the thermal residue of the Big Bang. The
image they produced from the Cosmic Background Explorer satellite was
so fascinating that it led the head mission scientist to exclaim
'It's like looking at the face of God!' That was all it took to
arouse the zealous hearts of the New Age scientists.
At a scientific conference sponsored by the American Association for
the Advancement of Science last February, the New Age scientists
reflected on the COBE results. One educator performed 'The
Handwriting of God, a musical exploration of the techno-mythical
implication of the fluctuations discovered by the COBE satellite'.
Another scholar discussed the need to develop an 'Earth cult' devoted
to the study of the spiritual significance of the COBE results. But
she was taken to task by a scholar who insisted that the name might
offend life forms in other galaxies. They settled on the name 'Universe cult'.
How can we possibly prevent the death of reason? The educated class
is joining the cults and pursuing antiscience fantasies, so it seems
that we are not educating very effectively, and popular culture is
embracing the fanciful, so clearly science and reason are not
sufficiently popular. We must defend science against superstition and
subjectivity, and elevate scepticism over faith. We must demand
rigorous explanations and be prepared and eager to doubt them. Only
alert objectivity can prevent the death of reason.
Francis Slakey is the Science Policy Administrator for the American
Physical Society, and an Adjunct Professor of Physics at Georgetown
University.
FRANCIS SLAKEY
