From: ydobyns@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (York H. Dobyns)
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: Consensus: Too Sluggish or Too Hasty?
Summary: Weird is in the eye of the beholder
Date: 9 Apr 92 20:36:26 GMT
Article-I.D.: Princeto.1992Apr9.203626.8724
Distribution: na
Organization: Princeton University
Originator: news@ernie.Princeton.EDU

(An incomplete version of this followup may have been posted by mistake
due to an ethernet problem in the middle of the editing session. If so,
apologies.)

In article <22557@dog.ee.lbl.gov> sichase@csa2.lbl.gov writes:
>In article <1992Apr7.165901.25348@Princeton.EDU>, ydobyns@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (York H. Dobyns) writes...
>>In article <22483@dog.ee.lbl.gov> sichase@csa2.lbl.gov writes:

[contention that mainstream science has about the right degree of
conservatism and "prejudice"]

>> 
>>Have you ever read Stephen Jay Gould's "The Mismeasure of Man"?
>> 
>
>Finally, a good example.  Yes, I must allow that exception.  However, for
>fairness, I add the following few caveats (#3 is the most important).

[Caveat 1: deleted, as I don't want to get into an argument about the
merits of IQ scoring]

>(2) The example you give is a emotionally charged.  Many people make wierd
>claims  (perpetual motion, vacuum energy, PSI, Relativity is wrong, etc.) 
>which have no societal implications, and for which there is no a priori
>reason for scientists to act irrationally about.  

I have to disagree with almost every clause in this sentence. First of
all, you refute it in your next statement:

>I go ballistic every time 
>someone tells me that scientists are suppressing evidence of UFO's or perpetual
>motion machines, or whatever.  

Going ballistic is rational? You've just put your finger on one very
good a priori reason: some of these extraordinary claims are tantamount
to accusations of negligence, stupidity, or outright malice against the
scientific community.  It's only natural for scientists to resent such
slurs.

To get back to your initial comments, first of all these "weird" topics
can be every bit as emotionally charged as the issue of race prejudice.
PSI, for example, could conceivably bear on questions of spirituality
and/or a verifiable afterlife--issues of great emotional importance to
much of the human race. It likewise has huge societal implications, at
least in potential--consider what kind of social mechanisms would
be needed to cope with "telepathy boxes" available at the corner drugstore. 
(Note for the overly literal: I'm discussing hypothetical cases here!)

Are perpetual motion/vacuum energy claims "weird"? Boyer's crowd has
been publishing stochastic electrodynamics (SED) papers for years,
in Phys Rev yet; if you believe SED, the zero-point background is a
*real, physical* background of *classical* radiation (and "quantum"
effects like the uncertainty principle are the result of this real
background radiation impinging on classical particles) which no a priori
principle prevents tapping. Does this qualify as weird? It certainly
seems to suggest a certain maliciousness on the part of reality. But
the SED enthusiasts have pointed out that if Planck had postulated the
radiation background--essentially tantamount to postulating that the
Jeans ultraviolet catastrophe has already occurred, everywhere, in the
indefinite past--instead of quantized radiation emission, he'd have
gotten the same formula for blackbody radiation, and the whole
edifice of quantum mechanics might never have occurred to anyone.
From Planck's classical perspective, that approach might even have
made more *sense* than this arbitrary postulate of quantized radiation.
We might today be working with a physics in which Planck's constant
is an empirical parameter set by the intensity of the radiation
background, rather than an arbitrary constant of nature whose value 
must be accepted as given.

>(3) Your example was not one of scientists being "too critical" or too 
>unaccepting, but rather the opposite.  People jumped on an attractive
>bandwagon.  So, my statement (above) stands unmodified, and your example is 
>proof that we probably should be even more critical and hypersensitive to new
>claims than we already are.
>

You describe (3) as your most important caveat, and it's the point that
I disagree with most strongly. The cases Gould cites are of scientists
being too willing to accept established wisdom; they accepted evidence
that confirmed things they already "knew"--such as that men were smarter
than women, etc.--and were hypercritical of evidence that threatened
what they "knew". It may be a case of jumping on an attractive bandwagon,
but the analogous bandwagon today is the established consensus, not the
fringe theories. Remember, in the 19th century, racial equality was a
weird, fringe idea that only a few crackpots took seriously. Scientists
didn't start from a pristine state of unbiased egalitarianism and flock
towards racist ideologies to fatten their egos; they were (for the most
part) well-off white males who already "knew" in the marrow of their
bones that white males were the pinnacle of Creation.

Yes, the racism is an overly charged example. But, just to cite topics
that have already come up in this thread, consider the vituperation and
ridicule involved in continental drift arguments in the 50's, or impact-
theory arguments in the 80's; whether the intensity of emotional
commitment to theory is *rational*, it's certainly *there*.

York Dobyns 	ydobyns@phoenix.princeton.edu
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic,soc.men