This article is provided as a public service by the Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks, in cooperation with the UAF research community. Larry Gedney is a seismologist at the Institute. It is sometimes difficult for science to compete with pseudosciences that offer warmth and comfort to human beings. What . . .
Scientists seem to be wedded to uncertainty.
They know that the conclusions they reach must be based on rational evidence and can never be more than tentative. New evidence may quite suddenly overthrow a long-held belief, and the old conclusion must be discarded. That is science. Pseudoscientists, however, cling to conclusions with bone-crushing ferocity. Perkins' theory was that metals draw diseases out of the body.