Saturday, Jul 19, 2008
Does the debunker need debunking? Plus: Up with the Sponge! "Mission to Mars" doesn't get off the ground.
Mar 20, 2000 |
The Scrooge of science
BY JENNIFER OUELLETTE
(03/15/00)
Robert Park is not a "Scrooge of Science" but a Scourge of Pseudoscience, one of only a few people in North America with the knowledge, intelligence and courage to speak out about scientific irrationality and to encourage people to think critically -- about everything. The human mind distorts and confabulates to a remarkable degree. None of us is immune from wishful thinking and reality distortion. Unless we are on our guard constantly, we can be taken in quite easily. Therefore Park is so right to encourage us to regard strange and unlikely claims with great skepticism. Far from a Scrooge, he is inheriting the mantle of other great realists such as Houdini and Sagan.
The physician quoted in the review has his own distortions yet to be dealt with, and there are few people in position to do more harm than physicians who are not anchored in reality -- only politicians can do more harm. And now it looks like more is coming from, of all places, the White House, with a new commission on "alternative medicine" whose makeup has already been decided. Politics and scientific reality distortion in a deadly combination. Way to go, Dr. Park.
-- Wallace Sampson, M.D.
editor, The Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine
I was much heartened by the response of Nicholas Nossaman to skeptical carping of physicist Robert Park. As Nossaman said "I don't care if Bob Park is convinced or not. All I care about is that people get better."
How true. I myself do not care if Park rejects alien abductions and creationism. All I care about is that the aliens told me that they love me and that God created the world last Tuesday.
-- Alan Donald
What amazes me about people like Park is their apparent lack of any shred of historical perspective. What was accepted scientific fact in the past is commonly now known to be utterly false. And yet, inherent in Park's smug insistence in the correctness of today's know scientific facts is the underlying assumption that we have reached some sort of final epoch in the sciences that future generations will not rewrite. Even more amazing, to my mind, is when scientists childishly equate a lack of proof with a demonstration of falsehood. Talk about pseudoscience!
-- Matthew Anderson
What may have escaped your, and certainly Park's, attention is that the simple fact that he was shocked to have "seen" a UFO while driving near Roswell, N.M., is proof that he had also described himself when he said, "They judge science by how well it agrees with the way they want the world to be." If he was sincerely looking for the truth, as every scientist should, he may have been mildly surprised, at the most. But, by his own account, he revealed his bias, which no competent researcher should have.
-- Patrick Dalton
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