There must be nothing worse than to find, after a…
April 29, 2010
There must be nothing worse than to find, after a couple of decades of academic graft and that there is a whole world of ideas out there of incomparable pedigree that has become inaccessible. What of quasi-science and the bits that fall off Jupiter?
That too is a product of the hatred, but in a slightly different form from mere rejection.
It is not too awful to be confronted with people cleverer than oneself (in science journalism it happens quite a lot) but it is intolerable to share the world with people who apparently are party to bodies of knowledge and ways of thinking that make all one’s own ideas seem petty.
Whole tribes of proud and even magnificent people have at times sat down and died for no other reason than that their ancient culture has been exposed, even briefly and to one that seems to belong to a superior order.
To be confronted with modern science, and to have no route into it, is an awesome affront to human dignity, just as the transistor radio is an affront to many an ancient faith.
One response to this affront is to erect an alternative system of belief; to fabricate another, esoteric world of ideas that seems to challenge and in turn to trivialise the ideas that are proving so bothersome.
So, if modern orthodox astronomy seems esoteric and omniscient, let’s erect alternative theories of astronomy that are no less esoteric, and which challenge the claim to omniscience.
Immanuel Yelikovsky’s idea that the Earth stopped rotating in Old Testament times is attractive, as Martin Gardner points out in his recent Science, Good, Bad and Bogus , because it seems to verify the Old Testament.
But it is also attractive, just as Ron Hubbard’s dianetics or Wilhelm Reich’s orgone theories are attractive, because it seems capable of grasping great truths while casting orthodox science in the role of the lame and purblind also-ran.
The hatred of science among educated people might, in a hundred years, fade into history: a quaint phenomenon of the 20th century. Quasi-science will remain as a perpetual epiphenomenon.
A decade (and more!) of pseudoscience
David Whitehouse believes scientists should take up the cudgels
A DOCUMENTARY programme from NBC-TV in January 1973, had such an impact that in the following 48 hours more than a quarter of a million copies of the associated book were sold.
The book was Chariots of the Gods and the Erich Von Daniken circus of controversy was opened for business. Von Daniken claims that our ancestors were visited by alien intelligences. His hypothesis, while unlikely, is neither logically nor physically impossible.
Many scientists believe that the Earth is not the only place in the Universe inhabited by intelligent life and so much so that radio telescopes are being used to search for them.
But Von Daniken, like others of his creed, believes that evidence of spacemen already exists on Earth.
His assertion is that our ancestors were too stupid to have created the most impressive of surviving ancient architectural and artistic works.
Few books can have captured so powerfully and quickly the imagination and appealed to the religious yearnings of a gullible public than Chariots of the Gods and its successors.
The Swiss-born amateur archaeologist has probably sold 40 million copies worldwide.
But in none of these books is there any hard evidence for the thesis it presents.
However, addition of a synergist such as triphenyl phosphate (TPP) can overcome this resistance, probably by competing with the malathion and saturating the carboxylesterase enzyme (Pesticide Biochemistry and Physiology , vol 17, p 149).
Further work in collaboration with G. P. Geoghiou of the University of California has shown that organophosphate resistance in Culex quinquefasciatus , a common nuisance mosquito and vector of filariasis, can also be suppressed by the addition of synergists such TPP, DEF (a defoliant) or the fungicide Kitazin (IBP).
During selection with malathion and IBP and resistance gene frequency of a stock of Culex quinquefasciatus decreased at the same rate as untreated mosquitoes, whereas with malathion alone the resistance gene frequency increased fourfold in three generations.
Field applications of malathion and IBP could therefore delay the onset of resistance or even reduce the frequency of resistant genes already present.
Kitazin does increase the mammalian toxicity of malathion approximately eightfold, but even at this level malathion would remain amongst the less hazardous insecticides. The thinning of the British hare
HARES are steadily disappearing from the British countryside and say researchers at the Game Conservancy in Hampshire. Modern agricultural practices are mostly to blame, it seems.
Dr Richard Barnes, funded by the Natural Environment Research Council, and Dr Stephen Tapper of the Game Conservancy, have documented the decline by looking at hunting records. Before 1965 hunters bagged 10 hares per sq.
km, on average every year, but by 1980 only five hares were shot for every sq. km.
Declines in East Anglia are even more striking.
Predators and bad weather have helped to halve the number of British hares.
Hares make up some 20 to 30 per cent of a rural fox’s diet, and foxes have increased by three-fold over the last 20 years. But the main culprit seems to be modern farming techniques.
Barnes radiotracked a group of hares living on Hampshire farmland and found that the animals are very selective foragers.
A hare feeds only very briefly on any given crop ” it will visit winter wheat, for instance, only in late February or early March, when the corn is still short and growing rapidly.
For the rest of the year it will look elsewhere for its food and timing its trips to turnips or spring wheats with equal finesse .
Over a year a hare may travel over an area as large as 50 hectares, in search of the right food.
To satisfy its taste for diversity, a hare tries to pick an area where it has access to half a dozen fields.
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