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GARDNER
May 14, 2002
"Fads & Fallacies
In The Name Of Science"
- Martin Gardner (1952)
A collection of short essays
describing various
irrational, pseudo-scientific
beliefs extant around the
beginning of the fifties.
A quick run-through of flat
earthers, flying saucers,
dowsing, and so on, plus a
number of other odd beliefs
that are more obscure.
Gardner has a two-fold
purpose here:
(1) he's writing to
entertain, and these
descriptions of whacky
beliefs are supposed to be
amusing.
(2) He also has a serious
concern that we may be living
in an age of an upswing in
irrationality, and that it's
important to study this
syndrome, to be on guard
against it.
Now myself, I'm very much a
hardcore rationalist.
I have a strong suspicion
that there is no such thing
as a "harmless delusion" (though I don't claim
to have a proof of
And the idea of objective that proposition). TRUTH
truth strikes me as fairly
close to being objectively
true.
PRETTY_TRUE
So I'm very much on Martin Gardner's side
(and the side of the CSICOPs in general)... CSICOP
*Every* case Gardner cites
as crazy pseudo-science, I'm
completely convinced that he's
called it right -- with *one*
exception -- want to guess which
one? No, it isn't chiropractors.
EXCEPTION
(It might be nice
to provide a listing,
a multiple choice
menu. But that
would be pretty long...)
But... I have my doubts that
Gardner is the best soldier
in the cause. He doesn't
really approach things with
an open mind, which gives the
true believers grounds to
shrug off anything he says.
There are serious problems
in "epistemology" that
could be addressed here, I'm not talking about the
but he just insists that traditional obsessions of
there's no need to get classical western philosophy, e.g.
into that with opinions as "How do you know you exist? How
obviously nutty as these. do you know the external world
exists?". To most of us
that just looks like a silly
intellectual game (the real
answer being that to suppose
the contrary just isn't very
interesting).
Instead of "how do you
know what you know?",
the question here is
"How do *we* know what Maybe this should
*we* know?" be called "social
epistemology" (and
maybe it is, for
all I know).
The acquisition of scientific
knowledge is very much a social
process, and at the core are
questions about who you trust.
It's easy enough to argue that all
scientists should be open to new
ideas from all quarters, but in
practice that would be an absurd
waste of time.
The dream: The reality:
"Of course I'll "Most things that look
talk to him. I'll like nonsense really
talk to anybody." *are* nonsense."
-- Dr. Who -- Max Dresden
It's literally impossible to
treat every assertion with a
completely open mind.
So scientists pay attention And similarly, someone outside
solely to accredited of the sciences can't possibly
colleagues with similar take the time to evaluate
academic backgrounds... with scientific argument --
the obvious risk that they not even when it addresses
may get lost in unchallenged critical public policy issues.
unconscious assumptions and
"group think".
This is in fact a *really* nasty
problem, with no easy resolution
that I know of.
NEED_TO_KNOW
Martin Gardner seems to expect
people to just relax and trust the
authority figures, but that's
obviously unsatisfactory to any
adult with an once of spirit. (Even if it is
a good rule of
The reason so many madmen and thumb most of
con-artists can get as far as the time.)
they do with a pose like
outsider-genius-suppressed-by-the-
hidebound-orthodox-establishment-
interested-in-preserving-
their-hegemony is that this
actually isn't all that
implausible a scenario.
Martin Gardner would warn you
against the tendency of crack
pots to work selectively with
the data, but he himself does
a lot of selection. He
consciously avoids
"borderline" cases and tries
to talk only about the clearly
crazy.
But if you encounter some odd
belief, how is Gardner's
survey of the extreme supposed
to be of help? How do you
know if you're looking at a
borderline case? If the idea
is that Gardner is trying to
come up with a set of warning
signs to watch out for, then
isn't the study incomplete
without checking these warning
signs against the borderline Consider Ted Nelson: high
cases, to see if your bullshit opinion of himself, heavily
detector might yield some critical of the authorities in
false positives? computer UI design, little
background of formal study in
the field, tendency to indulge
Martin Gardner also indulges in neologisms... but one of
in selection of the data when his neologisms was
he talks about the craziest "hypertext". His ideas pretty
aspects of his subjects. clearly influenced the
These days, most people expect creation of the World Wide Web
nothing of chiropractors (though sometimes indirectly).
except that they can help you The Tim Berners-Lee book
feel better if you've hurt labels him a "professional
your back -- now as it visionary".
happens, I expect that this
limited expectation is quite
possibly in error, and I think
*that's* the case you need to (I like the book
make if you want to discredit "9 Crazy Ideas in Science"
chiropractors. Pointing out by Robert Ehrlich...
that in the early days you an attempt at seriously
could find chiropractors with evaluating some "crazy"
nuttier claims is mostly claims. Too bad there
besides the point. aren't more books like
this.)
CRAZYIDEAS
If it's fair game to judge people by
the *worst* things they've ever said,
then you need to get rid of guys like
Kepler and Newton, who in addition to
doing classic work of science also
came up with some godawful nonsense
(in Kepler's case, he kept insisting
the layout of the solar system
mirrored the structure of a set of
nested perfect solids; and Newton was
famously interested in alchemy).
One thing I found myself wondering:
Where's the chapter on Freud? Or
for that matter Christianity? (Though there is a chapter
on fundamentalists vs.
Isn't there something unfair geology and evolution...)
about making fun of only the
unpopular, uncontroversial
forms of irrationality? If
you're really worried about
these things becoming a mass
movement, shouldn't you work But then there's some signs
on the ones that really have that Gardner was a true
become a mass movement? believer in Freud.
FREUDS_GARDNER
I find myself wondering
how Gardner felt later
about McCarthyism.
He's haunted by the
fear of an epidemic of
irrationality that might
lead to a new fascist era...
Did he recognize
McCarthyism as
that era?
Or did his
"trust the
establishment"
reflex kick in?
Gardner repeatedly sounds the
alarm about an increasing
trend toward irrationality, a
dumbing down of the public.
Is there any evidence that
this is really the case?
There's always been a certain
amount of superstition.
If there was a golden age of
reason, it was a pretty brief
era on the scale of history.
Found an interview of Gardner at
csicop.org. He mentions
that he was originally
something of a fundamentalist,
and was taken in by Price,
until he learned some geology.
So: that's the psychological
motivation? He's taking
his revenge.
He says that he regrets
having spent so much
time in the debunking
business, which I can
fully understand.
A thankless task, and maybe
I should be thanking that someone
as good as Gardner took it on
rather than complaining that he's
not better.
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