The Undergrowth of Science: Delusion, Self- Deception and Human Frailty

By Walter Gratzer

Book Overview

We think of scientists as sober, precise thinkers, but they can be wildly off the mark. Consider cold fusion, N-rays, or polywater--three "discoveries" that turned out to be complete nonsense. But serious scientists somehow convinced themselves that they were real.
In The Undergrowth of Science, Walter Gratzer recounts the blind alleys that honest, dedicated researchers have wandered down--and had to be dragged out of by more cool-headed colleagues. Self-deception runs through each of Gratzer's many examples, a distressing if sometimes hilarious theme. We meet the American researchers who convinced themselves that memories were captured in RNA molecules; if extracts from the brains of trained rats were injected into the untrained, they argued, the knowledge was passed along. Gratzer also describes the group of serious scientists took up the cause of Uri Geller and assorted 11-year-old children who claimed to have the power to bend spoons with their minds--but only if the observers wanted them to succeed. When less biased researchers saw the children slyly bending the cutlery with their feet, their scientific defenders voiced outrage at the unfairness of the test. Politics sometimes plays a role as well, as it did when the U.S. government spent millions looking into the strange and miraculous Soviet invention of polywater. It turned out to be normal water contaminated with silicates.
Gratzer guides us through the rogue's gallery of false discoveries, from mitogenic radiation to the recent (and infamous) cold fusion. Informative and entertaining, yet with a serious point to make, this book offers much insight into why good science sometimes goes bad.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0198507070
• ISBN13: 9780198507079
• Release Date: November 2000
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 344 Pages
• Weight: 1.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.4" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Research off the rails...

The topic of Gratzer's book is largely confined to what physicist Irving Langmuir properly called "pathological science." In such instances, a scientist supposedly quite capable of doing valid research produces an incredible farrago of nonsensical garbage, usually being seduced into total self-deception by arrogance, political or religious considerations, national pride, or other influences totally irrelevant and completely destructive to the search for truth.With so many topics covered, I think the most useful review is just an outline of what is covered. Chapter 1 covers the most classic instance of pathological science, Blondlot's discovery of "N-Radiation." Chapter 2 discusses many crazy (and wrong) ideas from biology, including radiation emitted by cells, cannibal learning in flatworms, and the like. Chapter 3 covers the Davis-Barnes and Allison effects investigated and exploded by Langmuir. Chapter 4 tells the sad tale of polywater. Chapter 5 is a very unfocussed discussion largely dealing with pseudoscience rather than pathological science--- beginning with Mesmer it winds up with spoonbending children in the labs of British physicists Taylor and Hasted. Chapter 6 deals with cold fusion, Chapter 7 with various idiocies and surgical fads of medicine--- hardly pathological science, since science only began to penetrate medicine during and after WWII, but certainly pathological.Chapter 8 deals mainly with the delusion that scientists in different countries do science differently--- one's own country, of course, is the only one that does it right. Chapter 9 covers the horrifying destruction, first of genetics and then of biology itself, in Stalinist Russia. Chapter 10 is concerned with "race hygiene" and similar perversions of anthropology and human biology, before and during the reign of Hitler, including the Nazi adoption of a crackpot theory of cosmology, the Welteislehre. This long chapter then turns to the persecution of Jewish physicists and mathematicians, and specifically (non-Jewish) physicist Werner Heisenberg. The most frightening account in this chapter, for me, was a description of the way some established scientists who had cooperated fully and enthusiastically with such persecutions, were instantly readmitted to German scientific society immediately after the war, no matter how red their hands or how black their hearts. Chapter 11 deals with "eugenics" and various other fatally oversimplified proposals to breed superior humans.One can see that the book covers a very mixed bag of examples, not many of which are pure instances of pathological science in the Langmuir sense. Homeopathy, for example, is really a kind of "healing religion," having no origins within or support from science, although it did generate some pathological science in the 1980s in France. I found few obvious mistakes, but mistakes are inevitable in a book covering such a wide range of topics. There are some real lulus on page 103--- Puthoff and Ta

Science Mutated

We expect that science will uncover truths about nature, and that scientists will be well trained in observing, recording, and analyzing data with objectivity. Anyone who regards scientific progress over the centuries, and especially in the past century, will find that such expectations are generally met. And yet scientists are human, with all the weaknesses humans are prone to. _The Undergrowth of Science: Delusion, Self-Deception, and Human Frailty_ (Oxford University Press) by Walter Gratzer demonstrates instances where scientists can be susceptible to wishful thinking, patriotic coercion, and self deception. Interestingly, the book does not dwell on cases of fraud; the scientists in the episodes described generally aren't trying to fool anyone, but manage to do so only after fooling themselves.The guiding spirit of this book is Irving Langmuir, a scientist who won a Nobel for his work on surfaces, but who brashly (and offensively to some) pushed his way into the research areas of other scientists. When he wasn't in the lab, he liked to pursue what he called "pathological science." He never wrote about this hobby, and only a transcript of a lecture he gave in 1953 remains, but Langmuir's Rules for spotting pathological science show up all over this book. The rules specify, among other things, that in pathological science, experimental results are very close to the limit of detectability (hardly noticeable, or noticeable at a very low statistical significance); there are claims of great accuracy; explanations are fantastic and contrary to experience; and any criticism of the "science" is met with excuses thought up on the spur of the moment.What has happened to these scientists? Gratzer explains: "The germ of a pathological episode is usually an innocent mistake or an experimental mirage; the perpetrator is persuaded that he has made a great discovery, which will bring him fame and advancement in his profession. Once committed it is difficult to go back and to allow the principles of caution and skepticism that training and experience normally inculcate to overcome the excitement and euphoria of a brilliant success." Among the stories Gratzer covers are N-Rays, polywater, Lysenkoism, the foolish Nazi science of superstition, cold fusion, and more. These stories have all been told before, but it is useful to have them collected here. Gratzer writes for _Nature_ and has a clear style even when the physics gets a little intimidating. The lessons from the collected events should increase our admiration for how well science usually works, but should also remind us that there will always be fringe scientists. It is impossible to tell when the next cold fusion embarrassment will occur, but I hope we will be able to count on mainstream science to counter claims that HIV does not cause AIDS, that the world is less than 10,000 years old, or that people are being regularly abducted by aliens.