Reading such eyebrow-raising articles as “Pennsylvania Man Claims to Burn Salt Water” (see http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,296395,00.html) in the Science News section of the online news, and the Discover Magazine article (Dec 2007) "Water on Fire" nearly makes me weep with frustration.
“Why?” you might ask. “It’s just good for a chuckle…” you might say.
No, it is a symptom – a symptom of the disease that may well kill the great country known as the United States of America.
Science is on a decline; one characterized and accelerated by the basic lack of understanding of what is science and what isn’t.
Nowhere is this trend more evident than in the press, especially that one author by the name of “Associated Press”. He (or she? “Associated” is somewhat gender-neutral…) doesn’t even seem to have the common sense that an eight year old child might be expected to possess – I mean, if I asked any grade school child to burn some water for me, he or she would probably smile and say “Silly! Water doesn’t burn!”
I suppose Associated thought that he/she was being an (please excuse the way-over-used cliché) out-of-the-box thinker by blindly accepting the scientific value of the implication for free energy from seawater inherent in the proclamation.
Which brings us to Check Point One: “It Ain’t Science If It’s Free Energy”
This covers the 100-mpg carburetor for your gas-guzzler, all of the various forms of electrolysis claiming to be energy-from-water technology, and all of the mystery-magnet perpetual motion machines out there (even the ones powered by spiritual sources).
Wishing for something that is against the basic tenants of thermodynamics to be true – even, even if you cross your fingers, isn’t going to make it so.
Second Checkpoint, you can bet real money that if the headlines contain the phrase “Scientists Say…” (a.k.a. “Experts Say”) that the article will not, in fact, be what the person who happened to be working in a field vaguely scientific or in some way associated with something technical (say, like the janitor working in the laboratory during the interview) actually was trying to explain. Let’s summarize Check Point Two as “Real Scientists Say ‘I Don’t Know For Sure’”
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the process of science is one of discovery, as opposed to oracular proclamation of The Truth. That means that any real ‘scientist’ is giving you the best guess we have, but even though the computer model says it won’t rain tomorrow, you’d be smart to bring your umbrella.
This last checkpoint might lead some folks astray. I mean, if scientists aren’t 100% sure, then there’s a chance that Santa really might exist! Yeah, let’s believe in all of our pet favorite fairy tales!! After all, why not?
Any good bookie can tell you – suckers bet against the odds. The real problem here is that folks in general do not really understand the meaning of probability in their day-to-day lives.
My best example is the lottery. I often tell folks that I’d have only a slightly better chance of winning the hoped-for lottery if I actually bought a ticket. This inevitably brings a laugh, and the comment that I can’t win without buying a ticket.
That’s not actually the case, you see. In reality, I might find a ticket – or be given a ticket – and that unpaid-for ticket might be the big winner! Yeah!
What I am trying to convey is the concept that the odds of winning are so very low that reducing them by multiplying the odds of a serendipitous ticket on the ticket-winning odds makes no real difference. A visual example here might help.
I just grabbed the Ohio Lottery ‘Mega Millions’ listed odds for the Big Jackpot, one out of 175,711,536 – or 0.000000005 as rounded off on my calculator. Hey – that’s like -164.8 dB! Uh, sorry – some ‘engineer speak’ slipped in… But back to the visuals: One ticket (for simplicity) out of that stack wins, each ticket is, say 0.02 inches thick which makes the stack of tickets 55 ½ miles high!
Is it clear that the size of something that’s 0.02 inches compared to something that’s 55 ½ miles is close enough to nothing so as not to matter??
Now what if the stack of losing tickets were, say, 5,500 miles tall? Not really any different, right? You’d still be safe calling the relative thickness of the winning ticket ‘zero’. Well, if the odds of getting a free ticket were one out of a hundred, that’s what you’d have…
That’s a lot of verbiage to summarize as Check Point Three: “Science Doesn’t Bet Against The Odds”.
Finally, and very sadly, much touted ‘science’ in the press today is really agenda support. Let me contrast real science with techno-propaganda: a real scientific investigation looks for facts, pro and con, that answer the question “Could reality be like I think it might be?” – and that answer may well be ‘NO’. Techno-propaganda, on the other hand, seeks to prove a specific position.
The key difference is the motivation, a motivation that in the case of techno-propaganda leads to the tendency to exclude/ignore those inconvenient negative points that might prove problematic to the Agenda.
The Check Point Three summary is: “If There’s Money, Beliefs Or Politics At Stake, It Probably Isn’t Real Science”
Notably, those most motivated to report on their results are often the folks with the biggest stake in the actual answer… Foxes are always the first to volunteer for hen house guard duty.
I hope these easy to apply checkpoints help the public, if not the news media, distinguish between real science and fantasy. If any of those agenda-motivated statistics out there happen to be truly representative of the real situation in this country, then we are already in a world of hurt, science-wise! It’s no wonder that 12% of us are poor! (Or is it 22%? Or 9%? Any how, 99% aren’t rich…? Or 96.1% aren’t rich…? Or 93.1%…)
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