Bad Science Read online

However, only one edition appeared in the United States in the year 1924. The book and its crazy ideas of moving continents was so harshly criticized by American scientists that it was decided not to bother printing any more editions. In fact, the president of the American Philosophical Society called it nothing less than, “Utter, damned rot!” (But how did he really feel?)

  Another scientist in the U.S. bitterly complained that, “If we are to believe [this] hypothesis, we must forget everything we have learned in the last 70 years and start all over again.”

  (Yeah…so…isn’t that what we call research and knowledge, which is the basis of science?)

  But lest you think just those on the American side of Pangaea were the only ones who didn’t catch the drift, a British geologist declared that any individual who “valued his reputation for scientific sanity” would never entertain such a ridiculous theory. The criticisms continued to rain down upon Alfred Wegener from all sides—including his own father-in-law, who happened to be Germany’s leading meteorologist.

  There were some scientists who did recognize the validity of his evidence and supported his theory, but those scientists were few and far between. In a somewhat lame defense of Wegener’s critics, modern-day scientists have pointed out that he got the rate of drift wrong (Wegener’s theories had the continents fairly cruising rather than drifting, with rates at anywhere from ten to one hundred times faster than is now believed), but an error in predicting how fast something moved should not discount the fact that it did move.

  Unfortunately, Alfred Wegener did not live long enough to see his theories vindicated. He had a lifelong fascination with Greenland, and during his fourth expedition there in 1930 he was caught in a blizzard and froze to death. Almost fifty years after first presenting the ideas of continental drift and Pangaea to the world, the mechanism of sea-floor spreading was finally discovered—the mechanism that drove the landmasses and unlocked the origins of the continents and oceans.

  Today, Wegener is not exactly a household name, but he has posthumously been honored by having craters on both Mars and the Moon, as well as an asteroid, named after him. And thanks to this courageous scientist, how many other schoolchildren, feverishly working their round-tipped scissors, will cut and paste the continents together, and so easily learn a lesson that the most educated men once called, “Utter, damned rot!”

  Be Careful What You Ask For

  In Japan on November 11, 1971, researchers from the Agency of Science and Technology conducted an experiment to study landslides. They soaked the side of a 60-foot hill using fire hoses, but failed to anticipate the 9-foot-high wall of mud and rocks that swept down the hillside, engulfing scientists and journalists alike. Fifteen people were killed, and nine were injured.

  Hopefully, the surviving scientists realized that landslides are best studied at a distance.

  The Miracle Mineral

  The word asbestos is from the ancient Greek meaning “not extinguishable,” due to its flame-resistant properties. Unfortunately, it does extinguish something—life.

  It was the geographer and historian Strabo (c.64 B.C.-23 A.D.) who first wrote about the respiratory problems asbestos miners suffered on island of Euboea. Slaves who wore clothing made with fabric woven with asbestos also showed signs of lung disease. However, sick and dying miners and slaves weren’t sufficient to stop the mining and use of asbestos, and unfortunately, thousands of years later, more lives would also be sacrificed on the altar of what came to be called the “Miracle Mineral.”

  In the 1890s, asbestos was being mined around the world, and would eventually be used in a wide variety of products, including house shingles, tiles, insulation, appliances, car brakes, yarn, mittens, cigarette filters, and even baby powder! It takes about ten years for symptoms of asbestos-induced lung disease to manifest, and right on schedule the first diagnosed case of asbestosis occurred in London in the early 1900s.

  The victim was a 33-year-old textile factory worker, and during his postmortem, the doctor found asbestos fibers in the man’s lungs. Once these tiny fibers enter the lungs they become permanently embedded, causing irritation, inflammation, and scarring. As scarred lung tissue loses its elasticity, breathing becomes increasingly difficult, and eventually leads to death.

  Another disease brought about by inhaled asbestos fibers is cancer, both in the form of lung cancer and malignant mesothelioma, a rare and particularly deadly form of cancer. Victims may not develop mesothelioma until decades after exposure to asbestos, but the link between asbestos and cancer was already evident in the 1920s. By that time, health insurance companies were denying coverage to people who worked with asbestos due to the “assumed health-injurious conditions” encountered in the factories.

  Despite the mounting death toll and obvious link between asbestos exposure, respiratory disease, and cancer, over the ensuing decades the production of asbestos products grew in leaps and bounds, due to that age-old motivation—profit. Unfortunately, the value of human life didn’t appear on the balance sheets of most big corporations.

  Those same corporations also made sure other things didn’t appear, such as medical evidence clearly illustrating the deadly hazards of the Miracle Mineral. Reports and studies were effectively blocked from being released to the public, such as the U.S. Bureau of Mines and Occupational Health Clinic study in 1932, conducted on workers at the Johns Manville factory in Oklahoma. The examinations included x-rays of the lungs of the employees and it was found that 29 percent had asbestosis. Johns Manville made sure the report was never released.

  Years of bribery, threats, and lies continued to keep the truth from the general public, resulting in such suffering and death in a scope and scale that is unimaginable. But did corporate big shots lose sleep over their deadly deception? Hardly, as a memo from the Bendix Corporation to Johns Manville in 1966 illustrates: “…if you have enjoyed a good life while working with asbestos products why not die from it.”

  In 1952, the medical director of Johns Manville, Dr. Kenneth Smith, requested that warning labels be applied to products containing asbestos. His request was denied, and Dr. Smith later testified as to the company’s reasoning: “It was a business decision as far as I could understand…the corporation is in business to provide jobs for people and make money for stockholders and they had to take into consideration the effects of everything they did and if the application of a caution label identifying a product as hazardous would cut into sales, there would be serious financial implications."

  Countless other evidence of asbestos companys’ blatant and callous disregard for their workers’ safety has been revealed in the last few decades as many asbestos exposure-related lawsuits were filed. For example, in 1984, Charles Roemer, a manager at Johns Manville in 1943, testified that in that year, the president of the company stated that a competitor’s managers were “a bunch of fools for notifying employees who had asbestosis.” Roemer then said to the president, "Do you mean to tell me you would let them work until they dropped dead?" The president’s response? “Yes. We save a lot of money that way.”

  The truth finally emerged and the corporations who knowingly exposed their workers, and then suppressed the deadly evidence, have at least been paying billions in financial settlements for their crimes—although despite what big corporations think, money is no substitute for health and life.

  In 1979, the Environmental Protection Agency announced it would be banning almost all uses of asbestos, but it was not until 1989 that the ban took effect. Remarkably, even after all that has happened, asbestos companies won a federal lawsuit in 1991 that repealed that ban! Although greatly limited, the use of asbestos continues to this day, to the tune of millions of pounds being used every year.

  Though shocking in their human toll, these asbestos horror stories should not surprise us, and we should never assume this was an isolated example. How many other cover-ups for profit are taking place around the world at this very minute? How many lives will be ruined by toxic substances tha
t right now are being ingested, breathed in, or entering our systems through contact with plastics, fabrics, cosmetics, and hundreds of other products? What damage is now being caused by the electromagnetic fields of cell phones and dozens of other handheld and desktop devices with which we surround ourselves on a daily basis?

  As long as people with no conscience value profit over safety, this asbestos story will play out again and again in countless variations, over countless generations. If people believe corporations and the government will protect us, then we are all indeed “a bunch of fools.”

  Asbestos was used extensively in naval shipyards, during both World War II and the Korean War, to insulate pipes and boilers. Exposure was not only high for the men who built the ships, but for the crews stationed aboard them, as well as the longshoremen who handled the bundles of asbestos.

  Mount Sinai School of Medicine conducted a study that revealed that for those shipyard employees with at least 20 years on the job, 86 percent of them developed lung disease or cancer due to their exposure to asbestos.

  “We feel that the recent unfavorable publicity over the use of asbestos fibers in many different kinds of industries has been a gross exaggeration of the problems. There is no data available to either prove or disprove the dangers of working closely with asbestos.”

  A Raybestos-Manhattan company official, 1966

  Monosodium Glutamate (MSG) is widely used as a flavor enhancer, yet in the 1950s it was already proven to damage the retina, and later shown to also kill neurons in the brain. MSG is recognized to be an excitotoxin—a group of substances that destroy nerve cells throughexcessive stimulation. Numerous food additives have excitotoxic effects.

  Aspartame, marketed as Nutrasweet and Equal, may cause over 100 side-effects, from migraines, to loss of vision, to psychological problems such as anxiety, depression, and insomnia. Yet, aspartame is used in over 5,000 products such as diet soda and gum, and is consumed by over 250 million people.

  Children are particularly sensitive to the damaging effects of food additives.

  Despite the fact that many food additives are dangerous, and potentially deadly, they are very profitable, and therefore will continue to be marketed to uninformed consumers.

  Astronomy & the Space Program

  Just in Time for Dinner

  For thousands of years, mankind has pondered the age of our world, but few individuals felt themselves clever enough to try to pin Creation down to the exact day.

  Enter Archbishop James Ussher, Primate of Ireland (a fitting title), born in 1581. Considered a scholar in his time, Archbishop Ussher took the Bible and tallied up all the generations listed back to Adam and Eve, basically compiling a “Who Begot Who” of the ancient world. Then, employing what were undoubtedly painstaking calculations, he determined that the world came into being in the year 4004 BC.

  Not content to simply bull’s-eye the year with startling accuracy, the sage Archbishop further declared that Creation occurred on October 22, sometime in the evening—presumably giving Eve time to whip up a little dinner before she and Adam tottered off to bed in their new home.

  Remarkably, his calculations were widely accepted—even Sir Isaac Newton believed the Creation date of 4004 BC to be accurate to within an error of only twenty years. In fact, this ridiculous date did not meet any serious challenges until the late 18th century, when works of geologists like James Hutton finally established that our Earth, and therefore the universe, was far older than the primates dared imagine.

  “We are probably nearing the limit of all we can know about astronomy.”

  Simon Newcomb, astronomer, 1888

  A Slight Miscalculation

  To be an epicurean is to seek pleasure, not in the overtly sensual hedonistic sense, but in a refined, genteel manner. This lifestyle got its name from Epicurus, a Greek philosopher who was born on the island of Samos in 341 BC. Believing that mankind was unnecessarily troubled by the fear of death and retribution from the gods, Epicurus tried to ease men’s minds by explaining that their fears were groundless. He also developed a detailed outline for living life in a manner that reduced pain and increased pleasure, without harming anyone else. In a world half a step away from barbarism, striving for happiness wasn’t such a bad way to pass the time.

  However, Epicurus should have stuck with his happy philosophies, for when it came to astronomical theories, it turned out to be a bad way for him to pass the time. For example, despite the fact that some scholars of the era correctly maintained that the world was round, Epicurus believed that it was flat. But if an individual really wanted to believe it was round, that was okay with him, too, because you should believe whatever makes you happy.

  Another of Epicurus’ beliefs should put a smile on everyone’s face. When asked how large was the sun, he declared it was no more than two feet in diameter. Yes, that was no more than two feet in diameter. Now remember, Epicurus wouldn’t be happy if you laughed so hard it hurt.

  Not So Happy Hour

  The age of Pericles in Athens during the fifth century BC is generally regarded as the pinnacle of Greek civilization. Adept in all areas from the martial to fine arts, Pericles was the symbol of courage, wisdom, and the democratic spirit. Surprisingly, however, this time of prosperity, power, and learning also paradoxically saw the banning of the study of astronomy. But it will come as no surprise that this act was religiously (i.e., politically) motivated.

  Such were also the motives behind the condemnation of Pericles’ friend, the philosopher and scientist Anaxagoras. Arriving in Athens at the age of twenty, the young Anaxagoras shunned the pursuit of wealth in favor of the pursuit of science, going so far as to state that the purpose of life was to study the Moon and stars.

  During his lifetime, he made some remarkable (and correct!) assertions: Eclipses of the Moon were caused by the shadow of the Earth, the surface of the Moon contained mountains and deep valleys, and its light was reflected from the sun. He always strove to find a natural explanation for everything and even concluded that because man stood erect and could use his hands to examine things, our species developed superior intelligence.

  Unfortunately, this evolutionary theory of intelligence did not seem to extend to the leaders of Athens, who indicted Anaxagoras for his blasphemous theory of the sun. The simplest mind in Athens knew that the sun was obviously a god, yet Anaxagoras had rashly used his inquiring mind to hypothesize that the sun was actually fiery, superheated rock, which, he boldly added, was probably many times larger than the entire Greek peninsula of Peloponnesus. The political enemies of Pericles seized the opportunity of eliminating their rival’s friend, arrested Anaxagoras, convicted him of atheism, and threw the aged scholar in prison.

  Fortunately, Anaxagoras was able to avoid the Athenian cocktail party Socrates would later be compelled to attend. While accounts vary, it seems that just at the appointed hour of execution, Pericles aided Anaxagoras’ narrow escape, even as the hemlock was being shaken, not stirred.

  Counter-Intelligence

  The great Pythagoras (582-507 BC) left no writings of his own, and it was almost one hundred years after his death before a follower of his teachings, Philolaus, began the task of putting down Pythagoras’ ideas for posterity. While he was at it, Philolaus decided to put down a few theories of his own.

  The following summary will in turn, put down those theories… as far down as possible.

  While Pythagoras had taught that the Earth was a sphere, he erroneously placed it firmly in the center of the universe and declared that everything revolved around our world. Philolaus didn’t like the idea of the Earth at the center, not for any evidence based upon observation or calculation, but simply because he thought the Earth was too unrefined to inhabit such a noble position.

  If our planet was not in the center of the universe, then Philolaus’ theory necessitated the monumental step of setting the Earth in motion. This he did, but not around the sun. Being the motivated planet-starter that he was, Philolaus crea
ted some new heavenly objects to fit his scheme of things. At the center of everything he placed the “central fire” (also called the “watchtower of Zeus” or the “hearth of the universe”). Around this central fire revolved the Earth, sun, and all the planets and stars.

  Of course, no one had actually ever seen this fire, so Philolaus needed to explain why. This time his solution was even more ingenious—in order to explain why we can’t see the central fire, he created another object we can’t see. This second object was a new body he called the Counter-Earth, or Antichthon, and it conveniently solved two problems.

  First, even though the fire was never visible from Greece, because the Greek side of the Earth never faced the center of our orbit (where the central fire was allegedly located), people on the other side of Earth couldn’t see it either, because their view was blocked by the Counter-Earth. Thus, Philolaus resorted to an expedient, yet self-defeating, theory which at the time was impossible to either confirm or deny. (Perhaps he should have abandoned astronomy for politics?)

  The second problem the Counter-Earth seemed to solve was that of pure numbers, something with which the Pythagoreans were deeply enamored. Pythagoras felt that there was a harmony in the universe that could be expressed through mathematics, and numbers took on an almost mystical quality. Ten was a very important number to the Pythagoreans (apparently because it was the sum of the first four numbers, which personally doesn’t send a chill up my spine, but hey, I’m not Greek) and Philolaus was thrilled that his addition of the Counter-Earth brought the total number of heavenly bodies to ten (the sphere of stars was considered one of the bodies).

  There is never any mention about the Counter-Earth being inhabited, but it is likely that Philolaus assumed it would not be, because only the region between the Earth and the Moon was thought to be capable of sustaining mortal beings. However, he did believe the Moon to be inhabited with flora and fauna similar to that of Earth’s—except for the “fact” that the Moon’s creatures were fifteen times stronger, ostensibly due to their day being fifteen times longer.