Refute bad ideas, don’t just suppress

Published 8:58 pm Monday, November 25, 2013

The best way to counter a bad idea is with a good one. Put another way, the best way to refute falsehoods is with facts. That’s an important concept, as we continue to deal with questions about science — in particular, climate change and “alternative” medicines.

The perceptive science writer Ross Pomeroy notes that Carl Sagan once spoke about countering bad science. The worst way to do that, Sagan said, was by trying to suppress it.

In 1950, Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky (a psychiatrist) published a book claiming that the planet Venus began just 3,500 years ago as a comet, and its passing close to the Earth resulted in some miracles in the Bible, including the parting of the Red Sea. He published a best-selling book explaining his theory.

“The uproar from the scientific community was nearly unanimous,” Pomeroy writes. “Piqued over the fact that a brazen psychiatrist was dabbling in areas outside his field, astronomers were furious that Velikovsky took his outlandish ideas straight to the public, effectively dodging the vital and necessary process of peer review. Some called for Velikovsky’s book to be banned from print.”

But that’s the wrong response. Ideas shouldn’t be suppressed — they should be countered.

“The worst aspect of the Velikovsky Affair was not that many of his ideas are in gross contradiction to the facts,” Sagan said in 1980. “Rather, the worst aspect is that some scientists attempted to suppress Velikovsky’s ideas. There are many hypotheses in science which are wrong. That’s perfectly alright: it’s the aperture to finding out what’s right. The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion or in politics, but it is not the path to knowledge, and there’s no place for it in the endeavor of science.”

Today, we see the same dynamic. The Los Angeles Times has announced it will no longer print letters to the editor that question climate change.

“As for letters on climate change, we do get plenty from those who deny global warming,” Times editor Paul Thornton explained. “And to say they ‘deny’ it might be an understatement: Many say climate change is a hoax, a scheme by liberals to curtail personal freedom. … Simply put, I do my best to keep errors of fact off the letters page; when one does run, a correction is published. Saying ‘there’s no sign humans have caused climate change’ is not stating an opinion, it’s asserting a factual inaccuracy.”

The truth is, of course, that the evidence is not as clear-cut as Thornton claims. Even if it was, suppressing dissent is the wrong approach, according to Sagan.

Then there’s “alternative” medicine. Various lobbying groups for “complementary” treatments are now lobbying Congress and states to try to get some of the Obamacare money.

Here, the evidence truly is clear-cut. No scientific study proves that alternative medicine, such as acupuncture or homeopathy, work better than placebos. Anecdotes are not evidence.

But that doesn’t mean acupuncturists and specialists in other quackery should be silenced.

As Pomeroy contends, “Ideas should never be suppressed, no matter how revolutionary, no matter how crazy, no matter how discomforting.”