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Science in the Courts
Robert L. Park, Ph.D.
It is a special pleasure to be asked to speak at the New England School
of Law. About two Sundays after the September 11 terrorist attack, there
were full-page ads in The New York Times and The Washington Post from
organizations expressing their grief, or patriotism, or asking for donations
to help the victims and their families. There was even a full-page ad by the
SPCA to raise funds to find suitable homes for the pets owned by deceased victims of the attack. They were simply doing what they do best.
Of course, there was a certain amount of commercialization in some of
these ads. General Motors had an ad that stated “Let's Keep America Rolling.” As though it’s your civic responsibility in this time of crisis to go
out and buy a gas guzzling SUV. That was alright. However, there was
one full-page ad that really struck me. It was an ad for “The Endowment
Funds for World Peace.” The “Endowment Funds for World Peace” was
seeking contributions of one billion dollars. “Surely, there are a lot of
Americans,” the ad said, “who must have a billion dollars. But, if you
cannot donate that much, perhaps you could simply advance it to us, and
we will pay you back.” However, before you give your billion dollars, you
might want to know to whom you are giving it, and what they are going to
use the money for. You would actually be giving it to the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, spiritual advisor to the Beatles and the founder of Transcendental Meditation.
What he wanted to do, he said, was pure science. He wanted to create a
consciousness field for the whole world: a consciousness field that would
induce peace among all people. To do this, he needed a trained core of
 Dr. Park is a Professor of Physics at the University of Maryland and Director of the Washington Office of the American Physical Society. He was the Edgar
Lewis Marston Fellow at Brown University in 1960. In 1974, he was appointed
Professor of Physics and Director of the Center of Materials Research at the University of Maryland in College Park. In 1978, he became the Chair of the Depar tment of Physics in Astronomy. Professor Park is the author of What=s New, a
controversial weekly electronic commentary on science policy issues. He is also a
regular contributor of opinion articles in major newspapers, including the New
York Times and the Washington Post, and a frequent guest on radio and television
news programs. He is also the author of the book Voodoo Science: The Road from
Foolishness to Fraud.
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40,000 transcendental meditators. And, when he said trained, he meant the
best. And, by the best, he meant yogic fliers. You might be wondering
what a Yogic flyer is. Actually, this organization had been to Washington
two years earlier during the trouble in the Balkans. They had gone to
Washington to raise money to create peace in Kosovo. And the way they
were going to do it, was again with a trained core of transcendental meditators. They were going to meditate in unison. In this case, they thought
about 7,000 would suffice.
In the new call, they needed 40,000, because they were going to spread
peace all over the world. But, 7,000 were presumably enough for the Balkans. And, right there in the National Press Club, they gave a demonstration of yogic flying, and I just must show you their announcement. Here
they were -- yogic fliers demonstrating the mechanics of creating peace.
Excellent photo opportunities; the poster said, camera crews were welcome, and all you see are these three young fellows who look like they are
sort of hovering. I could not resist this. My office is in the press building,
so all I had to do was go upstairs to watch it.
The person leading the whole thing, was Dr. John Hagelin. Well, Dr.
Hagelin is a Physicist. He has a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Harvard
University, was Summa Cum Laude from Dartmouth, and at one time
worked at the Stanford Linear Accelerator, and published many respectable papers. But the first rule you have to keep in mind is that there is no
claim so preposterous that a Ph.D. scientist cannot be found to vouch for
it. Remain alert for this one. Hagelin is now the Chairman of the Physics
Department at Maharishi University. He explained that meditating to create a peace field is very scientific.
You may ask -- why now? Why now when science is on such a role?
There are real breakthroughs in medicine and technology everyday. And
yet, we are also seeing more nonsense labeled science. At any rate, I went
to the yogic flying demonstration. And right there, a block and a half
from the White House, they spread mattresses out on the floor, and 10 to
15 fit looking young guys came in and assumed the lotus position on the
mattresses. I would demonstrate the lotus position for you, but I fear that
I could not get up again. They assumed the lotus position, and began
meditating, and the rest of us were cautioned, to remain perfectly silent so
as not to break their concentration. Suddenly, one of the young men levitated. I do not mean that he floated up and out the door or something. He
just sort of popped up a few inches and thumped back down on the mattress. You know, I cannot prove it, but I would guess that he followed a
parabolic trajectory in his brief launch into space. And a moment later,
another one levitated, and then another, and another -- they went thump,
thump, thump, back to the mattress. It began to look like corn popping.
And right then, I knew that Madeline Albright had made a mistake. She
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really should have supported these guys. The sight of 7,000 yogic flyers
bouncing around would have rendered the Serbian troops helpless with
laughter.
We now see scientific claims everywhere. That’s because science is
successful. The more successful science is, the more opportunities there
are to mislead the public in the name of science. Consider the best selling
book by Deepak Chopra, Ageless Body, Timeless Mind: The Quantum
Alternative to Growing Old. Well, I will take almost any alternative! But,
I can tell you that Deepak Chopra knew absolutely nothing about quantum
mechanics. The few lines in his book about quantum theory seem to be
lifted directly out of Stephen Hawking’s “A Brief History of Time,” as far
as I can tell, was the extent of Chopra’s knowledge of quantum mechanics.
We live in a very perilous time right now. The most recent threat is
bio-terrorism. Just last week, there was a hearing of the House Government Reform Committee, chaired by Dan Burton of Indiana. Now, Dan
Burton as you may know, is a strong advocate of alternative medicine.
Alternative medicine refers to untested medical procedures that are not
widely accepted in the medical community. There are many of these alternative therapies, and Representative Burton (R-IN) likes them all. A couple of years ago, Burton held a hearing on alternative medicine, in which
the lead witness was none other than Jane Seymour, who plays the title
role in Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman on TV. The congressman may be
having trouble separating fact from fiction
In this hearing, Dan Burton was concerned about bio-terrorism. And,
rightly so. We are all concerned about bio-terrorism. But, what worried
him the most was that we might run short of medicine if these terrorist
attacks continue. He said we might run short on things like Cipro and
Doxycycline, two antibiotics commonly used to treat anthrax. Or we
might run short of vaccine against small pox - all of these things. But,
Dan Burton thought there was a solution. Alternative medicine could substitute if regular medicine ran short.
One of Burton’s first witnesses was none other than Stephen Strauss, a
medical doctor and also the Director of the Center for Complementary and
Alternative Medicine at the National Institute of Health. He is a highly
respected medical scientist. There is an interesting story behind this.
When that center was first created, Congress picked the directors. And the
previous director of that office was a man named Wayne Jonas. But when
Harold Varmus left as the director of NIH, his last official act was to persuade Stephen Strauss to take over as the head of the Center. He was now
there to testify on the possible use of alternative medicine in coping with a
terrorist attack, but he did not say what he was expected to say. In his
eloquent, and forceful prepared remarks, he asked whether alternative
measures for promoting health, do anything more than prey on people's
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fears, and distract them from taking more prudent steps to protect themselves. In fact, it may not even be prudent to combine natural products
such as herbs with antibiotics, because of the possibility that the herbs will
interfere with the proper action of the drugs. Well, I think that he stated it
very well. There had been suggestions from all over the country that you
could you could treat Anthrax with various alternative methods, with
herbal medications or even homeopathic medications. But in fact, even
the dietary supplement “Energia” had its spokesman out, warning the public not to use these natural products, in the treatment of Anthrax. Fearing,
no doubt, lawsuits that might ensue. These are untested treatments. One
of them that is popular these days is Coloidal Silver, which has been on
the list of toxic substances for a long time. At any rate, the testimony of
Stephen Strauss had a powerful impact.
There was another witness at the same hearing, whose testimony was
more to the liking of Representative Burton. This was the former head of
the NIH Office of Alternative Medicine. His name is Wayne Jonas.
Wayne Jonas is the author of an “authoritative” book on homeopathy. So
what in the world is homeopathy? Homeopathy is a treatment that dates
back about 200 years. It was developed by Samuel Hahnemann in Germany. The idea is that you can treat illnesses with something that might
produce the same symptoms in a healthy person. But you do this with
extremely dilute solutions of the substance. It is not a totally nonsensical
idea: it is kind of what we do when we inoculate people against diseases.
You give them a little bit of the disease agent. The question is, how little?
I looked in Wayne Jonas' book, to see what common illness homeopathy might be effective for. The list included just about everything that
afflicts us. So I asked my assistant to go and buy me a homeopathic remedy. And she said, “for what?” And I said, “it doesn't matter.” What she
came back with was pills for menstrual cramps. Actually, I had not been
suffering from menstrual cramps. The pills looked like aspirin tablets, but
were a little smaller.
Now, am I concerned that I am taking things that might be bad for me if
I do not actually have menstrual cramps? Well, not really. It tasted a little
sweet. In fact, it was lactose, milk sugar. It was nothing but lactose. If I
looked on the package, it tells me that the active ingredient is “pulsatilla,”
an herb that produces cramps. Not to worry. It says that the concentration
is 12x. What does 12x mean?
When Hahnemann was treating patients over 200 years ago, he used a
method of sequential dilution. The “X” means that it is diluted one part in
ten. And the number twelve means that you repeat that twelve times. So,
if I do it once, I have one part in 10. If I do it twice, I have one part in
100: Six times, one part in a million, and nine times, one part in one billion. And, according to this menstrual cramp box, we were going to do
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this twelve times. A millionth of a millionth. Now, there is not a chemist
on earth that could detect it, if it was there.
I then looked up some of the other standard homeopathic cures, and
there was one that I liked. This was for diaper rash. Now, what do you
suppose that you use to treat diaper rash? Well, you use an herb called
“rhus-toxicodendron.” And, what do you suppose that is? Poison ivy.
Baby has a rash? Give baby a little bit of something that causes a rash,
namely poison ivy. Fortunately for baby, it was diluted 30C. What does
it mean to be diluted by 30C? Well, “C” means one part in 100. And, the
thirty means we are going to repeat it thirty times. Now, that is one part in
one followed by 60 zeros. That would exceed the dilution limit. In other
words, a pill is unlikely to contain even one molecule of the substance.
One molecule in the Atlantic Ocean would be much too concentrated.
I also picked up something in the drugstore for the flu. Go to your
drugstore and you can find this on the flu counter. It is called Oscillocoxinum. The box says, “For the symptoms of flu, fever, chill, or body aches
and pains.” And what is Oscillocoxinum? It is actually derived from
duck livers, but it’s no threat to the duck population. I looked on the side
of the box, and it told me that the concentration is 200C. Now, I can excuse Hahnemann. Two hundred years ago, we did not know Avogadro's
number. We do not need to go into detail here, but this number allows
you to calculate how many atoms or molecules are in a known amount of
any substance. So, you can give me water, tell me how much it weighs,
and I could tell you how many molecules are in it. This is really great, it’s
a very valuable thing to know. Hahnemann and Avogadro were in fact,
contemporaries. But the truth is that even Avogadro did not know Avogadro’s number. He knew there should be such a number, but it took another 50 years before other scientists determined what Avogadro’s number is.
Avogadro’s number allows us to calculate how many molecules are left in
a particular dilution. When you get down to one molecule, you’ve
reached the “dilution limit.”
You cannot just dilute something indefinitely, because things are made
up of atoms and molecules. So I get down to the point where there is only
one molecule or atom of this substance left. After the next dilution, there
is unlikely to be a single molecule left. I can go on with dilution after dilution after dilution. So, its important to decide whether you are exceeding
the dilution limit of the substance. In the case of Oscillocoxinum, the
concentration is 200C. Well, that means one part in 100, repeated 200
times. That would be one part in one followed by four hundred zeroes.
There is no reason why you should know, but does anybody have a guess
as to how many atoms there are in the universe? Well, astronomers know
that number pretty well. It is about one followed by eighty zeros. Oscillocoxinum has vastly exceeded the dilution limit of the universe. So there
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is clearly something wrong here. Help me figure out what this means.
This is a billion dollar business, a multi-billion dollar business, over all
the world. It is a big business within the United States and an even bigger
business in Europe. This suggests that there is a lot of room here for litigation. People who take these homeopathic medicines think they are curing themselves. It is a wonder that a few of the purveyors of homeopathy
have not been successfully prosecuted.
The whole picture of Science and the Law changed in 1993 with the
Supreme Court’s Daubert1 decision, which you people are more familiar
with, than I am. Basically, the Supreme Court ruled that federal judges
have a responsibility to act as gatekeepers, to make sure that juries do not
hear scientific nonsense. The previous standard of scientific evidence was
that testimony had to be "scientifically accepted”. Under the Daubert rule
the evidence must be scientifically gathered. Science is open to change.
That’s the good news. The good news is, that science is open. When you
get better theories, or you do better experiments, you re-write the textbooks and throw the old ones away.
That is what gives science its legitimacy. The validity of science depends on this simple, self-correcting mechanism. When we get better science, we throw the old ideas away. The Supreme Court recognized this
concept. The condition the Supreme Court put in the Daubert decision
was that scientific evidence had to be gathered, by scientifically valid procedures in order to be used. This was a rather novel concept. That allows
the possibility of evolving scientific concepts. What you do not want to
do, is to lock in an old idea, since the new ideas are responsible for the
progress that we see all around us. In fact, many of my colleagues were
pessimistic that judges would adhere to the Daubert decision.
A few months ago, however, I was invited to Cold Spring Harbor on
Long Island by the Federal Judicial Council to talk to a group of federal
judges. They wanted to know about a practice that was beginning becoming more and more common. Judges were creating panels of experts who
have no connection with the case that they are presiding over. These experts advise the Judge on what testimony can be admitted. And it is working very well. There have been some very important decisions made on
this basis.
One of the first things the federal judges asked me about was the Mass
Tort blitz that was attempted during the power line/cancer controversy. A
few years ago, power lines were thought by many to cause cancer. We
now know they do not cause cancer. That was recognized first by the California Supreme Court which issued a ruling based on information from
1.
Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharm., Inc., 509 U.S. 579 (1993).
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the National Academy of Science, the American Physical Society, and by
a group of prominent scientists and Nobel Laureates who wrote amicus
briefs for the Court. The Court decided this was a controversy that belonged to the regulators and not in the courts. This essentially ended the
debate on power lines and cancer. In fact, out of all of the suits on health
effects from power lines, there was never a successful suit linking power
lines to cancer. We see the same debate repeated today in cell phones. I
fear cell phones every time I see one being used by the driver of car, but I
don’t worry about cancer.
So, I set out to develop a set of warning signs that we might use to
guide us in similar situations. These are only warning sings and not absolute rules. The first warning sign is that a discovery is pitched directly to
the media. Now if I come up with a discovery, the first thing that I am
going to do is talk to my colleagues and see if they can point to a mistake
in my measurements or reasoning. I will then probably present my work
at a departmental colloquium. And, if nobody in the department jumps on
me, I will probably give a paper on my new discovery at a scientific conference and if I get away with that, I will probably submit my discovery to
a scientific journal which will send it out to a bunch of anonymous reviewers who would like nothing better than to tear me apart, and I go all
the way through the process. We rely on our colleagues to keep us
straight in science, and this is very important. That check is missing when
a discovery is announced first to the press.
A second warning sign, is that there is said to be a powerful establishment, often involving the media, suppressing a new discovery. Some of
you are too young to remember this, but, back in the early '70's, there was
an inventor by the name of Sam Leach, who claimed to have invented an
automobile that runs on water as fuel. He drove that car across the United
States and disappeared. I do not mean that he disappeared literally. In
fact, he retired a rich man. The President of Budget Rent-a-Car and a few
other investors had invested millions of dollars in his invention. Sam
Leech even took a reporter from Newsweek on his drive across the United
States in this car that supposedly ran on water.
But, there is no car today that runs on water. Whatever happened?
Well, Sam Leech says his invention was suppressed by the oil companies,
and there are a lot of claims like that. Discoveries that are covered up by
powerful interests. That is one of the warning signs that I was talking
about; the discovery and the suppression of the discovery. Who knows
what the oil industry would have done to keep cars from running on water?
Another warning sign is that information is withheld that would allow
other scientists to replicate the results. This violates the basic rule of science. Science is open. We submit our publications, our ideas, our find-
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ings to the scrutiny of other scientists who can build their reputations by
tearing us down. And, we do this freely, because this is the process that
gives science its legitimacy.
Another warning sign is that the evidence for a scientific discovery relies heavily on anecdotal evidence. Anecdotal evidence consists of personal stories: Uncle Fred took such and such a medicine and he got out of
his hospital bed and threw away his crutches. You hear these stories all
the time and the public is very strongly persuaded by such anecdotal evidence. A good example of anecdotal evidence is the magnet craze. If you
want to see magnets being used, go to a golf course. I don't know what it
is about golf courses. Lawyers go to golf courses more than they go to
work. I am not a golf expert, but, 20 years ago, just about everyone on the
golf course was wearing copper bracelets. They said that wearing copper
bracelets suppressed arthritis and made their joints move more freely.
Copper bracelets must have stopped working. But you can still buy copper bracelets at golf pro shops and I see them occasionally on the golf
courses.
More common today, is wearing magnets. The wearing of magnets also
started on golf courses, but, now it has spread everywhere. I have some
problems with this. I look at this ad for a particular magnetic therapy device, and in the photo on the right, I see a woman wearing a magnet on her
wrist. This troubled me. When I walk, my wrist passes right by my hip
pocket and my hip pocket is where I have my credit cards. This ad says
that the magnet is 800 gauss. Now, 800 gauss is plenty strong enough to
erase my credit cards. This company couldn’t have wanted my credit
cards erased. So, I went out and bought a magnetic bracelet. It really was
very handsome. It consisted of a nice blue velvet strap, which goes
around the wrist, and then, the magnet is in a little Velcro pouch that attaches to the velvet wristband. So, now that I have got it around my wrist,
this presumably is helping whatever problem was affecting my joints. The
claim was that the magnet attracts blood because blood has iron in it.
Let’s talk about this.
The iron in blood is in the chemical form of hemoglobin, which is not
ferro-magnetic. It turns out to be diamagnetic. That means blood is actually repelled slightly by a magnet. Next, I checked to see if the magnet
was really that strong. I measured it right at the surface and just like the
magnet company had said, the magnet was 800 gauss. But, less than an
eighth of an inch away from the surface, I was unable to measure any
magnetic field at all. There was a reason for this.
One of the neat technologies that we all use and never even think about
is a refrigerator magnet. Refrigerator magnets are a fairly new development. This is clever stuff. You have this refrigerator magnet that looks
like your local pizza delivery truck with their phone number on it and you
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post a Dilbert cartoon on your refrigerator with it. If you ever notice, it
has a painted side with the phone number and the other side, which goes
against the refrigerator, is black. If you try to put it on backwards, with
the black side out, it does not stick. How do they do that? How do they
make a magnet that is only magnetic on one side? In fact, if you’ve ever
tried putting more than one piece of paper under it, all of a sudden, the
magnet falls off the refrigerator. They do not weigh much. The first piece
of paper I put held up pretty tightly. But, as I added more and more paper,
the paper and then eventually the magnet fell off. Well, take a look at my
therapy magnet that I bought, placed next to a paperclip. A paperclip is a
good test for a magnet. It sticks to a magnet quite strongly. But now,
when I put my therapy magnet on the velvet strap, the way they show you
to use it, the side that would be next to my body there has no magnetic
field at all. Now, where did it go? Well, this is how refrigerator magnets
are made. They are made in narrow strips, with alternating north and,
south poles. And so, right at the surface, the field is very strong, but a
short distance away, the north pole cancels out the south pole. A very
short distance away, there is really no magnetic field at all.
Most people I talk to in the public are convinced that if people are out
there in a billion dollar business, selling magnets, these magnets must
work. However, these magnets have such a short range that the field may
not even extend through the skin. Little, if any, magnetic field reaches the
muscles and joints where the injury is. People just cannot believe that
there is not a federal agency that would stop people from selling these
magnets if they don’t work, or would prevent people from selling worthless sugar pills.
Incidentally, the osillicoxinum in this box, consists of six doses. It cost
me $11, exactly what I paid for a flu shot. Now, which one, the sugar pill
or the flu shot, is going to help me the most? These sugar pills get around
federal regulations quite freely however.
This is a full-page ad from USA Today. Full-page ads do not come
cheaply and this is the most read newspaper in the world. Here are these
happy, smiling people, the picture of health. They seem to be saying they
are happy because they take Vitamin O. What in the world is Vitamin O?
You cannot read the words, so I blew some of them up. Here is what it
said: “It is so safe that you can drop it into your eyes. It is so natural it
contains the most abundant element on earth. It is so effective you can
spend hours reading the unsolicited testimonials of those who have used it
with dramatic results.” But, how does Vitamin O do this? “The bloodstream absorbs the Vitamin O and carries the pure oxygen straight to your
cells and tissues, where it maximizes your nutrients, purifies your bloodstream, and eliminates toxins and poisons. All the processes necessary to
prevent disease and promote health.” But, what is in this Vitamin O? The
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amazing thing to me, is that the ad tells you exactly what it is. “Vitamin O
contains stabilized oxygen molecules in a liquid solution of sodium chloride, salt, in distilled water, to be taken orally as a supplement: usually 1520 drops, two to three times a day.” Well, what are these “stabilized oxygen molecules” the ad talks about? It is ordinary oxygen; the stuff you are
breathing right now. The question is, how much of my oxygen am I going
to get from 20 drops of water? Well, codfish get their oxygen from water.
For humans, it is known as drowning. In fact, you need only two numbers. First is the solubility of oxygen in water. You can get about 8 milligrams of oxygen in a liter of water. How much do we use? Well, just
sitting there, unless you are particularly agitated at me, you probably are
consuming 15 to 20 milligrams per second. So, how much water am I
going to have to drink? I am going to need a couple of liters every second. And that would be if I could absorb the oxygen from my gut, which I
simply cannot. That is why we have lungs. The lungs do a fantastic job
of it. I mean, if I was a trained athlete and I was performing at a high level, I would be using perhaps 130 milligrams per second. We humans are
very good at this. We have the right apparatus up here in the lungs to do
this, but when I put it into my gut, it is going to wind up in my bladder. It
is not going to end up in my bloodstream. It would not matter if it did,
because there is such a tiny amount of it. Well, so what happens? I published this information in my column and Science Magazine picked it and
published it in their magazine. Someone from National Public Radio read
Science and I was invited to talk about it on National Public Radio.
And, where was the Food & Drug Administration? Well, the Food &
Drug Administration could not touch it, because it was a natural supplement. The 1994 Dietary Supplement and Health Education Act, passed by
our Congress, prevents the Food & Drug Administration from requiring
proof of either efficacy or purity for natural supplements. So, when you
buy these dietary supplements, you have no assurance that they work or
even that you are getting what it says on the package. It is kind of shocking.
There is another agency that should look after us and that is the Federal
Trade Commission. The Federal Trade Commission stepped in and
charged the company selling Vitamin O with false advertising. The company was shut down, and, I was feeling like I had finally accomplished
something. However, in the mail one day recently, I received a flyer, advertising Vitamin O. They were no longer advertising in USA Today and
they had changed the name of the company and changed the address to the
next block. Well, it was obviously the same company, selling the same
product. And, in fact, as I searched the web, I found at least five companies that were selling what amounted to Vitamin O. Essentially, they were
all selling ordinary water, at prices like $40 dollars an ounce. And, they
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even sell this to the hockey teams. I don't know if it's gotten to football
yet, but in hockey, the teams all use oxygenated water to give the players
an extra boost. It may send them back to the men's room prematurely.
The most important discovery in medicine is not antibiotics, nor vaccination. The greatest achievement of medical science is the randomized,
double-blind test. Medicine was not a science until the double-blind test
was invented. The fathers of this nation, for example, all believed that
bleeding was a cure for almost anything that bothered you. Thanks to the
double-blind test, we now know that it is not only not helpful, but it is
harmful.
Another warning sign is that a discovery is said to be credible, because
it has endured for centuries. This is my favorite on this whole list. It’s the
old Ancient Wisdom myth. Somehow, before people knew that blood
circulated, or that there was a germ-theory disease, before they knew any
of these things, they had these magical cures that we modern people have
lost somehow. Well, I am waiting to be shown one of these that actually
works. But there are, in fact, hundreds of health devices, methods, therapies, on the market right now, that rely on this idea of Ancient Wisdom.
Homeopathy, for example. It was discovered, if discovered is the right
word, about two hundred years ago. Now, that is pretty recent compared
to some ancient wisdom. Things like acupuncture, are thousands of years
old. And, sound medical evidence that they work is still missing.
There are millions of people that swore by bleeding for example. The
discovery was made in isolation. You know, this is not the tricky one.
We have this myth of the lone genius laboring all by himself in his little
workshop in the attic. There he makes some wonderful discovery. But,
this is a myth that is not really impossible. It is certainly possible that
some lone inventor somewhere will make a really important discovery.
But, by and large, science is a very closely-knit fabric. We all depend for
every step we make in science, on things that are learned by our colleagues. Yet another warning sign is that no plausible theory at all is offered for a miraculous discovery. That again is the one thing we hear
about most in the medical field.
I do not know if this has helped you in what you are here to discuss today. But, we all have to be concerned that the public is being misled by
false scientific claims. Scientists tend to think we would not have a problem if we had a more scientifically literate public. I ask, what it is that you
want society to know? I mean, I have trouble keeping up in my own field.
Most scientists do because progress is being made so rapidly today. The
idea that the public should know the solubility of oxygen in water, for
example, is totally unrealistic. I did not know what the solubility of oxygen in water was until I looked it up. But, we cannot expect the public to
even know where to look. We live in an age of experts. And, it is the
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[Vol. 36:3
responsibility of the scientific community, to speak out on these issues. I
think we have neglected our responsibility to a shocking extent. Scientists
are busy people, they enjoy what they do, and focus on their own research.
They do not want to take the time to get involved in every false claim.
Sometimes, however, scientists avoid getting involved for fear of being
sued. My book was held up for a couple of months by threats of lawsuits
from people who didn’t like what the book said about them. They had
obtained prepublication review copies. Oxford Press then hired lawyers to
go through the book, and satisfy themselves that every line could be documented.
Scientists, by and large, are not paid enough to risk lawsuits. My wife
probably wishes I wouldn't take that risk. It certainly inhibits scientists
from speaking out on issues that are very important to the public. Scientists will have to learn to work with the legal profession. A lot of this depends on you, the future lawyers. Take care. Thank you.