"Forget for a while all of your knowledge of physics...Remove from your mind all objections that may occur...Never reason for six weeks... Be very credulous; very persevering; reject all past experience, and do not listen to reason...Never magnetize before inquisitive persons."

So, if the real science is so fundamentally honest and voodoo science dishonest, why does popular culture so frequently regard real science with suspicion and embrace the "bold iconoclasts" and "free thinkers" of pseudoscience?

• Reason one: Most people don't really know what scientists do, but they DO know that the products of scientific activity, the technologies that science spawns, have huge impacts on their lives:
  • Some of these are beneficial: Medicine, electronic devices, agricultural productivity.
  • Some are threatening: Hydrogen bombs, nerve gas.

• Even when they have no practical impact, scientific ideas have a way of confusing us or deflating our egos:
  • Heliocentric Astronomy - (Humans not physical center of Universe)
  • Deep Time - (Human history only a brief moment in a huge pre-human epic.)
  • Evolution - (Humans share common ancestry with non-human creatures.)
  • The Big-Bang Theory of cosmology - (The Universe isn't eternal)

  The problem: To the uninformed, scientific activity takes place inside a black box. The activities that go on inside that box that are so crucially important, are a mystery. Is it any wonder that people feel helpless and dependent before science. Feeling that way, they would be stupid not, also, to feel suspicious.

• Reason two: Into that gulf of suspicion steps an entire range of folk culture including:
  • Popular fiction
  • Voodoo science.
  • The occasional peice of real science that was done so irresponsibly as to discredit the whole profession.

This genre has been with us for many generations. Early examples:

The Golem: Story has its origins in Kabalah. The definitive version emerges in 16th century in which a wise man (usually a rabbi) creates a creature out of clay and gives it the semblance of life. The creature or Golem (Hebrew for "unformed matter") serves the rabbi and his community in various ways in different stories, but although it is values and admired, becomes more and more powerful, so that it eventually becomes threatening and has to be destroyed.

Dr. Faustus: Scholar makes pact with the devil trading his soul for the ability to do good on Earth. Made famous in plays by Marlowe and Goethe.

Of course, once modern science got going, artists and entertainers quickly siezed on people's fascination with it.

To recap, suspicion of science is:

• grounded in reasonable concern for science's power in society

• draws on long folkloric and literary tradition

• is amplified by commercial media.

This is no joke. In the past, each of the following has been condemned as unnatural or unholy.

• Antomical study of human cadavers

• Flight

• In vitro fertilization

• Direct genetic manipulation of crops. (Frankenfood)

• Stem-cell research

• Major and recurring threat to humanity

• Mythical beast preoccupying only the superstitious

• Something in between?

Pseudoscience hits the big-time: Not surprisingly, some of the heavy hitters are really pseudoscientists who managed to infiltrate proper scientific institutions. The problem they pose for science is that proper scientists either let them into their midst or didn't prevent politicians or commercial interests from forcing them into scientific establishments.

Trofim Lysenko: Background, Ongoing political theoretical conflict between mendelian genetics and lamarkinaism. 1927: Publication of "vernalization" the idea that plant development is a function of environment at different life stages. Appeal is in parallels between biological and political evolution. "In order to obtain a certain result, You must want to obtain precisely that result; if you want to obtain a certain result, you will obtain it .... I need only such people as will obtain the results I need". Lysenko's habit was to report only successes. His results were based on extremely small samples, inaccurate records, and the almost total absence of control groups. Wa negative toward the use of mathematics in science. 1937 Lysenko becomes president of the Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences. Lysenkoism held official sway in USSR until 1955. His legacy is a long-standing deficiency in Soviet - Russian biological sciences.

Josef Mengele: A promising academic physical anthropologist until his military career intervened. Wounded in action, mustered out, but promoted to SS Captain. Remember the Hollow Earth Space Nazis? Physical anthropology was one of the areas in which pseudoscience got its biggest foothold in the intellectual life of the Third Reich. In the SS, he was allowed to continue his anthropological research at the Auschwitz extermination camp. Three preoccupations: Physical abnormalities Alteration of racial features, especially eye color. Use of identical twins as controls. A handsome spit-and-polish man, but pathologically indifferent to human suffering. His subjects were automatically slated for death (although in some cases, their utility as experimantal subjects postponed the fatal moment until they could be rescued.)

Real science done with malicious intent: Very rare, but when it comes to light it REALLY gives science a bad PR problem.

Sigmund Rascher: An opportunistic Luftwaffe Captain and friend of Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler, transferred to the SS where he held the rank of Untersturmbahnführer (major) Worked to gather data for Luftwaffe on effects of avaiation hazards, including hypothermia and decompression. Experiments dealt with: High altitude simulations Simulations of parachuting into cold North Atlantic waters Methods of treating effects of the above: protective gear body heat (at the behest of his wack-job superiors) hot baths Work was mostly on condemned prisoners at the Dachau concentration camp. Ironically, Rascher fell afoul with Himmler when it was revealed that he and his wife were trafficing in kidnapped infants. Himself imprisoned at Dachau and executed just prior to its liberation.

Think only the nazis did this?

The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment For forty years between 1932 and 1972, the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) conducted an experiment on 399 black men (mostly impoverished and poorly educated share-croppers) in the late stages of syphilis. The essence was to gather data on the course of the disease when left untreated. Some specifics: Researchers understood from the outset that test subjects would provide most of their useful information in the form of autopsies. Subjects were misled into believing that they were receiving medical care. Researchers understood from the outset that test subjects would provide most of their useful information in the form of autopsies. Great pains were taken to insure that subjects didn't obtain medical care elsewhere. The program came to an abrupt halt in 1972 when its existance was made public by the Washington Star. It would be easy to dismiss this as a case of simple racism by a public institution, but that would be misleading also. Consider: The project was enthusiastically hosted by the Tuskeegee Institute, a historically black college. Many key researchers and staff on the project were, themselves, black. So a closer approximation of the truth is that people (black and white) with power and influence decided that a group of society's weakest individuals were "expendable."

Two take home lessons:

• As we've seen before, official secrecy has bad side effects. In the case of the Tuskeegee Experiment, it allowed institutions to get away with something that any reasonable person would view as a crime.

• Evil science and pseudoscience can be weapons in the arsenals of tyrannical governments. In fact, maybe any government that resorts to their use is tyrannical by definition.
• The scientific method is morally neutral.

  Like any other method, people with their own moral compasses must decide to employ it for good or ill.

  But the good news - in a democracy with free access to information, the people can decide for themselves how the scientific method should be employed. None of the cases above would have occurred if democracy and freedom of information hadn't been impaired.