UNTIL 2012

Controversial Science: Inventors & Charlatans

The Seven Warning Signs of Bogus Science

By Robert L. Park

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is investing close to a million dollars in an obscure Russian scientist's antigravity machine, although it has failed every test and would violate the most fundamental laws of nature. The Patent and Trademark Office recently issued Patent 6,362,718 for a physically impossible motionless electromagnetic generator, which is supposed to snatch free energy from a vacuum. And major power companies have sunk tens of millions of dollars into a scheme to produce energy by putting hydrogen atoms into a state below their ground state, a feat equivalent to mounting an expedition to explore the region south of the South Pole.

There is, alas, no scientific claim so preposterous that a scientist cannot be found to vouch for it. And many such claims end up in a court of law after they have cost some gullible person or corporation a lot of money. How are juries to evaluate them?

Before 1993, court cases that hinged on the validity of scientific claims were usually decided simply by which expert witness the jury found more credible. Expert testimony often consisted of tortured theoretical speculation with little or no supporting evidence. Jurors were bamboozled by technical gibberish they could not hope to follow, delivered by experts whose credentials they could not evaluate.

In 1993, however, with the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. the situation began to change. The case involved Bendectin, the only morning-sickness medication ever approved by the Food and Drug Administration. It had been used by millions of women, and more than 30 published studies had found no evidence that it caused birth defects. Yet eight so-called experts were willing to testify, in exchange for a fee from the Daubert family, that Bendectin might indeed cause birth defects.

In ruling that such testimony was not credible because of lack of supporting evidence, the court instructed federal judges to serve as "gatekeepers," screening juries from testimony based on scientific nonsense. Recognizing that judges are not scientists, the court invited judges to experiment with ways to fulfill their gatekeeper responsibility.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer encouraged trial judges to appoint independent experts to help them. He noted that courts can turn to scientific organizations, like the National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, to identify neutral experts who could preview questionable scientific testimony and advise a judge on whether a jury should be exposed to it. Judges are still concerned about meeting their responsibilities under the Daubert decision, and a group of them asked me how to recognize questionable scientific claims. What are the warning signs?

I have identified seven indicators that a scientific claim lies well outside the bounds of rational scientific discourse. Of course, they are only warning signs -- even a claim with several of the signs could be legitimate.

1. The discoverer pitches the claim directly to the media. The integrity of science rests on the willingness of scientists to expose new ideas and findings to the scrutiny of other scientists. Thus, scientists expect their colleagues to reveal new findings to them initially. An attempt to bypass peer review by taking a new result directly to the media, and thence to the public, suggests that the work is unlikely to stand up to close examination by other scientists.

One notorious example is the claim made in 1989 by two chemists from the University of Utah, B. Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann, that they had discovered cold fusion -- a way to produce nuclear fusion without expensive equipment. Scientists did not learn of the claim until they read reports of a news conference. Moreover, the announcement dealt largely with the economic potential of the discovery and was devoid of the sort of details that might have enabled other scientists to judge the strength of the claim or to repeat the experiment. (Ian Wilmut's announcement that he had successfully cloned a sheep was just as public as Pons and Fleischmann's claim, but in the case of cloning, abundant scientific details allowed scientists to judge the work's validity.)

Some scientific claims avoid even the scrutiny of reporters by appearing in paid commercial advertisements. A health-food company marketed a dietary supplement called Vitamin O in full-page newspaper ads. Vitamin O turned out to be ordinary saltwater.

2. The discoverer says that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress his or her work. The idea is that the establishment will presumably stop at nothing to suppress discoveries that might shift the balance of wealth and power in society. Often, the discoverer describes mainstream science as part of a larger conspiracy that includes industry and government. Claims that the oil companies are frustrating the invention of an automobile that runs on water, for instance, are a sure sign that the idea of such a car is baloney. In the case of cold fusion, Pons and Fleischmann blamed their cold reception on physicists who were protecting their own research in hot fusion.

3. The scientific effect involved is always at the very limit of detection. Alas, there is never a clear photograph of a flying saucer, or the Loch Ness monster. All scientific measurements must contend with some level of background noise or statistical fluctuation. But if the signal-to-noise ratio cannot be improved, even in principle, the effect is probably not real and the work is not science.

Thousands of published papers in para-psychology, for example, claim to report verified instances of telepathy, psychokinesis, or precognition. But those effects show up only in tortured analyses of statistics. The researchers can find no way to boost the signal, which suggests that it isn't really there.

4. Evidence for a discovery is anecdotal. If modern science has learned anything in the past century, it is to distrust anecdotal evidence. Because anecdotes have a very strong emotional impact, they serve to keep superstitious beliefs alive in an age of science. The most important discovery of modern medicine is not vaccines or antibiotics, it is the randomized double-blind test, by means of which we know what works and what doesn't. Contrary to the saying, "data" is not the plural of "anecdote."

5. The discoverer says a belief is credible because it has endured for centuries.

Ancient folk wisdom, rediscovered or repackaged, is unlikely to match the output of modern scientific laboratories.

6. The discoverer has worked in isolation. The image of a lone genius who struggles in secrecy in an attic laboratory and ends up making a revolutionary breakthrough is a staple of Hollywood's science-fiction films, but it is hard to find examples in real life. Scientific breakthroughs nowadays are almost always syntheses of the work of many scientists.

7. The discoverer must propose new laws of nature to explain an observation. A new law of nature, invoked to explain some extraordinary result, must not conflict with what is already known. If we must change existing laws of nature or propose new laws to account for an observation, it is almost certainly wrong.

I began this list of warning signs to help federal judges detect scientific nonsense. But as I finished the list, I realized that in our increasingly technological society, spotting voodoo science is a skill that every citizen should develop. There is a persistent myth that hundreds or even thousands of years ago, long before anyone knew that blood circulates throughout the body, or that germs cause disease, our ancestors possessed miraculous remedies that modern science cannot understand. Much of what is termed "alternative medicine" is part of that myth.

Robert L. Park is a professor of physics at the University of Maryland at College Park and the director of public information for the American Physical Society. He is the author of Voodoo Science: The Road From Foolishness to Fraud (Oxford University Press, 2002).

Charlatans versus scientists

By Ludwik Kowalski

An interesting paperback book was published in 2003 by Keith Tutt in England. The title is "The Scientist, the Madman, the Thief and the Lightbulb." The book begins with the biography of Nikola Tesla, goes over the alleged discovery of Henry Morey from Salt Lake City (1930's) and then focuses on recent episodes, including that of cold fusion. In chapter 11, entitled "Of Charlatans, Conspiracies and Skeptics" the author gives a description of schemes by which con artists take advantage of naive expectations of many investors and convince them to finance unreasonable, often non-existing projects. One recent episode of that kind involved an Australian manipulator, Brian Collins.

He was claiming to invent a miraculous energy-making machine "measuring just 12 inches by 3 inches and weighing only 10 pounds. During the tests the machine was said to produce enough electrical energy to completely power an average size home. . . . With the availability of unlimited amounts of affordable electric energy, individuals can at last pursue their creative aspirations in a new age of society. In a longer description of the device, published at the same time, the claims are even more generous: "The prototype . . . produced electrical energy in excess of 1000 kW, enough power to satisfy the energy needs of 100 domestic dwellings at average load demand."

Exploiting naive desire to get rich from free energy Collins wrote: "The special few who sent funds . . . for every dollar that they sent, they'll see more money than they ever believed possible, . . . [I]n the next few weeks there could be some amazing things happening that could see many, many times the funds returned to everybody." But several months later, when money was collected, he apologized that he had been misled by his scientists about the status of the generator. The only persons who benefited from the fraud were Collins and his associates.

In reading numerous books critical of cold fusion I never encountered an accusation of fraud directed to Fleischmann and Ponds or to those who carried out additional investigations in thirteen years after the initial announcement. I saw accusations of misinterpretation, lack of expertise, self-delusion and inappropriate methodology but no accusations of deliberate deception or fraud. The only exceptions were words attributed to an MIT professor Ronald Parker. According to a journalist, Nick Tate (Boston Globe, May 1, 1989), cold fusion was denounced by Parker as "scientific schlock." But in a news conference next day the professor denied using these words.

On the other hand, I encountered one accusation of fraudulent manipulation of data on the part of critics of Fleischmann and Pons. According to E. Mallove, the chief science writer in the MIT's press office (who had access to nearly all the information that was put out by the Plasma Fusion Center) there was a deliberate campaign to discredit cold fusion. Those who orchestrated the campaign (Parker among them) were motivated by the desire to protect their own projects supported by the government ($ 200,000,000 per year). Mallove wrote that "MIT as a whole did, indeed, acquire the deserved reputation as a 'bastion of skepticism' on cold fusion. . . . They suspected that .. . . if the public were to have a too open-minded attitude toward . . . the cold fusion, funding for their [hot fusion] program would be endangered. Assuming this to be true one is tempted to criticize the motivation based on financial self-interest. Scientists are expected to be objective in the analysis of experimental facts and theories. But how can one be impartial when asked to evaluate a competitor?

On page 139 Tuff shows two sets of plots summarizing a calorimeter experiment conducted at MIT. The draft plot, dated July 10, 1989, shows evidence of excess heat, as reported by Fleischmann and Pons. That evidence, however, was removed from the final plot, dated July 13, 1989. l (who discovered the contradiction) asked for the original data but his request was ignored. Mallove believes that this was a conspiracy designed to influence the US Department of Energy.

By the way, a colleague sent me a copy of an interesting article of R. Park. It was published in The Chronicle of Higher Education (vol. 49, issue 21, page b20, 2003). The title is “The Seven Warning Signals of Bogus Science.”

Ludwik Kowalski (March 7, 2003)
Department of Mathematical Sciences
Montclair State University, Upper Montclair, NJ, 07043

"Free energy" devices

In the 1760s, James Cox (with the help of John Joseph Merlin) developed a working perpetual motion machine of sorts: a clock (known as Cox's timepiece) powered by changes in atmospheric pressure. Cox was quite open about the workings of his machine, unlike many perpetual motion inventors. The clock still exists today (but was deactivated by the clock's relocation). [3] Another early prospector in this field included Cromwell Varley. Varley did discover in 1867 that an electric generator did not need to be started with a conventional prime mover. He used the Earth's magnetic field to induce enough field strength in the stator windings to get a generator running. [4]

Some 19th century inventors, such as Thomas Henry Moray (an admirer of Nikola Tesla), claimed to be able to tap into radiant energy sources utilizing high frequency high voltage currents interacting with the aether. The energy would be derived from the "running river" of the aether. Several demonstrations by Moray were done where 50 kW of power were generated for several days from an antenna connected to a series of transformers, capacitors, and other components. However, all plans and knowledge were kept secret by Moray, demonstration was not verified, and patents were never granted. Hermann Plauson, an Estonian engineer and inventor, also investigated the production of energy and power via atmospheric electricity.

Some free energy devices are devices that absorb ambient electromagnetic fields (known as radiant energy) and converts the incoming energy into a useful form of power or function. Here the term is categorised more as renewable energy. Other "free energy devices" are solar cells and thermocouples which do the same for light and heat. Of course "free energy" here is something of a misnomer, it is simply that the energy used is generated elsewhere. These devices are not perpetual motion machines in the strict sense of breaking thermodynamic laws and being unworkable.

An early "free energy" device that was widely used was the crystal radio, which consisted of a solenoid coil made of insulated wire and a galena crystal. It used no batteries. Over the course of history, powerful versions of these "wireless" machines were built by Mahlon Loomis, David Edward Hughes and Nikola Tesla.

The Testatika is an electromagnetic generator based on the 1898 Pidgeon electrostatic machine which includes an inductance circuit, a capacitance circuit, and a thermionic rectification valve. Allegedly a perpetual motion machine, the Testatika resembles in some respects a Wimshurst machine. It was built by German engineer, Paul Suisse Baumann, and promoted by a Swiss community, the Methernithans.

Perpetual Motion

Perpetual motion refers to a condition in which an object moves forever without being driven by an external source of energy.

The term is commonly used to refer to machines which display this phenomenon. In the macroscopic world, perpetual motion is not generally considered to be possible. Perpetual motion machines (the Latin term perpetuum mobile is not uncommon) are a class of hypothetical machines which would produce useful energy in a way which would violate the established laws of physics. No genuine perpetual motion machine currently exists, and according to certain fundamental laws in physics they cannot exist. Specifically, perpetual motion machines would violate either the first or second laws of thermodynamics. Perpetual motion machines are divided into two subcategories, defined by which law of thermodynamics would have to be broken in order for the device to be a true perpetual motion machine.

The impossibility of energy for nothing is not merely a matter of habit of thought with science. It is enshrined in one of the most fundamental and important laws of physics: the first law of thermodynamics or the law of conservation of energy, which says that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, but can only change its form.

A typical application of gravity in a perpetual motion machine is Bhaskara's wheel, whose key idea is itself a recurring theme, often called the overbalanced wheel: Moving weights are attached to a wheel in such a way that they fall to a position further from the wheel's center for one half of the wheel's rotation, and closer to the center for the other half. Since weights further from the center apply a greater torque, the result is (or would be, if such a device worked) that the wheel rotates forever. The moving weights may be hammers on pivoted arms, or rolling balls, or mercury in tubes; the principle is the same.

Scientists and engineers accept the possibility that the current understanding of the laws of physics may be incomplete or incorrect; a perpetual motion device may not be impossible, but overwhelming evidence would be required to justify rewriting the laws of physics. Any proposed perpetual motion design offers a potentially instructive challenge to physicists: we know it can't work (because of the laws of thermodynamics), so explain how it fails to work.