Science has been battling hoaxes down the ages. And some of the good guys too.
But scientists today scoff at both possibilities since neither has an iota of scientific proof. They fall into the realm of hoaxes and half-baked theories that have plagued science ever since mankind started figuring out the whys, whats and hows. Albert Einstein once said: "Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the universe."
People, even scientists, will believe what they want to. Like, in 1912, when they got excited about the Piltdown Man, with an ape-like skull but human-like teeth, discovered in England and thought to be a critical link in human evolution. Later, it came about that the jaw and skull were from different eras. Two scientists, Charles Dawson and Sir Arthur Smith Woodward, had faked it. In 1999, a fossil showing a dinosaur with birdlike plumage (to sit well with the theory that birds evolved from dinosaurs) proved the handiwork of a Chinese farmer.
There have also been numerous cases of scientists "cooking" data to prove their point. William McBride, an Australian obstetrician credited with the 1961 discovery that Thalidomide (a popular drug in the ’50s) caused birth defects, changed data while investigating the side-effects of another drug, Debendox, two decades later. Robert Slutsky, who used to churn out a research article every 10 days, had to resign his post at the San Diego School of Medicine in 1985 on similar charges.
What really becomes a matter of concern is when renowned people unwittingly reach the wrong conclusions. In 1983, astronomer-writer Carl Sagan talked about the "global consequences of multiple N-explosions". He warned that it would result in a giant cloud of dust rising upwards to cover the earth. It would block out all sunlight, result in a long ‘nuclear’ winter—a climatic change that may well explain why dinosaurs suddenly vanished from earth. Seven years later, Sagan and his co-authors admitted their inferences were not correct.
Sometimes, unscientific analysis results in idiotic findings. In the ’80s, media reports said two Yale sociologists and a Harvard economist had found that single women over 35 had only a 5 per cent chance of marrying. What the authors had failed to analyse was the percentage of women who had made a conscious choice to put off marriage. Obviously, excluding this factor, any study would result in half-baked interpretations.
However, it’s also true that what’s considered bad science today can turn out to be good in the future. In 1989, when Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann announced that "cold fusion" was possible, it energised the scientific community. For, it meant that nuclear fusion was possible on a tabletop (our energy problems could be solved in a jiffy). Later experiments failed to replicate it and the duo were excommunicated. But science is now again talking of the possibility of cold fusion.
A similar thing happened to Jacques Benveniste, a French biologist who said homoeopathy (which believes in diluting drugs in water) works because water molecules retain the memory of the medicine dissolved in it. He was ridiculed, lost his fundings and credibility. But it now seems that Benveniste may have been right. Well, that’s science for you. Constantly evolving, constantly learning and correcting its own theories, and constantly confronting fakes, frauds and hoaxes.