Anomaly analysis

I try to be tolerant of people's foibles, but one thing that annoys the absolute hell out of me is when someone is obviously ignorant of the basic facts of a subject, and yet expects everyone to treat their opinion about it as if it had merit.

It's why "the Big Bang means nothing exploded and made everything" (cosmology) and "why are there still monkeys?" (evolutionary biology) both make me see red almost instantaneously.  Fer cryin' in the sink, if you're going to talk about something, at least take the five minutes it requires to read the fucking Wikipedia page on the topic first.  Yes, I suppose you're "entitled to your opinion" regardless, but I'm in no way required to treat such idiocy as if it were Stephen Hawking levels of brilliance.

I mean, I have a lot of faults, but one thing I try to avoid is pontificating on subjects about which I am ignorant.  I have a pretty good idea of the limits of my own knowledge, and I am unhesitating in saying, "Sorry, I don't know enough to comment about that."

It's really not that hard to say.  Try it, you'll see.

What brings this whole infuriating subject up is all the people who weighed in on something that is honestly a very cool piece of research, which came out in the journal Geophysical Research Letters last week.  A team led by geophysicist Charlotte Gaugné-Gouranton, of Paris City University, used satellite data to analyze a peculiar shift in the Earth's gravitational field that affected a huge region of the eastern Atlantic Ocean.

The team is uncertain what caused the anomaly, which lasted for about two years and then subsided back into its original state.  "By analyzing time series of GRACE [Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment]-derived gravity gradients, we have identified an anomalous large-scale gravity gradient signal in the eastern Atlantic Ocean, maximum at the beginning of 2007, which cannot be fully explained by surface water sources nor core fluid flows," the researchers wrote.  "This leads us to suggest that at least part of this signal could reflect rapid mass redistributions deep in the mantle."

The team suspects it might have been caused by a sudden phase transition in a common mantle mineral called bridgmanite (Mg,Fe(SiO3)), which could cause mass redistribution because of changes in density, similar to what happens when water freezes into ice.  But further research is needed to confirm this explanation.

Well, in a classic case of people adding 1 + 1 and getting 73.8, we immediately had dozens of self-styled experts adding "anomaly" to "gravity" and multiplying by "cannot be fully explained" and getting... well, take a look for yourself:

• "Advanced technology of alien manufacture is capable of 'shielding' from gravity and is the means of FTL propulsion that's been observed over and over.  This 'blink' means it's finally been captured by scientific equipment.  Countdown until the government denials start."
• "Disruptions like this are to be expected during the End Times.  Hell is on the move."
• "The scientists know more than they're letting on.  I wouldn't live along the East Coast of the United States if you paid me.  Connections to La Palma?"  [Nota bene: La Palma is one of the Canary Islands, home to a volcano that has been erupting intermittently since 2021, and was the subject of a rather hysterical BBC documentary in 2000 about how the island could split in half and cause a megatsunami -- something geologists have determined is extremely unlikely]
• "When those windows open and close again, it is a sign of the Celestial Ascension.  We should expect more of the same very soon."
• "I'm surprised they let this study get published.  Something that can change the Universal Law of Gravity, and they're shrugging it off as an 'anomaly'?  But now that the secret is out, why hasn't this been headline news worldwide?"
• "The LHC [Large Hadron Collider] went online in 2008.  Not a coincidence.  It's only a theory, but they said that the LHC could create mini black holes, and this may be proof."
• "Movement within the Hollow Earth.  But movement of what?  Stay tuned, folks, this is big."

*brief pause to stop banging my head against my desk while whimpering softly*

Okay, let's all just hang on a moment.  First of all, this anomaly was vast in size, but tiny in magnitude.  The fluctuation was small enough that it was undetectable on the Earth's surface (the scientists' own words) and was only caught by highly sensitive sensors on satellites that had been specifically designed to detect minute shifts in the Earth's gravitational field.  Second, it wasn't a "blink" -- it lasted for over two years.  Third, it peaked back in 2007, so whatever it was ended seventeen years ago, and in that time we have seen no Atlantic megatsunamis, aliens, Celestial Ascensions, or hellmouths opening.  Fourth, a shift in the gravitational field just means "something with mass moved," not a "change in the Universal Law of Gravitation."  Fifth, if the LHC had created a dangerous mini black hole, you'd think the physicists right there in Switzerland would have been the first to know, not some geologists working out in the Atlantic.  Sixth, you can't give an idea legitimacy simply by adding the phrase "it's only a theory;" if a claim was stupid before, it's still stupid after you say that.  In fact, it might be even stupider.

Seventh, and most importantly: for fuck's sake, people.

Captain Picard has absolutely had it with this kind of nonsense.

It's not that we laypeople -- and I very much include myself in that term -- can't get carried away by the hype sometimes.  In fact, when I first read about the La Palma thing a few years ago, I was honestly kind of freaked out by it; devastating landslide-induced megatsunamis have happened before (in fact, long-term followers of Skeptophilia might recall that I've written about two of them here -- the Storegga Slide and the Agadir Canyon Avalanche).  But then I did what everyone should do when they're confronted with a claim outside of their area of expertise; I did a little digging to find out what the scientists themselves had to say on the topic, and I found out that just about all geologists agree that while La Palma is clearly seismically active, it's unlikely to fracture and create an ocean-wide megatsunami.

At that point, I just kind of went, "whew," and resumed business as usual.  I did not then go on to claim that the scientists were wrong, the island was too going to fracture, and aliens from the Hollow Earth were going to use their anti-gravity faster-than-light propulsion to come out and usher in either the End Times or the Celestial Ascension, depending on which version you went for earlier.

Look, it's not that there's anything specifically dangerous about thinking there's an alien base under the eastern Atlantic.  It's more that such fuzzy irrationality very quickly becomes a habit.  Once you're accustomed to demanding respect for a claim that upon examination turns out to be "this crazy, fact-free idea I just now pulled out of my ass," you begin to apply the same demand for your uninformed opinions on medicine, the economy, and politics.

Which in one sentence explains why the United States is currently a slow-motion train wreck.

It all goes back to what Isaac Asimov said in 1980, doesn't it?  Seems like a good place to end:

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been.  The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."

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The undiscoverable country

After Thursday's post about nonexistent islands, a loyal reader of Skeptophilia asked me if I'd ever heard of the country of Listenbourg.

I said, "Do you mean Luxembourg?" but he assured me he was spelling it right.

"Islands aren't the only thing that can be nonexistent," he said, which is true, but when you think about it too hard is a very peculiar statement.

So I looked into Listenbourg, and it's quite a story -- especially since the whole thing started as a way to ridicule Americans for their ignorance about anything outside the borders of the United States.

In October of 2022, a French guy named Gaspard Hoelscher posted a doctored map of Europe on Twitter that looked like this:

He captioned it, "Je suis sûr que les américains ne connaissent même pas le nom de ce pays!" ("I'm sure that Americans don't even known the name of this country!")  One of his followers responded, "Qui ne connaît pas le Listenbourg?" ("Who doesn't know Listenbourg?")

You'd think anyone who'd ever given more than a ten-second look at an actual map of Europe would immediately know this was a joke, but no.  Even a closer look at this map would have revealed the curious fact that "Listenbourg" is actually a resized and inverted copy of the outline of France itself, simply pasted onto (and partially covering) the northwest corners of Spain and Portugal.

Apparently, this was not the case, as the original post caused a number of irate Americans to jump up and defend our superior knowledge -- almost none of whom, however, came right out and said that they recognized it was a prank.  You could tell that some of them had actually come damn close to saying, "Of course I know where Listenbourg is," but held back at the last minute.

This prompted a flood of hilarity online that the prank's originator, Hoelscher, said "totally overwhelmed" him.  Amused Europeans invented a flag, capital city ("Lurenberg"), culture, history, language, and even a national anthem for Listenbourg.  It has five regions, they said: Flußerde, Kusterde, Mitteland, Adrias and Caséière.  A post saying that Hoelscher himself was the president was met by universal acclaim.  Then it escaped social media into the wider world:

• An announcement prior to the Paris Olympics of 2024 stated that "The number of Olympic delegations has risen from 206 to 207 with the arrival of Listenbourg."
• Amazon Prime in Europe announced that a documentary on the history of Listenbourg was in production -- only careful watchers noticed that the projected release date was "February 31, 2025."
• Ryanair said in a press release that they were "Proud to be announcing their new base in Listenbourg."
• The French television network TF1 aired a realistic-sounding weather report for the country.
• French politician Jean Lassalle said in a speech that he was "just returned from a visit to an agricultural seminar in Lurenberg."
• The city of Nice said that they were happy to announce their intention to become a sister city to Lurenberg, and that there would be new inexpensive flights between the two.

I have to admit that as an American, my laughter over all this is coupled with a distinct edge of cringe.  I mean, being global dumbasses is not exactly the reputation I'd like my country to have.  Sadly, though, I can't really argue with the assessment.  You don't have to dig very hard to find highly embarrassing videos of interviewers stopping people in crowds in the United States to ask them tough questions like "What is the capital of England?" and finding numerous Americans who can't come up with the answer.  And with the Republicans currently doing everything in their power to destroy our system of public education, the situation is only going to get worse.

Oh, but don't worry.  At least we'll have the Ten Commandments on the wall of every classroom, and students will get Bible lessons every day and won't be exposed to scary books like Heather Has Two Mommies.

Hey, I wonder what would happen if you asked Donald Trump to find Listenbourg on a map?  I bet he'd never realize he was being pranked, considering that he once gave a speech to African leaders and confidently talked about the proud country of "Nambia."

Look, I know we all have holes in our knowledge; all of us are ignorant about some subjects.  The important thing is not to make ignorance a permanent condition -- or to flaunt it.  Stubbornly persisting in your state of ignorance has a name.

It's called "stupidity."

What's worse is when people think they are experts on stuff when they're clearly not, and publicly trumpet their own idiocy.  (Donald Trump is absolutely the poster child for this phenomenon.)  As Stephen Hawking trenchantly put it, "The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge."  Because if you're convinced you already know everything you need to know -- and that, I'm afraid, is the state of many Americans, including the majority of our elected officials -- you have no incentive to learn more, or worse, to find out you're actually wrong about something.

My dad used to say "there's nothing as dangerous as confident stupidity."  I think that's spot-on.  And sad that the Listenbourg incident -- funny as it is -- pointed out that in the eyes of many people in the world, that's what the United States represents.

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Internet expertise

What is it with people trusting random laypeople over experts?

Okay, yeah, I know experts can be wrong, and credentials are not an unshakable guarantee that the person in question knows what they're talking about.  But still.  Why is it so hard to accept that an actual scientist, who has a Ph.D. in the field and has done real research, in general will know more about the topic than some dude on the internet?

The topic comes up because of a conversation I had with my athletic trainer yesterday.  He is pretty knowledgeable about all things fitness-related -- so while he's not a researcher or a scientist (something he'd tell you up front), he's certainly Better Than The Average Bear.  And he ran into an especially ridiculous example of the aforementioned phenomenon, which he was itching to show me as soon as I got there.

Without further ado, we have: the woman who thinks that the amino acid L-glutamine is so named because it is important for developing your glutes:

And of course, it must be right because she heard it from "the TikTok Fitness Girls, and they don't lie."

The whole thing reminds me of something I heard every damn year from students, which is that the ingredient sodium erythorbate in hotdogs and other processed meat products is made from ground-up earthworms, because "earthworm" and "erythorbate" sound a little bit alike.  (Actually, sodium erythorbate is an antioxidant that is chemically related to vitamin C, and is added to meat products as a preservative and antibacterial agent.)

But to return to the broader point, why is it so hard to accept that people who have studied a subject actually... know a lot about the subject?  Instead, people trust shit like:

• Noted scientific researcher Gwyneth Paltrow recommending coffee consumption... which she wants to administer by squirting it up your ass.
• Another noted scientific researcher, Kim Kardashian, suggesting combating wrinkles and other visible signs of aging by withdrawing blood from your arm and injecting it under the skin on your face.
• A claim that chemotherapy actually causes cancer.
• A person who recommends using crystals to treat illness in dogs.
• Selling people charcoal-based "detoxifying juice cleanses" -- which have the unfortunate side-effect of absorbing important substances you may have ingested, like vitamins, minerals, and medications.
• A belief that you'll die if you eat more than seven bananas in a day, which started out as a joke told in an interview by British comedian Karl Pilkington that then got out way of hand.
• "Ear candling," which is sticking a lit candle in your ear in an attempt to suck out the earwax.  There are two confirmed cases of people falling asleep while ear candling and setting their houses on fire, and dozens of people who've ended up in the emergency room after dripping hot wax down their ear canals.
• The practice of "perineum sunning," which unfortunately is just what it sounds like.  You take off all your clothes and expose your butthole to direct sunlight, which is supposed to rotate the tires on your energy meridians or something, but in actuality risks a sunburn that I'd rather not even think about.

And I feel obliged to make my usual disclaimer that I am not making any of the above up.

I wonder how much of this attitude, especially here in the United States, comes from the egalitarian mindset being misapplied -- that "everyone should have the same basic rights" spills over into "everyone's opinion is equally valid."  I recall back when George W. Bush was running for president, there was a significant slice of voters who liked him because he came across as a "regular guy -- someone you could sit down and have a beer with."  He wasn't an "intellectual elite" (heaven knows that much was true enough).  

And I remember reacting to that with sheer bafflement.  Hell, I know I'm not smart enough to be president.  I want someone way more intelligent than I am to be running the country.  Why is "Vote Bush -- He's Just As Dumb As You Are" considered some kind of reasonable campaign slogan?

I think the same thing is going on here -- people hear about the new health miracle from Some Guy Online, and it sounds vaguely plausible, so they give more credence to him than they do to an actual expert (who uses big complicated words and doesn't necessarily give you easy solutions to your health problems).  If you don't have a background in biological science yourself, maybe it sounds like it might work, so you figure you'll give it a try.  After that, wishful thinking and the placebo effect do the rest of the heavy lifting, and pretty soon you're naked in the park sunning your nether orifice.

There's a willful part of this, though.  There comes a point where it crosses the line from simple ignorance into actual stupidity.  To go back to my original example, a thirty-second Google search would tell you that L-glutamine has nothing to do with your glutes.  (In fact, the two words don't come from the same root, even though they sound alike; glutamine comes from the Latin gluten, meaning "sticky," and glutes comes from the Greek γλουτός, meaning buttocks.)  To believe that L-glutamine will develop your glutes because the TikTok Fitness Girls say so, you need to be not only (1) ignorant, but (2) gullible, and (3) uninterested in learning any better.

And that, I find incomprehensible.

I'll end with the famous quote from Isaac Asimov, which seems to sum up the whole bizarre thing about as well as anyone could: "There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been.  The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'"

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Ignorant and proud of it

Way back in 1980, biochemist, writer, and polymath Isaac Asimov wrote something that is even more accurate today than it was back then:

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been.  The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."

I remember the first time I ran headlong into the bizarre American "ignorant and proud of it" attitude Asimov describes, during the presidential campaign of George W. Bush.  Even Bush's supporters admitted he wasn't an intellectual; I heard one person say he was voting for Bush because he wanted someone in the White House who was one of the "common folk," someone he would want to sit down and have a pint of beer with.  I responded, in considerable bafflement, "Don't you want the president to be smarter than you and I are?  I know I'm not smart enough to run the country."

His response was that the intellectuals are out of touch, and don't understand on a visceral level the problems ordinary people face.  This, I have to admit, contains a kernel of truth.  Politics is a money game, and most (not all; I'm sure you'll find counterexamples) elected officials come from some level of wealth and privilege.  And it's true that this privilege can create a set of blinders.  People who have never been down to pennies at the end of a pay period -- as I, and many others, have -- don't understand what it's like for financial worries never to be far from your mind, twenty-four hours a day.

The problem, of course, is that while an "ordinary person" might empathize with the plight of other ordinary people, that doesn't mean (s)he knows how to fix it.  Experiencing a problem doesn't mean you have a clue how to solve it.

But as Asimov pointed out, the "we're equal as people, so my ideas are as good as yours" nonsense is woven deeply into the American psyche, and the result has been that increasingly you run into people who seem to be not only oblivious to their own ignorance, but actively proud of it.  I was just discussing this with my athletic trainer, Kevin, this week.  One of the points I made is that I know there are a lot of areas about which I am ignorant.  The internal workings of cars, for example.  I have only the vaguest notion of how automobile engines work -- which is why when something goes wrong with my car, I go down to my mechanic and say, "Car not go, please fix."  What I don't do is start blathering on to my friends and acquaintances about carburetors and alternators and fuel pumps, and getting all defensive when one of them tells me what I'm saying is bullshit.

This, surprisingly, is often not the approach people have.  Kevin told me he was at a party a while back, and someone was pontificating about how the problem with the COVID-19 vaccination was that it was a vaccine.  On the other hand, he said, he was fine with getting a flu shot, because that wasn't a vaccine, it was a shot.

Kevin said, "The flu shot is a vaccine, too."

The guy responded, "No, it's a shot.  COVID is a vaccine, which means it does stuff to your immune system."

A little goggle-eyed, Kevin said, "But... doing stuff to your immune system is what shots are supposed to do."

Undeterred, the guy said, "No, that's vaccines.  The flu shot just stops the flu virus from making you sick, it doesn't mess with your immune system."

At that point, Kevin decided that the guy had the IQ of a peach pit and gave up.

What gets me about this is not that some person had a goofy misconception about something.  We all have goofy misconceptions about some things, and a complete lack of knowledge about others.  But -- hopefully -- most of us know better than to broadcast our ignorance in front of a large group of people.

Or on a major news network.  Just a couple of days ago, Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson, who is himself no stranger to broadcasting his stupidity, had a guest who made Carlson's own beliefs look positively Ph.D.-worthy by comparison.  The guy's name is (I'm not making this up) Joe Bastardi, and you'll get a good idea of his scientific credibility when I tell you that he's the author of a book called The Weaponization of Weather in the Phony Climate War.  (He chose this title when it narrowly edged out his second-favorite choice, which was 99% of the Earth's Scientists Are Big Dumb Poopyheads.)  But what he said went way beyond just claiming that "the climate's just fine, keep on burnin' those fossil fuels."  Here is a direct quote, which (once again) I swear I'm not making up:

I’ve been giving [climate change policy] a lot of thought today, because I had to drive from Iowa City all the way to Pittsburgh, and when I went by South Bend, oddly enough it hit me.  There are three possibilities here, in my opinion, just looking at this, okay.

First is, they’ve all got climate vaccines.  We don’t know about them, but unlike the COVID vaccine, they actually work, so whatever they do, they’re immune from it.  So that’s a possibility.  That’s a long shot.

The second, Tucker, is, that if bad weather stops air travel, and it stops car travel, if you can cause more bad weather, right, then guess what?  Everybody can’t drive.  For instance, next week, and the week after?  Watch how much bad weather comes into the United States.  It’s going to be the coldest, snowiest period around the Christmas time since 2000.  So we’re gonna see planes, and trains, and all these other things shut down.  So if you just dump all this CO2 in the atmosphere, your assumption is, hey, CO2 causes bad weather, if I could cause more bad weather, then guess what?  Other people won’t be able to fly, and we’ll have less CO2 emissions.

Or the third possibility, exactly what you said: it’s a phony climate war, it’s fraudulent.  When we talked back in July, we talked about how it’s going to get cold earlier this year across the United States, that has nothing to do with CO2, what it has to do is the natural cycles of the weather, and what happens is these people are taking advantage of people who fall prey to this, and this is what they’re doing.  There’s no logic or reason for it except they are trying to establish a caste system that destroys the greatest experiment of freedom and individuality, which is this country.

I have a few responses to this, to wit:

1. How the fuck do you vaccinate someone against the climate?
2. Winter is frequently the coldest, snowiest part of the year in the United States.  That's because we're in the Northern Hemisphere and that's how seasons work.
3. So, what he's saying is that the environmental scientists have created the whole climate change thing in order to destroy the United States.  Even though a great many of them live here.  Because that makes total sense.
4. Does he really think that somehow, the climatologists are engineering bad weather across the entire United States?  Simultaneously?  How are they doing this, using magical laser beams from space, or something?
5. No, wait -- it's not magical laser beams from space, he says.  It's something way less plausible than that.  What we're gonna do is dump carbon dioxide into the air to make travel difficult, which will stop travel, which will cause us to emit less carbon dioxide. 

Now that's what I call a cunning plan.

And through the entire conversation, Tucker Carlson sat there, nodding sagely, as if what Bastardi was saying was nearing Stephen Hawking levels of brilliance, instead of doing what I'd have done, which is to say to him, "What is clear from this conversation is that if the government taxed brains, you'd get a refund."

Which explains why I am not a commentator on Fox News.

So.  Yeah.  For some reason, there are people who are abjectly ignorant, and yet who consider it critical that the entire world finds out about it.  It all brings back the well-known aphorism -- one of my dad's favorites --- that "it's better to keep your mouth and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and prove it."

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Warning: DNA is everywhere!

Because evidently my generally abysmal opinion of the intelligence of the human species isn't low enough, yesterday a loyal reader sent me an article referencing a survey in which eighty percent of respondents said they favored mandatory labeling of foods that contain DNA.

[Image is in the Public Domain courtesy of the National Institute of Health]

I kept looking, in vain, for a sign that this was a joke.  Sadly, this is real.  It came from a study done by the Oklahoma State University Department of Agricultural Economics.  And what it shows, in my opinion, is that there are people out there who vote and make important decisions and (apparently) walk upright without dragging their knuckles on the ground, and yet who do not know that DNA is found in every living organism.

Or maybe, they don't know that most of what we eat is made of cells.  I dunno.  Whatever.  Because if you aren't currently on the Salt, Baking Soda, and Scotch Diet, you consume the DNA of plants and/or animals every time you eat.

Lettuce contains lettuce DNA.  Potatoes contain potato DNA.  Beef contains cow DNA.  "Slim Jims" contain -- well, they contain the DNA of whatever the hell Slim Jims are made from.  I don't want to know.  But get the picture?  If you put a label on foods with DNA, the label goes on everything.

Ilya Somin, of the Washington Post, even made a suggestion of what such a food-warning label might look like:

WARNING: This product contains deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA).  The Surgeon General has determined that DNA is linked to a variety of diseases in both animals and humans.  In some configurations, it is a risk factor for cancer and heart disease.  Pregnant women are at very high risk of passing on DNA to their children.

Despite the scary sound of Somin's tongue-in-cheek proposed label, there's nothing dangerous about eating DNA.  Enzymes in our small intestines break down the DNA we consume into individual building blocks (nucleotides), and we then use those building blocks to produce our own DNA every time we make new cells.  Which is all the time.  Eating pig DNA will not, as one of my students once asked me, "make us oink."

But this highlights something rather terrifying, doesn't it?  Every other day we're told things like "Thirty Percent of Americans Are Against GMOs" and "Forty Percent of Americans Disbelieve in Anthropogenic Climate Change" and "Thirty-Two Percent of Americans Believe the Earth is Six Thousand Years Old."  (If you're curious, I made those percentages up, because I really don't want to know what the actual numbers are, I'm depressed enough already.)  What the Oklahoma State University study shows is: none of that is relevant.  If eighty percent of Americans don't know what DNA is, why the fuck should I trust what they say on anything else even remotely scientific?

But it's the voting part that scares me, because as we've seen over and over again, dumb people vote for dumb people.  I'm not sure why this is, either, because you'd think that there'd be a sense that even if a lot of voters are dumb themselves, they'd want smart people running the country.  But maybe that'd make all the dumb people feel inferior.  Or maybe it's because the dumb people want to be reassured that they, too, could one day hold public office.

Either way, it's why we end up with public office being held by people like:

• Mitt Romney: "I believe in an America where millions of Americans believe in an America that’s the America millions of Americans believe in.  That’s the America I love."
• Louie Gohmert: "We give the military money, it ought to be to kick rears, break things, and come home."
• Rick Perry: "The reason that we fought the [American] Revolution in the 16th century — was to get away from that kind of onerous crown, if you will."
• Hank Johnson: "Guam is an island that is, what, twelve miles from shore to shore?  And on its smallest level, uh, smallest, uh, uh, location, it's uh, seven miles, uh, between one shore and the other...  My fear is that (if US Marines are sent there) the whole island will become so populated that it will tip over and capsize."
• Diana DeGette: "These are ammunition, they’re bullets, so the people who have those now, they’re going to shoot them, so if you ban them in the future, the number of these high-capacity magazines is going to decrease dramatically over time because the bullets will have been shot and there won’t be any more available."
• James Inhofe: "Well actually the Genesis 8:22 that I use in there is that ‘as long as the earth remains there will be seed time and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, day and night,’ my point is, God’s still up there.  The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous."
• Henry Waxman: "We're seeing the reality of a lot of the North Pole starting to evaporate, and we could get to a tipping point.  Because if it evaporates to a certain point -- they have lanes now where ships can go that couldn't ever sail through before.  And if it gets to a point where it evaporates too much, there's a lot of tundra that's being held down by that ice cap."

The whole thing is profoundly distressing, and brings to mind the quote from Joseph de Maistre: "Democracy is the form of government in which everyone has a voice, and therefore in which the people get exactly the government they deserve."

Now, bear in mind that what I'm talking about here isn't simple ignorance.  We all have subjects upon which we are ignorant.  If I'm ever in any doubt of that in my own case, all I have to do is wait until the biennial meeting with my financial planner, because as soon as he starts talking about bond values and stocks and annuities and debentures and brokerage accounts, I end up with the same puzzled expression my dog would have if I attempted to teach him quantum physics.  

Ignorance, though, can be cured, with a little hard work and (most importantly) an admission that you actually don't understand everything.  What we're talking about here isn't ignorance alone; it's more like aggressive stupidity.  This is ignorance coupled with a defiant sort of confidence.  This would be like me taking my complete lack of knowledge of economics and finance, and trying to get people to hire me as a financial planner.

It brings to mind once again the quote from the brilliant biochemist, author, and polymath Isaac Asimov, which seems like as good a place as any to end: "There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been.  The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'"

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Skipping the comments

A few days ago I was casting about for topics for Skeptophilia, and was perusing that amazing clearinghouse for everything from the profound to the ridiculous, Reddit.

I ran into a link to a Science Daily article about some delightful research that came out of a collaboration between physicists at four different universities in China, which centered on the physics of skipping rocks.  I absolutely love skipping rocks, and whenever I'm by a lake I will spend inordinate amounts of time finding, and then slinging, the most perfectly flat stones I can find, trying to beat my record (which stands at thirteen skips).

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Killy Ridols, Stone skimming -Patagonia-9Mar2010, CC BY-SA 2.0]

The math in the original research is way way beyond my ability to understand, despite my bachelor's degree in physics (but to be fair, I kind of sucked as a physics student).  The reader is put on notice that it's going to be rough going immediately, because the first thing the authors do is to define no fewer than 49 different variables they considered in modeling the behavior of a skipping stone.

So I went back to the summary in Science Daily, and found a nicely dumbed-down explanation of what they'd done.  They used an aluminum disk launched by an air compressor in place of the typical round stone and person's arm, with a motorized feature that started the disk spinning at a chosen rate before launch.  Attached to the disk was a set of sensors that monitored the disk while in flight, because -- as you know if you're a rock-skipper -- it can all happen so fast that it's hard to keep track of all-important data like how much the rock's path curves (and which direction), the angle your rock hits the water, and the number of skips you get.

The upshot of it was that the rate of spin is critical, because spinning induces the gyroscopic effect and stabilizes the pitch of the rock as it flies.  Less intuitively obvious, to me at least, is that the vertical acceleration of the rock has to be higher than a certain threshold (which turns out to be about four times the acceleration due to gravity) in order for the stone to bounce.

So I thought all this was pretty cool -- taking a familiar phenomenon and explaining how complex it really is using mathematical modeling.

Then I did what you should never, ever, ever do.

I looked at the comments section.

I swear, I should get fitted out with something like those "Invisible Fence" dog collars, only instead of zapping me when I cross a line on our property, it would zap me when I try to look at the comments section.  Any comments section.  Because I started sputtering with rage almost immediately, when I saw comments like these -- which, for the record, are reproduced here verbatim, because I don't want to write sic over and over:

• This is what scientists do?  Spend their time fucking around throwing rocks in the water.  How about doing stuff that might actually help people.
• I cant believe our tax dollars is going to pay for bullshit "research" like this.
• Whats next, the physics of yoyos?
• Yeah I believe it.  Liberal loonies love this kind of stuff.  Waste of time.
• SMH you can't make this shit up
• Whose approving these grant appliactions?  FFS no wonder nooone trusts scientists to tell the truth when there playing kids games instead of working.

More sensitive readers may want to plug their ears.

WILL ALL OF YOU ANTI-SCIENTIFIC, ILLITERATE YAHOOS KNUCKLE-DRAG YOUR WAY BACK TO YOUR CAVES, AND LEAVE THE INTELLECTUAL COMMENTARY TO PEOPLE WHO HAVE AN ACTUAL INTELLECT?

I mean, really.

First of all, zero American tax dollars were spent on this study, because the entire thing was done in China.  I know we Americans have a regrettable tendency to think "America" = "the entire world," but all you have to do is look at the author affiliation list, or even the line in the Science Daily summary that says the research was done by "scientists from several universities in China."  And while the research itself studied stone-skipping, the model has applications to a lot of important stuff, which you'd have figured out if you bothered to look at the very first line of the original paper: "Although skipping stones seems like a time-honored pastime, an in-depth study of this game is of vital importance for the understanding of the water landing of space flight re-entry vehicles and aircraft, hull slamming, antitorpedo and antisubmarine water entry, etc."

And even if the researchers hadn't pointed out in the introduction to the paper exactly what the potential applications are, I absolutely abhor the attitude that pure research -- investigating a scientific question without regard to immediate utility -- is useless.  It's worth pointing out how many times what seemed like "nothing more than pure research" generated something that turned out to be incredibly important.  Here are a few examples that come to mind:

1. Two researchers, George Beadle and Edward Tatum, were researching nutrition in a mold called Neurospora, and were particularly interested in why some strains of Neurospora starved to death even when given adequate amounts of food.  Their research generated the concept of "one gene-one protein" -- the basis of our understanding of how genes control traits.
2. Charles Richet was studying how the toxin of a rare species of jellyfish affects the body.  His research led to the discovery of how anaphylactic shock works -- and the development of the epi pen, saving countless lives from death because of bee sting allergies, nut allergies, and so on.
3. Wilhelm Röntgen was researching the newly-invented cathode-ray tube, which at that point had no practical applications whatsoever.  That is, he was playing around.  He noticed that when he activated the tube, even though it was completely covered, some fluorescent papers at the other end of the room began to glow in the dark. He had just discovered x-rays.
4. Alexander Fleming was something of a ne'er-do-well in the scientific world. He did a lot of raising of bacteria on plates, and his favorite hobby was to take brightly-colored species of bacteria and paint them on agar media to make pictures.  One day, a mold spore blew in and landed on one of his picture-cultures and spoiled it.  His further messing-about with how the mold spoiled the culture led to the discovery of the first antibiotic, penicillin.
5. Roy Plunkett was working with gases that could be used to quickly cool vessels in scientific experiments, and after one failure he found that the vessel was left coated with a slick substance.  He eventually named it "Teflon."

See why I get a little impatient?

But I think what gets me most about this whole thing, and comments sections in general, is how people who are obviously ignorant on a subject still feel like their opinions have relevance.  I have a lot of faults, but at least I try not to pontificate on topics I know nothing about.

It once again reminds me of the wonderful quote by Isaac Asimov: "Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'"

So, that's my maddening excursion of the day.  To the scientists who did the skipping-stone study, I'll say, "Bravo."  To the people who responded to it with sneers and snarls, I'll say, "Until you learn some science, shut the fuck up."  And to the Invisible Fence people, I'll reiterate my request for a Comments-Section Collar.  I bet you could make some serious cash selling those.

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This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation is pure fun: Arik Kershenbaum's The Zoologist's Guide to the Galaxy: What Animals on Earth Reveal About Aliens and Ourselves.  Kershenbaum tackles a question that has fascinated me for quite some time; is evolution constrained?  By which I mean, are the patterns you see in most animals on Earth -- aerobic cellular respiration, bilateral symmetry, a central information processing system/brain, sensory organs sensitive to light, sound, and chemicals, and sexual reproduction -- such strong evolutionary drivers that they are likely to be found in alien organisms?

Kershenbaum, who is a zoologist at the University of Cambridge, looks at how our environment (and the changes thereof over geological history) shaped our physiology, and which of those features would likely appear in species on different alien worlds.  In this fantastically entertaining book, he considers what we know about animals on Earth -- including some extremely odd ones -- and uses that to speculate about what we might find when we finally do make contact (or, at the very least, detect signs of life on an exoplanet using our earthbound telescopes).

It's a wonderfully fun read, and if you're fascinated with the idea that we might not be alone in the universe but still think of aliens as the Star Trek-style humans with body paint, rubber noses, and funny accents, this book is for you.  You'll never look at the night sky the same way again.

[Note: if you purchase this book from the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Oobleck and stupidity

In his 1980 essay "The Cult of Ignorance," scientist, novelist, and polymath Isaac Asimov wrote, "The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through [American] political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'"

Asimov's words are, if anything, truer today than they were forty years ago when he wrote them.  It's an attitude I have a hard time comprehending.  My opinion has always been that of course I want our leaders to be more intelligent than I am; I know I'm not nearly smart enough to be the president.  But we've gone beyond the acceptance of ignorance Asimov pointed out into the realm of celebrating abject stupidity -- and, all too frequently, electing it to public office.  We've entered a terrifying time of living in the Upside Down, where individuals who can't put together a single sensible, grammatically-correct sentence, who engage in playground taunts that would sound immature coming out of the mouth of a third-grader, are lauded as "plain-spoken" and "willing to say what's on their mind."

Of course, as Stephen Colbert pointed out, "My drunk uncle says what's on his mind, and I don't want him to be president, either."

The American attitude toward intellectuals jumped out at me just a couple of days ago because of a charming piece of research into the behavior of "oobleck" -- the bizarre cornstarch/water mixture most of us got to play with as children.  Oobleck is a dilatant fluid, one in which the viscosity increases in proportion to the amount of shear strain.  Put more simply, if you hit it, it acts like a solid; if you press it gently, it acts like a liquid.  It is one of a group of weird substances called non-Newtonian fluids, which alter in viscosity dependent on stress, and include materials that are thixotropic (the fluid thins when it's stressed, like yogurt and ketchup) and ones that are rheopectic (the fluid thickens when it's stressed, like printer ink).  (Nota bene: it sounds like dilatant and rheopectic fluids are the same thing, but there's a technical difference in that rheopectic fluids continue to increase in viscosity the more they're shaken, while with dilatant fluids it's kind of an either/or thing.  But that's a minor point.)

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Baminnick, Cornstarch Experiment Materials, CC BY-SA 3.0]

In any case, the research I referenced above came out last week in Science Advances, and had to do with the old party trick of filling a shallow basin with oobleck and having people run across it barefoot.  Because of oobleck's dilatant nature, the faster you run, the harder the soles of your feet strike the surface -- so its viscosity and resistance increase, and you can run on the surface of something that's technically a liquid.

It turns out that there's a simple way to defeat this ability; all you have to do is rotate the basin.  The twisting motion means that when your foot strikes the surface, there's not only a vertical stress from the impact, there's horizontal shear from the basin turning under you, and that perpendicular shear reduces the viscosity and gets rid of the dilatant effect.  In other words, try running in oobleck on a rotating basin, and you'll sink.

I thought this was a pretty fun piece of research about a substance's very odd behavior, and noted with approval that it had been posted on social media...

... until I started reading the comments.

Here is a sampler.  Spelling and grammar are as written, because I don't want to run out of sics.

• This is what the scientist's are doing?  Taking taxpayer money and playing with goop.
• I read bullshit like this and I'm supposed to take "climate science" seriously?
• The usual libtard jerking off on the public dime.
• Youd think they had more important things to do, like inventing the next "pandemic."
• This is typicle waste of money.  They wonder why no one has faith in education when this is the kind of thing they spend time on than call it science.
• Check out where this happened.  A universtiy.  Color me surprised.

*brief pause to scream obscenities and kick a wall*

Okay, let me point out a few things, now that I've gotten that (mostly) out of my system.

First, just because the experiment was performed using something associated with kids' parties, they think it has no other applications?  What this shows is that they didn't even bother to read the paper itself, because the authors say the following:

The ability of OSP [orthogonal superimposed perturbations, the application of a rotational shear to flowing fluids] to de-solidify plugs formed under extension and fast compression has potential industrial applications where it is important to increase the flow rate or control the viscosity or unclog a pipe.  These applications range from high-throughput processing of dense suspensions such as cement and concrete to avoid jamming in narrow pipes and three-dimensional printing.

Stop for a moment and consider how many examples you can come up with of thick fluids flowing through pipes.  You think coming up with a simple, inexpensive way to stop those pipes from clogging is "the usual libtard jerking off?"

Second, there is a huge value to pure research.  I dealt with this here at Skeptophilia a very long time ago in a post that was spurred by the same kind of cretinous anti-intellectual commentary as this one was.  It looked at how pure research (which the uninformed call "just messing around") gave us, amongst many other things, antibiotics, x-rays, Teflon, and our understanding of anaphylactic shock and how genes produce proteins.  Just because you (not you personally) can't see the utility of a piece of research doesn't mean the scientists can't see it.

Third, why do these people think everything has to have utility in the first place?  Science used to be rightly revered for its capacity to expand the mind, to open our eyes to the wonder of the universe, to understand a small piece of it a little more clearly.  The subtext of the commentary from the yahoos I quoted above seems to be, "I'm fine being stupid and you have no right to try to fix that, or even to be smarter than I am."  This is, essentially, being arrogant about stupidity. as if being an absolute moron was a virtue, as if they were proud (and fortunate) that their brains had never been contaminated by any of that useless book-learnin'.

I honestly don't know how we've gotten here.  The popular attitude toward science and the intellect has become a race to the bottom.  A race we seem to be winning, given that we have a senator who thinks that a snowball disproves climate change, a representative who thinks we shouldn't be limiting our production of carbon dioxide because it's necessary for plant growth, and a president who makes so many ludicrous and ignorant statements daily that they're hard to keep up with.

A lot of it probably has its origins in the misguided egalitarianism that Asimov pointed out.  No, my ignorance is not as good as your knowledge.  All opinions are not equal.  My fifteen minutes of online "research" is not equivalent to the ten years of intensive study you spent to become an actual scientist.

Now, I'm not saying ignorance is necessarily shameful.  We're all ignorant about some things.  But we shouldn't be proud of it, either, and -- more to the point -- we should all be trying to remedy it.  Science remains our best way of doing that, and that means actual science, done by actual trained scientists who know how to evaluate data and who know when a hypothesis is supported and when it isn't, not the latest bizarre claim by some self-styled expert who happens to have a computer, a microphone, a YouTube channel, and a vastly inflated sense of the validity of his own opinions.

But once you've decided that ignorance is desirable, you've crossed a line into outright stupidity.  Ignorance is inevitable; stupidity is a choice.  Or, as it was put by my dad -- who wasn't well educated, but was one of the wisest, smartest people I've ever met, and who worked like hell to learn and to fill in those gaps in his knowledge left behind from his impoverished childhood -- "Ignorance is only skin deep; stupidity goes all the way to the bone."

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This week's Skeptophilia book-of-the-week is one that should be a must-read for everyone -- not only for the New Yorkers suggested by the title.  Unusual, though, in that this one isn't our usual non-fiction selection.  New York 2140, by Kim Stanley Robinson, is novel that takes a chilling look at what New York City might look like 120 years from now if climate change is left unchecked.

Its predictions are not alarmism.  Robinson made them using the latest climate models, which (if anything) have proven to be conservative.  She then fits into that setting -- a city where the streets are Venice-like canals, where the subways are underground rivers, where low-lying areas have disappeared completely under the rising tides of the Atlantic Ocean -- a society that is trying its best to cope.

New York 2140 isn't just a gripping read, it's a frighteningly clear-eyed vision of where we're heading.  Read it, and find out why The Guardian called it "a towering novel about a genuinely grave threat to civilisation."

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Ignoring the experts

The new book The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters, by Thomas Nichols, could not have been published at a better time.

We have an administration that is relentlessly committed to creating their own set of "alternative facts" and labeling as fake news anything that contradicts the narrative.  Criticism is met with reprisal, honest journalism with shunning, facts and evidence with accusations of bias.  The message is "don't listen to anyone but us."

Nichols's contention is that we got here by a steady progress over the last few decades toward mistrusting experts.  Why should we rely on the pointy-headed scientists, who are not only out of touch with "real people" but probably are doing their research for some kind of evil purpose?  You know those scientists -- always unleashing plagues and creating superweapons, all the while rubbing their hands together in a maniacal fashion.

I have to mention, however, that this was something that always puzzled me about 1950s horror films.  Those scientists who were part of an evil plot to destroy the Earth -- what the hell was their motivation?  Don't they live here too?

Be that as it may, Nichols makes a trenchant point; our lazy, me-centered, fundamentally distrustful culture has created an atmosphere where anyone who knows more than we do is automatically viewed with suspicion.  We use WebMD to diagnose ourselves, and argue with the doctor when (s)he disagrees.  We rate our folksy "look at the weather we're having, climate change can't be real" anecdotes as somehow having more weight than the hard data of actual trained climate scientists.  We accept easy solutions to complicated problems ("Build a wall") instead of putting in the hard work of understanding the complexity of the real situation.

What does she know, anyhow?  [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Nichols was interviewed a couple of days ago in the Providence Journal, and shared some pretty disturbing observations about the predicament our culture is in.  "The United States is now a country obsessed with the worship of its own ignorance," Nichols said.  "Worse, many citizens today are proud of not knowing things.  Americans have reached a point where ignorance, especially of anything related to public policy, is an actual virtue."

Of course, Nichols is not the first person to comment upon this.  Isaac Asimov, in his 1980 essay "The Cult of Ignorance," wrote something that has become rightly famous: "There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been.  The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'"

This, Nichols says, is not only pernicious, it's demonstrably false.  "People can accept the idea that they are not seven feet tall and can't play basketball.  [But] They hate the idea that anybody is smarter than they are and should be better compensated than they are.  This is a radical egalitarianism that is completely nuts."

What is weirdest about this is that we unhesitatingly accept the expertise of some people, and unhesitatingly reject the expertise of others.  "You put your life in the hands of an expert community all day long," Nichols says.  "Every time you take an aspirin or an over-the-counter medication, every time you talk to your pharmacist, every time your kids go to school, every time you obey the traffic directions of a police officer or go through a traffic light.  When you get on an airplane, you assume that everybody involved in flying that airplane from the flight attendant to the pilot and the ground crew and the people in the control tower knows what they are doing."

And yet when we are told that the overwhelming majority of climate scientists accept anthropogenic climate change, a substantial percentage of us go, "Meh, what do they know?"

The difficulty is that once you have fallen into the trap of distrusting expertise, it's hard to see how you could free yourself from it.  As the adage goes, you can't logic your way out of a position that you didn't logic your way into.  Add into the mix not only the rampant anti-intellectualism characteristic of our current society, but the fundamental distrust of all media that is being inculcated into our minds by the rhetoric from the Trump administration, and you've created a hermetically sealed wall that no facts, no evidence, no argument can breach.

So Nichols's conclusions are interesting, enlightening, and deeply troubling.  His arguments are aimed toward the very people who will be the most resistant to accepting them.

And with our current leadership deepening divisions, distrust, and suspicion of experts, it's hard to see how any of this will change any time soon.

Ignorance sucks

I bet you think you know what science is for.

I bet you subscribe to such ideas as "science is a means for understanding the universe" or "science provides a method for the betterment of humankind."  And I bet that you think that, by and large, scientists are working to elucidate the actual mechanisms by which nature works, and telling us the truth about what they find.

Ha.  A lot you know.

Yesterday I found out that scientists are actually all in cahoots to pull the wool over our eyes, and are actively lying to us about what they find out.  They work to stamp out the findings of any dissenters (and, if that doesn't work, the dissenters themselves), and to buoy up a worldview that is factually incorrect.

Why would they do this, you may ask?

I... um.  Let's see.  That's a good question.

Well, because they're that evil, that's why.  And you know, that's how conspiracies work.  They just cover stuff up, sometimes for the sheer fun of doing it.  Even the scientists gotta get their jollies somehow, right?  I mean, at the end of the day, rubbing your hands together and cackling maniacally only gets you so far.

I came to this rather alarming realization due to a website I ran into called, "Is Gravity a Pulling or a Pushing Force?" wherein we find out that what we learned in high school physics, to wit, that gravity is attractive, is actually backwards.  Gravity isn't pulling us toward the center of mass of the Earth, like your physics teacher told you.  It's more that... space is pushing you down.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

It's a little like my wife's theory that light bulbs don't illuminate a room by emitting light, they do it by sucking up dark.  She has been known to say, "Gordon, when you get a chance, can you replace the Dark Sucker in the downstairs bathroom?"  Presumably when the filaments in the bulb become saturated with dark, they become incapable of doing their job any more and need to be replaced.

But unlike my wife, the people on this website are serious.  Here is one representative section from the website:

Be sure to understand that any volumetric expansion of the Pressure of electrical-mass that surrounds the earth is what then compresses back and pushes free electrons along any given conductor. This elasticity of the quantum particles of space is the very source of "all" generated electricity around the world at this very moment. The Pressure (Density x Temperature2) of that ocean of electrical-mass that surrounds the earth is also the very origin of Gravity (your compared Density).

And so now - You - know the exact answer to what Albert Einstein spent 20 years searching for while he lived at 112 Mercer Street, Princeton, New Jersey.

The very connection between Gravity and Electricity.

Gravity is absolutely "pushing" us down onto the earth. Gravity is the Pressure of electrical-mass that permeates space and surrounds the earth. And that pressure is responsible for both the pressure of the earth's atmosphere as well as the pressure of water below any ocean.

Three layers surround the earth; The ocean, The atmosphere, and Gravity. Gravity is exactly equal to the ocean of water or the ocean of atmosphere that is surrounding the earth except Gravity is the third and outermost ocean of electrical-mass that surrounds the earth and moves through all mass.

Electrical-mass is invisible to the eye and does not possess temperature. Keep in mind that molecular Velocity = Temperature.
A = Acceleration Z = Time AZ = Velocity (Temperature) AZ2 = Distance.

The combustion of all stars (Energy) produces a pressure of electrical-mass (Gravity) that surrounds all planets and this is the exact connection between Energy and Gravity that Albert Einstein was diligently searching for.

A "Pulling Force" is absolutely impossible. And it's actually quite astounding that this needs to be stated in the year 2012. Certainly no one possesses the ability to calculate "continuous" or "exhaustively" true and pure Physics until they have come to the above realization.

It bears mention that my bachelor's degree is in physics, which means that my knowledge of the topic is, while not exhaustive, certainly better than your average layperson's.  And after reading the above (and lots more like it) on this website, I had two reactions:

1. What?
2. Do you have the IQ of a wad of used bubble gum?

I think what gets me about this is the way it's written; not only does the writer seem to have no knowledge whatsoever of elementary physics, (s)he comes across (and, in fact, states outright later on in the website) that people who do have such knowledge are the dupes.  We folks who have studied science have been fooled by the evil establishment, which is trying to keep us all in abject ignorance about how the universe actually works.

This individual isn't embarrassed by a lack of knowledge; this person is proud of it.  The author of this website takes an abysmal understanding of the rudiments of physics as evidence that (s)he has not been contaminated by the wicked Status Quo.

As another quote from the website put it, "Keep getting the word out to the Physics community who's [sic] eyes have been blinded by complexity rather than enlightened by simplicity."

It's just the cult of ignorance rearing its ugly head again, isn't it?  We here in the United States -- and it may be so elsewhere as well -- tend to distrust the educated, for some reason.  Why else would the word "elite" be used as an insult -- at least in academics?  Recall what Isaac Asimov had to say on the topic: "There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been.  The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'"

And that, I think, is at the heart of this.  Why should we have to put in our dues, listening to the pointy-headed professor types pontificating, when we can just sit around and come up with our own theories?  Especially now that there's an internet, wherein anything goes, regardless of whether it has any connection to reality?  You can always find ignorant people, insane people, and disaffected academic-wannabees who will give you lots of positive feedback, no matter how far out your ideas are.

And given that Science Is Hard, it's all too easy to characterize the professors as wanting to make it harder.  They obfuscate, couching the science in complex terms not because it is complex, but because they're engaging in some kind of Freemason-like ritual to throw people off the scent.  You are in the dark not because you're too lazy to learn the actual science, but because the scientists want to keep you in the dark.

Or maybe you just need to replace the Dark Suckers.