See the violence inherent in the system!

Yesterday I ran across an article on the bizarre website The Mind Unleashed that is mostly interesting for what it says about scientists.

Called "Suppressed Scientific Evidence Proves Free Energy Source Dating Back 25,000 Years," the majority of the article is just the usual tired old claptrap about pyramids concentrating Quantum Wave Frequency Vibration Oscillation Resonance Energies, or something like that.  As usual, it's hard to tell exactly what they are saying, because rigorous analysis is something woo-woos avoid like the plague.  We're not given any actual evidence, of course; we're just treated to passages like this one:

[Author Phillip Coppens said,] “The pyramids are proof that our ancestors knew and worked with an energy technology that we are now finally able to measure, but are still short of fully understanding.” Coppens along with Klaus Dona of Austria and dozens of speakers attended the International Conference Bosnia Pyramid in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina which is held annually to release findings to the public.

[Archaeologist Dr. Sam] Osmanagich has had a host of experts in various fields come to see his Bosnian pyramids, and measure anomalies associated with them. They have included the noted British scientist and inventor Harry Oldfield, who used a special camera system to photograph alleged electromagnetic (EM) waves in the vicinity of Visocica Hill.

So there's nothing really new here in terms of actual data.  But what caught my attention was the way the author claimed that scientists are suppressing this information, out of some sort of misplaced loyalty to the status quo:

Overwhelming evidence, supported by scientific research from all over the archaeological community proves that our recorded history is wrong concerning turn changes [sic] religion, science and academics... Prominent archaeologists have attempted smear campaigns on Dr. Osmanagich’s work out of fear of how the impact of his discoveries will make on their own work...

Is it possible that the fossil fuel based energy system we now rely on could have been prevented if inventor Nikola Tesla’s work on free energy hadn’t been suppressed? Why did the FBI seize his papers upon his death? Tesla’s (1856-1943) patented free energy methods were rejected due to their inability to be metered and monetized. “We urgently need to change our mistaken point of view that our ancestors were stupid and accept that they had an advanced understanding of the fabric of nature and the universe, just like Nikola Tesla, whose ideas were suppressed as they did not and do not fit in the reigning model,” states Phillip Coppens, author and investigative journalist.

My first thought upon reading this was: do you know any actual scientists?  Because it sure as hell sounds like you've never met one.

Let's consider the following scenario.  A physicist, working in a lab, runs an experiment and finds that her data seems to indicate that there are exceptions to the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics -- that you can, in fact, create energy from nothing.  Such a finding, if verified, would overturn all of physics as we know it.  So said physicist shows a few of her colleagues, the experiment is repeated, and lo and behold, it seems to be true.  What does she do?

1)  She writes a paper on it, urging other physicists to test her results and see if it can be explained.

2)  She doesn't tell anyone, because the Laws of Thermodynamics are laws, dammit.  You get in serious trouble for breaking laws.  Besides, we can't have any challenges to the pre-existing paradigm!  This is science!

I hope the answer is obvious.  If there really was evidence that any of the hitherto-accepted laws of physics were wrong, scientists would be trampling each other to death trying to get to the grant money first.  Doing groundbreaking research is how careers are made.  It's how Nobel Prizes are won.  The idea that scientists would avoid doing something edgy because they love the theories they already have is ridiculous.

Consider what happened when the scientists at CERN found what appeared to be a neutrino traveling faster than the speed of light.  Did they suppress the evidence, because (after all) you can't challenge Einstein?  Of course not.  They wrote a paper, issued a press release, and asked all of the qualified physicists in the world to try to explain the data.  As it turned out, the analysis seems to support a flaw in the data.  Einstein was vindicated again, not because anyone was engaged in a repressive campaign of Silence the Dissenters, but because the original analysis was wrong.

That's the problem here, isn't it?  There's no actual evidence that "Free Energy" exists (at least not in the sense that these people mean; "free energy," lower case, is a real scientific term, but it doesn't mean the something-for-nothing nonsense that the woo-woos are so fond of).  Throwing around Nikola Tesla's name isn't going to make these claims correct.  It's much easier to rant about a hidebound and oppressive scientific establishment than it is to do any actual science.  And as for the scientists who are criticizing the work of people like Sam Osmanagich as unscientific, hand-waving, poorly-executed rubbish, I'm sorry -- they're simply right.

Having your ideas criticized does not mean you're being repressed.  That's how science works.  And as for the researchers mentioned in this article, who claim that no one believes them -- if you can't deal with being challenged, with being asked for hard evidence for your claims, you're probably in the wrong field.

Muzzling the scientists

Let me say, from the outset, that I am not a particularly political person.

I do vote, and I try to keep myself informed, but I find that politics in general seems mostly to fall into two classes: (1) arguing over things that are obvious, such as whether banning same-sex marriage is discrimination; and (2) arguing over things that are so complex that it's unlikely we'll ever see a solution, such as how to balance the federal budget.

So, I find politics alternately maddening and baffling, and mostly I leave the political debates to the people who relish that sort of thing.  But what does make me sit up and take notice is when politicians begin to intrude on the realm of science -- which is what the government of Canada did, just last week.

In an article that a Canadian friend sent to me, entitled, "Canadian Government Votes Against... Science," we hear about a frighteningly common trend -- the desire by politicians to control what scientists research, publish, and discuss.  Here's what happened:

A little over a year ago, a claim hit the media that the Canadian government was "muzzling" its scientists.  At a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, held last February, Canadian scientists discussed the push of politicians to control what scientists were doing, particularly about controversial topics.  The government had the previous year issued a "protocol" that provided rules governing how scientists could interact with the media.  This protocol included the following:

Just as we have one department we should have one voice. Interviews sometimes present surprises to ministers and senior management. Media relations will work with staff on how best to deal with the call (an interview request from a journalist). This should include asking the programme expert to respond with approved lines.

Naturally, scientists were infuriated by the demand that they toe the party line.  "The Prime Minister (Stephen Harper) is keen to keep control of the message, I think to ensure that the government won't be embarrassed by scientific findings of its scientists that run counter to sound environmental stewardship," said Thomas Pedersen of the University of Victoria.  "I suspect the federal government would prefer that its scientists don't discuss research that points out just how serious the climate change challenge is."

Andrew Weaver, also of the University of Victoria, was even more pointed.  He said that the desire of the government was to keep the public "in the dark."

Some politicians took notice, and there was a measure recently introduced into parliament that read as follows:

That, in the opinion of the House,

a) public science, basic research, and the free and open exchange of scientific information are essential to evidence-based policy-making;

b) federal government scientists must be enabled to discuss openly their findings with their colleagues and the public;

c) the government should maintain support for its basic scientific capacity across Canada, including immediately extending funding, until a new operator is found, to the world-renowned Experimental Lakes Area Research Facility to pursue its unique research program.

The measure was defeated, 157-137.

I find this infuriating, but hardly surprising.  Here in the United States, there has been so much emphasis put on spinning science news that we have gotten to the point that a significant percentage of the public doesn't even trust the facts.  The scientists themselves have an agenda, political leaders claim.  If scientific research presents findings that run counter to the party-approved position, the scientists must be shills.

The result: to a lot of people, even the data is suspect.  At the far end of this we have articles like the one that appeared last week in Forbes entitled "Sorry, Global Warming Alarmists - the Earth is Cooling," which was such a hash of cherry-picked facts, misextrapolations, and outright lies that I barely know where to start.  Beginning with the fact that the author, Peter Ferrara, is the Director of Entitlement and Budget Policy for the Heartland Institute, which has as its stated goal "promoting climate skepticism."

Because that, evidently, is an unbiased, "skeptical" stance.

It is a frightening trend.  The problem is that if you can convince people that facts, that hard data, have a bias, you can convince them of damn near anything.  Yes, there can be productive political arguments over how to respond to a particular set of facts; but the data are either true or false, they cannot in themselves have an agenda.  And the desire of the government to control what the public knows is especially terrifying -- "Orwellian," in the words of Professor Weaver.  The fact that the Canadian parliament voted down a measure that stated that "federal government scientists must be enabled to discuss openly their findings with their colleagues and the public" should scare the absolute hell out of you.

I hope, for the sake of truth, that scientists in Canada and elsewhere defy this increasing demand by politicians that they should have the right to control the free flow of scientific information, and its release to the public.  It's bad enough that in many cases, governments control the purse strings, determining which research gets funding and which does not; it's worse when they want to make sure that the results of that research support the party's platform.  In the words of Carl Sagan, "The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion or in politics, but it is not the path to knowledge, and there is no place for it in the endeavor of science."