Four paragraphs copied from . Pages 256-257. The most relevant part is the second half of the third paragraph, but the context is useful.

Being human, scientists also sometimes engage in observational selection: they like to remember those cases where they’ve been right and forget when they’ve been wrong. But in many instances, what is “wrong” is partly right, or stimulates others to find out what’s right. One of the most productive astrophysicists of our time has been Fred Hoyle, responsible for monumental contributions to our understanding of the evolution of stars, the synthesis of the chemical elements, cosmology, and much else. Sometimes he’s succeeded by being right before anyone else even understood that there was something that needed explaining. Sometimes he’s succeeded by being wrong–by being so provocative, by suggesting such outrageous alternatives that the observers and experimentalists feel obliged to check it out. The impassioned and concerted effort to “prove Fred wrong” has sometimes failed and sometimes succeeded. In almost every case, it has pushed forward the frontiers of knowledge. Even Hoyle at his most outrageous–for example, proposing that the influenza and HIV viruses are dropped down on Earth from comets, and that interstellar dust grains are bacteria–has led to significant advances in knowledge (although turning up nothing to support those particular notions).

It might be useful for scientists now and again to list some of their mistakes. It might play an instructive role in illuminating and demythologizing the process of science and in enlightening younger scientists. Even Johannes Kepler, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Gregor Mendel, and Albert Einstein made serious mistakes. But the scientific enterprise arranges things so that teamwork prevails: What one of us, even the most brilliant among us, misses, another of us, even someone much less celebrated and capable, may detect and rectify.

For myself, I’ve tended in past books to recount some of the occasions when I’ve been right. Let me mention a few of the cases where I’ve been wrong: At a time when no spacecraft had been to Venus, I thought at first that the atmospheric pressure was several times that on Earth, rather than many tens of times. I thought the clouds of Venus were made mostly of water, when they turn out to be only 25 percent water. I thought there might be plate tectonics on Mars, when close-up spacecraft observations now show hardly a hint of plate tectonics. I thought the highish infrared temperatures of Titan might be due to a sizable greenhouse effect there; instead, it turns out, it is caused by a stratospheric temperature inversion. Just before Iraq torched the Kuwaiti oil wells in January 1991, I warned that so much smoke might get so high as to disrupt agriculture in much of South Asia; as events transpired, it was pitch black at noon and the temperatures dropped 4 – 6 degrees C over the Persian Gulf, but not much smoke reached stratospheric altitudes and Asia was spared. I did not sufficiently stress the uncertainty of the calculations.

Different scientists have different speculative styles, some being much more cautious than others. As long as new ideas are testable and scientists are not overly dogmatic, no harm is done; indeed considerable progress can be made. In the first four instances I’ve just mentioned where I was wrong, I was trying to understand a distant world from a few clues in the absence of thorough spacecraft investigations. In the natural course of planetary exploration more data come in, and we find an army of old ideas plowed down by an armamentarium of new facts. ]]> http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/02/27/randi-speaks-about-sagan/comment-page-1/#comment-159273 John Sat, 28 Feb 2009 22:09:49 +0000 http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/02/27/randi-speaks-about-sagan/#comment-159273 An uncle bought me a copy of Cosmos when it was first published. Carl Sagan inspired critical thinking in an eight year old fundamentalist baptist private school. (got my ass whipped for it by the principal, no less!) I still have that book, warped and dogeared, the pages stiff and the spine brittle after over a quarter century. It was confiscated, twice; once by that grade school principal, once by a science teacher at another christian private high school. I stole it back, without inhibition or remorse. (Sagan didn't teach me that, I learned that in school) It may be the only possession I treasure sentimentally. I didn't follow into science, but my life changed significantly as a direct result of Carl Sagan's life and work. An uncle bought me a copy of Cosmos when it was first published. Carl Sagan inspired critical thinking in an eight year old fundamentalist baptist private school. (got my ass whipped for it by the principal, no less!) I still have that book, warped and dogeared, the pages stiff and the spine brittle after over a quarter century. It was confiscated, twice; once by that grade school principal, once by a science teacher at another christian private high school. I stole it back, without inhibition or remorse. (Sagan didn’t teach me that, I learned that in school) It may be the only possession I treasure sentimentally. I didn’t follow into science, but my life changed significantly as a direct result of Carl Sagan’s life and work.

Four years later, and I’m typing this in a hotel room in a city across the country from my hometown, relaxing after having just finished my interviews for a Ph.D. in neuroscience. If not for his works, I would undoubtedly not be here; he has literally changed my life. Say what you will about his personality or his scientific ability, but do not say that he has not contributed to science. I know there are many others my age who went into science after they first discovered Sagan.

Still, I wish I would have met him or seen him, or even known about him before he died. He passed away when I was barely out of elementary school.

The “combustible mix of ignorance & power” part was absolutely prescient. It describes George W. Bush to a T!

Carl gets to say “I told you so!”

Thanks for the video Phil…(Your blog rules)

Gary 7

“In 1994, Apple Computer began developing the Power Macintosh 7100. They chose the internal code name “Carl Sagan,” in honor of the astronomer.

Though the project name was strictly internal and never used in public marketing, when Sagan learned of this internal usage, he sued Apple Computer to use a different project name – other projects had names like “Cold fusion” and “Piltdown Man”, and he was displeased at being associated with what he considered pseudoscience.

Though Sagan lost the suit, Apple engineers complied with his demands anyway, renaming the project “BHA” (Butthead Astronomer). Sagan sued Apple for libel over the new name, claiming that it subjected him to contempt and ridicule. Sagan lost this lawsuit as well; still, the 7100 saw another name change: it was now called “LAW” (Lawyers Are Wimps). ”

I think he mentioned his error regarding the Kuwaiti oil well prediction in one of his books as an example of how science self-corrects.

Are you honestly equating being hanged and burned at the stake with how the public feels about CEOs?

If so, I don’t see how any reasonable person can have a discussion with you.

All I want to point out is that it is important for scientists to educate policy makers and the general public, but blurring the line between statements of science and statements of political opinion will only undermine the role of science in public policy.

Highly unlikely. Both things. Far more people had been told to shuddup and quit yapping about that “AGW crap no one serious believes in” than have people had consequences speaking about evil Jewish Communist Martian Freemason conspiracy to scare people with Global Warming myth.

And of course, it was evil socialist requlations and populist measures that caused the Housing Bubble, not stock market speculations and litteral gambling with derivatives.

Dont listen to me please, I’m just another European-Jewloving-godless communist and America basher.

For example, if you substitute the words ‘CEOs’ for ‘witches’ in the video you have an accurate representation of the economic thinking going on in Washington right now.

Also, if you substitute ‘AGW Deniers’ for witches you have an accurate representation of what passes for scientific thinking in many College departments of natural sciences.

Gary 7

Somewhere along the way a creationist friend asked me how “so many smart people could be wrong about the age of the earth” and after hearing myself spew back the usual twaddle that passes for creationist logic, and thinking it didn’t sound all that logical, I realized I hadn’t looked at both sides. The punk rock me told me to look into it, and in the spirit of Will Hunting I plunged into the library’s collection of books on religion, science, and evolution. Somewhere relatively early on I checked out stumbled into Hawking’s Brief History of Time, and after he explained the big bang to me in such a lucid way I delved into Sagan’s Cosmos DVD’s and fell in love with the elegant logic and tone of it all.

I now keep a copy of his “Reflections on a Mote of Dust” hanging in my office and have started having my son watch Cosmos as part of his “Class from Dad” school work.

When the Iraqis set many more wells ablaze than Sagan predicted, and no major catastrophe followed, the result was a lasting public impression that much of what scientists say is more politically motivated than they are objective statements of science. To this day the right-wingers portray science and scientists this way when they dismiss scientific studies relating to global warming, sex education, etc., and Carl Sagan – unfortunately – provided the clearest example of politics posing as science to serve as their ammunition.

It was from then on, when I was nearly 15 years’ of age, that I began to think skeptically of “Life, the Universe, and Everything”, and even more so after watching Carl Sagan’s excellent Cosmos: A Personal Voyage series, back in 1981, which was also broadcast on BBC TV.

Thank you Carl Sagan, James Randi, and Phil Plaitt, and all the unsung heroes that continue to shed light into the darkness…