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Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 38: Mar-Apr 1985 |
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Geophysics: the sick man of science
"In order to be a famed geo-scientist and belong to the inclusive club of fully accepted geophysicists in their unknown thousands, one must kneel on the hassock and swear allegiance to the following tenets regardless of any scientific considerations:
- "Tenet 1. That the moment-of-inertia of the Earth has never changed.
- "Tenet 2. That the Earth contains a large central core composed of iron.
- "Tenet 3. That the continents are drifting as a result of unknown forces.
"These must be held with religious fervour, dissenters are just not to be tolerated, the devotees feeling it their right, and indeed duty, to defend the creed against all criticism by any means of chicanery and of sharp-practice within their power, however crude and improper, so long as they judge they can get away with it, but all the time representing themselves to the world as acting with judicial calm in the best interests of their science. It will be shown that all three of these tenets are wrong, and how their (naive) acceptance has hamstrung the believers from making progress in the deep waters of terrestrial science, though not of course in the worldly world of 'modern science.' Shades of Sir Cyril Burt."
So begins a long technical article by R.A. Lyttleton, author of many scientific books and papers. (He may lose his union card after this paper!) Lyttleton proceeds to demonstrate the incorrectness of the first two tenets above. Lyttleton's reasoning is buttressed by many scientific observations and so much quantitative reasoning that it is impossible to encapsulate it all here. Suffice it to say that it all looks correct, serious, and above-board.
(Lyttleton, R.A.; "Geophysics: The Sick Man of Science," ISCDS Newsletter, 5:3, December 1984.)
Comment. Now this is interesting. The ISCDS is the International Stop Continental Drift Society, now defunct. The Society's Newsletter, if you don't already know, is usually a tongue-in-cheek publication. Not so here, Lyttleton is deadly serious. Either that or the joke is lost amid all the equations in the body of his paper!