How to distinguish real scientists from psychos and crooks - says bioinformatician Mikhail Gelfand
Miscellaneous / / August 02, 2023
If a chemist offers his periodic table, and a virologist urges people to refuse vaccination, they are out of their minds.
The modern world is so complicated that everyone has to think how true is what he reads and sees. This also applies to science.
Honest self-critics: who are real scientists
The sign of a real scientist is honesty and criticalness in relation to what he does. Yes, he must believe that the science he is engaged in is the most interesting thing in the world, otherwise why devote his life to it. But at the same time, he is obliged to look for holes and gaps in his own conclusions.
Perhaps the most remarkable example in this sense is Charles Darwin. His book "Origin of Species”is built as a dialogue, a polemic with oneself. Offering a certain model of speciation - the mechanism of natural selection, he raises objections that could challenge his theory. Moreover, Darwin admits that he does not have a convincing answer to some of them. And this is understandable: the matter takes place in the 19th century, when genetics did not yet exist, and the mechanism for the transmission of heredity was not described even in the bud. But the main thing is that Darwin is honest.
This is the main difference between charlatans and real scientists - the former are deprived of both honesty and self-criticism.
Rogues and psychos: who are pseudoscientists
Charlatans in science are divided into psychos and crooks. And these are not necessarily mutually exclusive categories.
Psychos
The psycho sincerely believes in what he does and says. At the same time, he can be an absolutely accomplished specialist in some field. But that doesn't mean he won't go crazy one day.
A classic example is Anatoly Timofeevich Fomenko, who was a good mathematician, but, going beyond his competence, moved out on the basis of history. He created the pseudoscientific theory "New Chronology", according to which story humanity began only 1000 years ago, and ancient civilizations, ancient and early medieval states are nothing more than “phantom reflections” of much later cultures.
So, Fomenko believes that the ancient Egyptians are medieval Europeans, and Jesus Christ is the king of the Slavs, who founded the ruling dynasty in Rus'.
Another virologist, Peter Duesberg, has long been respected among his colleagues. He was elected a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and was considered one of the likely candidates for the Nobel Prize. However, in the 1980s, when the AIDS epidemic began in America, he issued a statement that this disease arises from immorality, and HIV has nothing to do with it.
Because of this, the US National Academy of Sciences, which owns a very prestigious scientific journal, changed the rules for publishing articles. Before that, academics could publish them without reviews, because it was believed that if a person is so accomplished, then he can hardly do something unreasonable. Now articles by academicians should also be reviewed.
crooks
The second category of scientific charlatans are crooks. They may not believe in what they are doing, and realize the whole delusion of their own conclusions, but this does not prevent them from reap benefits - financial or administrative.
A classic example of a rogue-pseudo-scientist is Trofim Denisovich Lysenko. He inspired the leadership of the Soviet Union with the idea that Mendelian genetics - bourgeois science. In return, he offered her his theory of stage development, which denied the chromosome theory of heredity, and promised to increase yields by several times.
For his "advanced" ideas, Lysenko was appointed director of the All-Union Breeding and Genetic Institute and was awarded the Stalin Prizes. All this gave him great power. The persecution of Soviet geneticists began, during which many of them lost their jobs, and some lost their lives. So, the outstanding scientist Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov, who anticipated the agrarian revolution, died of starvation in prison.
This is the most famous example, but there were others nearby. For example, Olga Lepeshinskaya, who wrote that plant cells spontaneously originate from "living non-cellular matter."
After that, Soviet genetics never managed to recover. More than 50 years have passed, but we still feel backward in this area. The funny thing is that some of them still publish Prolysenkov's books.
How to spot a charlatan
A lot can be said about a person's style of presentation of his thoughts and argumentation. There are several examples of which people should not be trusted.
1. The charlatan tries to undermine the foundations
Such a mass of irrefutable knowledge has already been accumulated that it cannot be fundamentally restructured. Undermining the foundations is now unlikely to succeed. So if you hear someone say, "Your fundamentals are wrong," know that you are a crook or a lunatic.
So, for example, the pseudoscientist Yuri Rybnikov tried to challenge the periodic table. Instead, he proposed a "periodic system of electroatoms of the Rus".
He also called mathematics fundamentally wrong and offered to return to the account that was in Rus': zero, rubles, half, quarter, and so on.
2. Charlatan promises quick global gains
For example, cure all diseases. If we are talking about fundamental sciences, and not about technology, the promise of a quick and global result should alert us.
Here we can recall Petrik. He invented a water filter, which supposedly had to purify water from reservoirs to the state of drinking. Petrik almost received a multi-billion dollar grant to equip all of Russia with these filters; unfortunately, some academicians supported him. Subsequently, these filters were found to be unsuitable for use. It took a fair amount of courage from other scientists to stop this scam.
3. Charlatan scares with horror stories
From such a person you can hear: “If you continue to eat GMOs, then you will grow horns”, “If you put vaccines, you will die.” This is the other side of the promise of benefits.
This became famous, for example, Luc Montagnier. At one time he received the Nobel Prize for the discovery human immunodeficiency virus. But then he went crazy and, during the coronavirus epidemic, began issuing statements that vaccination was an "unacceptable mistake" and urged people to refuse it.
Argumentation is very important in such matters.
For example, the problem of genetically modified organisms has a very substantial side. After all, any technology can indeed be randomly used to harm.
People who write about environmental-economic impacts, such as the erosion of traditional varieties, may or may not be right. But they use intelligible arguments that can later be challenged. But those who say that you will get cancer because of GMOs are spreading nonsense.
4. The charlatan is reinforced by the support of those in power
A real scientist will never say: "I'm right, because I reported to the president." He may be proud that he is being listened to, but he will never use this fact as an argument. If a person in his evidence refers to proximity to people who make decisions, then most likely he is a charlatan.
5. The charlatan believes in conspiracies
If a person believes that there is CONSPIRACY monopolies, scientists, governments, the West, then, most likely, he is also out of his mind. For example, the wonderful journalist Yulia Latynina says that all climate change science is a conspiracy of scientists bought by governments. Of course, she is not a scientist, so, strictly speaking, she cannot be called a charlatan, but nevertheless she repeats pseudoscientific statements.
What else to pay attention to
The next steps are more energy intensive. But if you have enough time, then you can also do them.
1. Examine the scientist's products
The products of the scientist are scientific articles and reports at conferences. If a person does not have publications in the field in which he is engaged, this sign should alert.
But even here everything is not so simple: unfortunately, there are many scientific journals that publish anything, including outright nonsense. In this sense, the availability of publications is an important, albeit formal, criterion that needs to be handled very carefully.
For example, Petr Petrovich Garyaev, who at one time sued me because of an insult to honor and dignity, had a theory of the “wave genome”. According to her, information is contained in DNA molecules in the form of a wave, so any sound allegedly affects the human genome. He also had the idea that child can carry hereditary information not only from the father, but also from the man who was the sexual partner of his mother in the past.
Petr Petrovich had publications in scientific journals - and not only in frankly strange ones, but also in those that are considered respected to some extent.
Therefore, here I would propose to be guided by this principle: if a person has published at least once in his life in a magazine for lunatics, this causes great suspicion. A normal scientist will never go to such a journal, because it means reputational damage for him.
How to check the log:
- Look at the composition of the editorial board. If there are people there whose reputation is good or impeccable, this is a good sign.
- Find out if there is a peer review in the journal. In very good journals, an article is reviewed by 3-4 people, in simpler ones - 1-2. Reviewers are professionals who pay attention to the substantive shortcomings of the article. And if you see the phrase: “Send the article along with the review” or “The journal does not review articles,” then this is a very bad sign.
- Check posting time. If a scientist is promised the publication of an article three days after he submits it, this is not a serious journal. Even under the fastest conditions, this process takes at least three weeks: after all, you need to find reviewers, give them time to evaluate the article, and then make an editorial decision.
- Read other articles. If you find already published bullshit, all the rest should also be in question.
However, even if a magazine appears normal by all these signs, it is not certain that publication in it will be absolutely kosher. So let's move on to the second point.
2. Find out about the reputation of a scientist among colleagues
Although the scientific community is quite tolerant of new ideas, it is well aware of the line between a non-trivial theory and outright nonsense. Scientists know well who among colleagues can be trusted and who cannot. Could it be that they are ostracized by a genius whose ideas were simply not understood by them? Hardly.
The ordinary notion of science is largely shaped by wonderful tales of a romantic past in which there are lonely unrecognized geniusesunderstood only after decades.
People often transfer these stories to the current reality. But now science is a mass activity. It is no longer created by a few, but by thousands. If before someone offered a crazy theory and 5 people did not accept it, then there was a possibility that they were wrong. But now this theory will be evaluated not by 5, but by 50,000 people. And if they consider that their colleague has skidded, then with a high probability it has skidded.
Now science has already accumulated such a mass of irrefutable knowledge that it is unlikely that an unrecognized loner, rejected by the scientific community, can appear.
Nevertheless, it is this legend that charlatans often build around themselves.
Of course, there can be no "reputation ratings" that would be published once a year by the Academy of Sciences. Therefore, to find out what kind of reputation a particular person has, you need to talk with his colleagues. Any professional has a set of scientists in different fields, whose opinion he trusts. You can turn to him and ask: "What do you think about ..." For this, it is also important that knowledgeable people do not remain silent.
For example, I have been doingDissernet” is a platform where we, together with other experts, expose fraudsters in science. As part of this project, we write applications for the deprivation of academic degrees, we propose to withdraw articles from scientific journals, publish information about candidates for the Russian Academy of Sciences, issue articles with revelations.
This project was invented not to deprive someone of a degree, but to restart the reputational mechanisms, to make them more open.
All these signs together will help to distinguish a scientist from a pseudoscientist. But, you know, my whole long statement can be replaced with one sentence: reread Strugatsky "Monday begins on Saturday" - chapters about Amvrosy Ambroisovich Vybegallo. This is a satire of the 60s, which is still absolutely relevant today.
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