Cocaine Mummies & Challenging Conventional Scientific Wisdom

obligatory column link

Once again, the arrogance of scientists play out in their ignoring of evidence that could revolutionize their discipline. In this case, it seems they haven’t found any ways to really refute the evidence, and in fact, have found more evidence supporting the hypothesis. Yet other scientists seems to dismiss even the possibility. I’d think scientists would be the first to acknowledge that they don’t know everything in their respective fields, and that new evidence should be objectively examined and theories revised - even if they contradict long-help beliefs. But this is not usually the case. Most truly revolutionary changes to scientific fields are met with widespread obstruction - even today. We laugh at the “scientists” of the past, who still held to the “flat-earth” theory after Columbus for example… but then we also defend current scientists who seemingly hold today’s scientific theories just as infallible.

This brings up a big peeve of mine… if science can’t explain the exact mechanism of something, then it doesn’t exist. How arrogant! Another case of “we know everything”, even when we really acknowledge that we don’t. Until we have an actual unified theory that fully explains how everything works on every level, we can’t make sure pronouncements. If someone dropped off an iPod in Edisons lab, he should have stated that it cannot and does not work, because Science cannot explain it. The same basic principle hold true for almost all of the energy-based, alternative healing modalities: Acupuncture, Homeopathy, Reiki, even Magnet therapy and the like. There is clearly some energetic-level to our bodies that Western science just doesn’t understand yet, but won’t admit to. Shit, Cecil even admits that Magnet therapy does have scientifically verifiable and valid effects here, but again states “The real problem with magnetic therapy …is that no one’s proposed a plausible physiological explanation for how magnetism does its stuff on the body’s cells”. So? Why does that really matter?? Can’t we just say that it works, but we don’t understand the how or why? Why is that so difficult to accept? Are we really withholding research into this area because we don’t understand the mechanism? Doesn’t that seem kinda stupid? There could be a substance that some traditional culture has been using for 1000’s of years to ward off a particular disease or condition, with tons of anecdotal evidence of its efficacy - yet the substance doesn’t “scientifically work” until we isolate the actual chemical mechanism - then Science has made a “discovery”. :smack:

This article attempts to explain some of the resistance by scientists. I can understand people actually in the fields have some stake in keeping things at the status quo, but I’d hope people at the Dope wouldn’t fall into the same trap. Unfortunately, most people just stick to the official “line” and call you a wacko.

I can’t download pdf files at work.

My mother is fond of saying, “Paradigms shift one funeral at a time.” and she, at least, is convinced that a number of standard theories in various disciplines became so not because the various giants in the field took an objective look at the evidence and threw out the old models but simply ignored them only to die and be replaced by younger scientists less beholden to ideas like luminiferous aether or phlogistons. I dunno, I’m not super up on my history of science but it makes sense to me. One hopes that people studied in rationality and empiricism could be more observant of our own biases, but we are all human, after all.

But in these cases, that of the cocaine mummies and the magnetic therapy, the evidence is not conclusive that the mummies were cocaine-users or that magnets have pain-killing properties. Scientists are willing to say that something works but we don’t know how, as long as there’s evidence that it does work. See gravity for an example of this.

The problem appears to be that their research isn’t supported by significant documentation and they don’t have access to the subject material. It’s potentially interesting, but there’s not enough data to make any conclusions yet. As such, the status quo (that these drugs had made it to Egypt in that timeframe) holds.

Lots of people come up with theories, even with some data that’s not enough to overturn the current accepted state of things. And that evidence must be available for multiple teams to investigate. It’s a positive thing that science is slow to change until evidence is presented to support new ideas.

Scientists knew that the Earth was round almost 2000 years before Columbus was born.

Wrong. Until recently, no one knew how aspirin worked, but scientists could still determine how to make it, how best to administer it, etc. No one doubted that aspirin prevented pain.

The linked article appears to be a reprint from the September 1961 edition of Science Magazine (Vol 134), titled “Resistance by Scientists to Scientific Discovery”, by Bernard Barber, professor of sociology at Bernard College, Columbia University, New York. It is a discussion of how scientists, who claim to laud open-mindedness, still seem resistant to new ideas in their fields. It gives a rundown of most of the famous scientific surprises and refusals to accept the new concepts known at the time. It doesn’t directly have anything to do with cocaine mummies or pre-Columbian travel between Africa and South America.

With regards to Cecil’s column, the reason why scientists seem skeptical of the claims is because the claims are extreme in ramifications and not provided with good justification. That resistance would weaken if more substantial justification were provided, including acknowledgment of the original claimants that their ideas are exotic and counter to known history. That kind of casual ignoring of such blatant counter findings is why they are not taken seriously. That’s a “Holy Shit” moment that is treated as a humdrum everyday occurrence.

When you have a ground-breaking discovery, the very first thing you need to do is recognize and admit how revolutionary the idea is. Downplaying it or not mentioning it at all gets you a :dubious:, like you don’t know enough about the field to realize what you’re claiming.

Had not made it to Egypt in that timeframe. Thus the incredulity in finding the traces, and the speculation of contamination or fraud. The conventional wisdom is not “we know that stuff was here, so there’s no grounds for speculating on sea trade”, the conventional wisdom is “that stuff wasn’t in Africa yet, so you must have done something wrong”.

Post-Copernican science is the greatest success story in the history of the human race, by far.
It is a colossus of transcendent merit, which may by now have doubled human life expectancy,
just to name one item from the index of priceless gifts it has bestowed.

No preposterous cocaine mummys, surely contaminated by modern recreational drug residue,
are going to put the slightest dent in the deserved reputation of science and scientists.
OP seems to think the rare worst that science has to offer is typical. In so doing he only exposes
his own shortcomings: a lack of any sense of appreciation and proportion. Maybe some day
he will flip one of those switches on his walls and realize, finally, that God is not the only One
who can say “Let there be light.”

akrako1, do you remember the flap not long ago where claims were made by one research body that the speed of light had been exceeded by a particle? Most scientists were skeptical, and eventually the scientific community reached the conclusion that the tests were flawed, and Einstein was still right.

Why was this claim not enthusiastically embraced? Because there was no confirming evidence, and the claim was pretty far out there.

In the case of the cocaine mummies, if the claims of a single group are right, it would seriously change our opinion of transportation and cultural exchange in the ancient world. Why is this claim not enthusiastically embraced? Because there is no confirming evidence, and the claim is pretty far out there.

“A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.” – David Hume

One of the marks of pseudo-science is that the evidence does not strengthen over time. If, in the coming years, additional evidence, from other sources, supports the cocaine mummy theories, it may gain more traction in the scientific community. Until then, it’s just another crackpot theory.

Compare plate tectonics. A seemingly harebrained idea at first. After a few decades of research into seafloor spreading and mountain building, accumulated evidence supported the original theory. The evidence strengthened over time.

So I think we need to take a wait-and-see attitude. For now, if anyone scoffs at the idea that ancient Egyptians had a pipeline to Brazil, they have good reason to think that way.

Ahem, yes, what he said.

That’s quite a rant you got there. Unfortunately, it’s highly un-original. We’ve heard it all before.

Before anyone spends time researching why something works, it’s a good idea to find out if it works. Why waste time on something that (1) has been proven *not *to work, and (2) Doesn’t have any plausible method to work?

Maybe you don’t understand yet that “energetic-level” forces are all in your mind? Doesn’t science have better things to do than work on proving leprechauns, fairies, magic potions, spells and undetectable energy fields? If you think we should work on these, all I have to say is “How arrogant!”

so if something in undetectable, if should automatically be lumped in with magic and potions? This is the kind of thinking i’m trying to examine, thanks for the example. If something doesn’t have a method considered “plausible” enough by you, I guess we shouldn’t even consider it. How much of our current science (silicon chips, nanotechnology, etc) would seem “plausible” to someone even 100 years ago? Does that mean the technology doesn’t actually work? No, it just means we don’t have the current technology to explain everything. Thinking otherwise is… (insert you favorite term here)

And I guess Cecil was lying when he said there was a scientifically determinable benefit to magnet therapy. Assuming he wasn’t, your premise is false. It has already been determined that it does have a real effect, but simply the mechanism is unknown. That’s the conundrum I’m wanted to discuss.

If there is even one valid study that determines there is some benefit to any of these “energetic-level” therapies, will you even consider the possibility that your world view is limiting you? Somehow I kinda doubt it…

And Musicat, regarding more confirming evidence needed to establish reliability, maybe you didn’t read this part of Cecil’s article:

Sounds like there was a least some validating follow up research…

And why was this claim not enthusiastically embraced? It seems people’s reactions are reason enough to not tout the claim. Publish the results, stand by your work, but don’t stick your neck out far enough that you’ll get vilified by your peers… see Galileo and the Inquisition.

That’s a bit of an exaggeration. In the 19th century it took a while for Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetism to become accepted, but in the 20th century, quite radical ideas were accepted almost immediately. For example, Max Planck proposed the weird idea that energy was quantized, in 1900 or so. Some other scientists might have dismissed his work, but in a matter of years, others were building on his work, and he won the Nobel prize in 1918.

The Inquisition were not scientists either.

Absolutely, until proven otherwise. How else can you distinguish what’s real from what’s not? Does the mere invention of something in your mind carry any weight without proof?

Current science is built upon earlier science. There is a pretty unbroken progression from Maxwell’s equations to the triode to the Bell Labs’ transistor to the printed circuit board to the CPU chip on a silicon wafer. The computer didn’t spring from nothing. This is called progress, something not shared by paranormal phenomena “research,” which is still stuck with trying to prove paranormal “electricity” exists.

Remember, there’s nothing wrong with saying, “I don’t know.” It’s far preferable to falling for some idea without proof.

Cecil didn’t say what you think he said. He was reporting on studies that hinted of some interaction between magnets and biological processes. Personally, I find much of this dubious, it has not made it to mainstream medicine, and I don’t think it will. Let me know when an MD prescribes a magnet to heal a broken bone instead of using a splint.

And even if magnets should one day prove efficacious in some way, that doesn’t mean that ALL claims of magnetic therapies should be believed. Magnets have been the mainstay of quack medicine for centuries.

No, one "valid "study does not change science. First, it might not be valid. Science is built upon replication and validation from different sources where confounding factors are eliminated. Any one study can be flawed. For that matter, two can be.

My world-view, and that of science, is limited to that which can be tested and verified. It doesn’t include fantastic flights of fancy as a test and verification method.

Why are you so ready to accept a single study without question?

One difference. Galileo was right, which even the Church admitted 400 years later. The evidence accumulated and built up.

It’s too early for the cocaine mummies for us to make anything more than a tentative conclusion. Remember cold fusion? There were some labs who claimed to be able to duplicate the favorable results, but most could not. As evidence was accumulated, most pointed to no effect.

If we can find confirming evidence of transportation between the shores of Egypt and Brazil, more pots that match, sunken ships, written records, etc. the possibility will grow. The cocaine measurements are fine for a starting point, but totally inadequate for a definite answer.

And I’m not impressed by the other dudes who agree with the cocaine tests. Check up on N-rays sometime. There were people (scientists, even!) who swore they could detect them, but N-rays proved to be total fantasy.

The proper response to something that is shocking and new to science is, “That’s interesting,” not, “We must rewrite all the books immediately!”

If the benefits claimed for it are unproven to even exist, yes. Absolutely. To think otherwise is to brand oneself a sucker who is prey for every charlatan with a slick product but no proof it even works.

Plausibility of the method is something to be worked out once it has been shown to work.

A lot of it. Hell, ALL of it. They did not spring forth from nothing but were built on existing technology. Lilienfeld patented the field-effect transistor in 1925, for instance. He would no doubt appreciate having a way to make one, but he’d know what to do with it if he had one.

Yes, but the difference between gravity and chakras is that we can demonstrate that gravity is real. Anything less is (insert your favorite term here; mine is “bullshit”).

Plate tectonics was accepted almost instantly. You’re thinking of continental drift, which was not accepted by geologists for decades because the hypotheses behind it (all involving solid rock continents being dragged through solid rock crust by various implausible forces) were unbelievable. And, in the event, they were indeed all false. Continental drift had some circumstantial evidence in its favor, but it simply made no sense.

Plate tectonics was discovered in an entirely unrelated way, in investigation of the sea floor. It was only then that someone noticed that continental drift might be—indeed, almost certainly was—true, after all.

Interestingly, although geologists hadn’t accepted continental drift, many paleontologists had; they had what looked to them like very good evidence, even though geologists didn’t take it seriously.

Just a point of minor contention: Lewontin ascribes the increase in average human lifespan to increases in agricultural efficiency and food distribution (Tuberculosis and influenza have far higher mortality in the malnourished to this day, as far as I am aware). Both of the accomplishments (distribution and agriculture) were the result of scientific achievements, but are probably not the first things one thinks of in that regard.

Nicotine traces could easily be due to the mummies having been in the presence of people smoking, or who smoked alsewhere and had nicotine on their skin/sclothes which transferred to the mummies.

As for Galileo as an example of scientific blindness to truth, it should be noted that, while Galileo’s conclusions were mostly proven correct in the end, he himself had very little evidence to prove them, and in fact some of the evidence available at the time contradicted his theories (partly because he persisted in using circular orbits for the planets, since elliptical orbits had been proposed by someone else and were therefore nonsense - Galileo was somewhat of an egotistical asshole when it came to rival discoveries), which he dealt with by simply ignoring it. It took several decades of increasingly accurate observations and other evidence before astronomers generally accepted the heliocentric model, and about another century before the accumulated evidence finally conclusively disproved all the other models. At which point the Church accepted the heliocentric solar system as a proven reality.

Whoah. Stop right there. The existence of one published study of shaky design with somewhat positive results is a far cry from the conclusion there is a scientifically determinable benefit to magnet therapy. There’s a long way to go to get there.

The key words there include “valid”. Most studies of this kind are flawed in conception and flawed in execution.