Greetings All,
One of my teenage heroes was Dr. Malcolm Lyall Watson. This guy seemed sincere; he studied under Desmond Morris of all people.
As a teenager, as we all do I guess, I was reading books on ‘the paranormal’, call it what you will - Mr. Watson was writing some fascinating stuff – “Suupernature”, “Lifetide” etc.
I am now a lot older, and as such a bit more skeptic on such matters, however I notice that Mr. Watson is still putting out new books regularly. Some of it is actually quite interesting, well researched and thoroughly entertaining to read.
My question, and the reason I am putting this in Great Debates, is this: Has anyone ever debunked some of his earlier work? Some of his claims were, to put it mildly, rather extraordinary.
Well, his Hundredth Monkey Effect claim was shown to have been invented (or, more charitably, “misunderstood”), by Ron Amundson, among others.
Thank you for that. I guess what puzzles me is why someone as trained in science as him would make such assertions - seems to me that he just opens himself up to ridicule.
Quote:
Watson attended boarding school at Rondebosch Boys’ High School in Cape Town, and in 1958 earned degrees in botany and zoology before securing an apprenticeship in palaentology under Raymond Dart, leading on to anthropological studies in Germany and the Netherlands. He has additional degrees in chemistry, geology, marine biology and ecology, indicating a broad range of interests. Watson earned a doctor of philosophy degree in ethology under Desmond Morris at London Zoo.
Why on earth does such a person risk his career with things like “Hundredth Monkey Effect” - just one example out of many?
He’s risking nothing if his real career is selling books (and it is).
OK - I will buy that. But what when he was writing his first books?
Supernature was a little less immediately nutty on first read - also, very much a child of its time, I think - I mean, it’s roughly contemporaneous with Don Juan (and a lot of drugtaking in academia, I’m sure)
My guess is that he really believed the stuff. A lot of people believe weird and far-out stuff, even when it has been forcefully debunked right in front of their eyes. Andrew Weir still writes and pushes nonscientific claptrap, even though he has admitted in print that James Randi debunked it in front of him (see Randi’s book The Magic of Uri Geller, which quotes liberally from Weir’s own articles).