Mad Scientists

Factual Questions
21

Teller was also a staunch advocate for the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), and particularly nuclear weapon powered X-ray and neutral particle directed energy weapons despite many technical objections to practicability that could not be mitigated by advancing the technology.

Lynn Margulis developed the now-widely accepted endosymbiotic theory (that eukaryotic organizisms with discrete organelles developed via symbiotic combination of separately evolved organisms) which underlies essentially of all modern molecular biology. She did this virtually single-handedly and in strong opposition by the established scientific consensus, for which she arguably should be due a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine due to the value of the theory in understanding the role and dysfunction of mitochondria in cellular-level physiology. She went on, along with James Lovelock, to promote the so-called Gaia Hypothesis, that the entire planet is a single symbiotic organism that evolves via some kind of deliberate cooperative development, supposedly deprecting the role of natural selection to a minor factor in evolutionary development. Although the claim did bring additional attention to the wide scale interdependency to organisms and natural climate and hydrological systems in the overall biosystem, the idea that the entire planet is a single organism is oft-descried as “more hype than thesis” insofar as it doesn’t provide any falsifiable tests or a scientifically useable postulates.

Nikola Tesla is well known for his experiments with creation and conduction of electricity. In fact, the three-phase power transmission method employed today in every commerical and residential power grid in the world is based upon his system of alternating current, despite vigorous opposition by Edison. Tesla is almost as well known, however, for some of his more crackpot ideas and claims. While Tesla was a great experimentalist and integrator, his grasp on the actual physical principles of his experiements was often shaky.

Bruce medalist (and overlooked for a Nobel prize awarded to Fowler and Chandrasekshar) astronomer Fred Hoyle made great contributions to astrophysics and cosmology. However, he was noted for his staunch opposition to Big Bang theory long past the point that it was accepted by the astronomy community (due to the discovery of the cosmic microwave background and the cosmic redshift). He also argued against the (now widely accepted) chemical evolution of life, arguing (from no evidence whatsoever) that life began by pansporidia (from viruses falling from space). He made repeated claims that pulsars were signals from other civilizations well after it was widely theorized that they were in fact natural phenomena.

Kary B. Mullis, who was the 1993 Nobel Laureate for Chemistry for is invention of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) which is used in most DNA matching tests and genome sequencing until recently. Mullis, however, has had a long history of bizarre and unfounded speculations, the most notorious of which is his claim that AIDS is not caused by the HIV virus. Although he has a small following on this issue, the vast majority of active researchers in the field of virology think he’s totally off his nut on this. In fact, most chemists regard his discovery/invention of PCR to be about the only viable thing he has ever produced in his career.

And as for Einstein: After a brief but fruitful period of innovation which turned the physics world upside down (or rather, without absolute reference whatsoever) he proceeded to blunder about, seeking a Theory of Everything for the next 30 years without success or conclusion. He considered his addition of a cosmological constant in GR to account for the expansion of the universe a big mistake, even though it now appears that there is in fact reason to believe that the “constant” is an appropriate correction.

Stranger

22

Einstein definitely doesn’t belong on this list. His later years weren’t nearly as fruitful as his earlier ones, but he was still doing sound science. He was mistaken, but not wrong.

23

It is true that he didn’t do anything flaky like research astrology or Hollow Earth theory, but his staunch denial of the basic principles of quantum mechanics despite well-grounded theory went well beyond science and bordered on obsession. He’s more an example of a promising mind that got locked into such a rigid way of thinking that he coudn’t accept the reality that normal everyday causality may not (is likely not) how the world ultimately functions, and as a result did nothing especially productive (on scientific fronts, although his humanitarian and public educational work should be noted) for the rest of his career despite a Nobel Prize and a cushy non-teaching research job at Institute for Advanced Study. But the history of Nobel laurates is rife with the same lack of fulfilling potential. For every Steven Weinberg or Marie Curie there are dozens of Nobel winners who go on to essentially retirement after their one great discovery.

Stranger

24

Off the rails…to all outward appearances. If consciousness turns out to be just another manifestation of energy then once that concept is harnessed the breakthroughs will be beyond reckoning.

25

Would John Lilly qualify for this list? I really don’t know much about his earlier life, and the Wiki article on him is somewhat vague regarding this. I get the impression that even in his younger days he was a crackpot, but at that time he didn’t fully incorporate his nuttiness into his professional life. I know a couple of people who were very casually acquainted with him, and they told me that it was only after he started pursuing grant money to feed LSD to dolphins or something that he became an academic laughing stock.

26

It’s no different than Robert Dicke, who came up with many experiments to disprove General Relativity and kept trying to disprove it – with legitimate science – for years. Einstein’s work on the Unified Field Theory was a dead end, but physicists now think his basic idea is sound and are working on ways to apply it.

So Einstein was on the right track, even if he was going about it incorrectly.

27

You could say something similar about every elderly crackpot mentioned here.

“If megadoses of vitamin C turn out to actually solve every health problem, the breakthroughs will be tremendous!”

“If they discover someday that N-rays actually exist, it will revolutionize physics!”

28

And once we find the hideout of the invisible pink woolly mammoths we will have an endless supply of the rainbow-colored sherbet that they excrete instead of elephant shit. Or not.

There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that consciousness is anything but an emergent property of really complex adaptive systems like the brain. The only apparent connection between quantum mechanics and cognition is that they are both very poorly understood groups of phenomenon that require a complex systems-level modeling to apply to observable behavior. Even if there is a component of consciousness that is somehow tied to some quantum mechanical effect (of which there is no evidence either despite the protestations of Roger Penrose) there is no indication that matter or some kind of universal energy field is directed by consciousness, nor that any of the crackpotisms like water memory, transcendental meditation, cold fusion, Eastern mysticism, or any other ideas promoted by Josephson have any validity whatsoever. These are areas of pseudoscience given the patina of legitimacy through the language and association with actual testable scientific theories and hypotheses.

Unfortunately, quantum physicists in particular seem to be prone to speculating beyond the bounds of science; David Bohm, one of the most brilliant of theoreticians working in quantum mechanics and with a willingness to dispense entirely with the current paradigm in order to come up with a self-consistent interpretation of QM, fell prey to errant speculations and near worship of New Age and Buddhist mysticism. Once you’ve entered the strange underworld of quantum mechanics, even the most unfettered and ill-grounded hypotheses seem reasonable.

Stranger

29

Oh, and I forgot to list Jack Parsons, the propulsion and ordnance engineer who worked on early solid rocket propellants, oxidizer/fuel mixing methods for liquid rocket engines, and the Jet Assisted Take-Off device, participated in founding the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory (GALCIT, later to become the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory) and Aerojet corporation, but was fired for his involvlement in the Agape Lodge (a branch of the Thelemite Ordo Templi Orientis) and association with (and eventually being defrauded by and, alleged by some, assassinated at the behest of) L. Ron Hubbard, with whom he conducted occult ceremonies to invoke the goddess Babalon to Earth.

Stranger

30

Francis Galton developed several methods in statistics that are still used today. He also became obsessed with eugenics and started churning out articles explaining, for instance,his plan to exterminate the population of Africa and then repopulate it with Chinese people.

31

But regardless, Einstein’s flat denial of the stochastic nature of mechanics at the fundamental level despite an increasing body of evidence to support it basically retarded any effort to progress in the unification of gravity. And from current evidence it appears that the notion of the continuous metric of Einstein space-time that underlies general relativity is very likely a weak field approximation of a more fundamental mechanic that gives rise to all forces. And that mechanic probably looks a lot more like a quantum field theory than it does a geometric theory. It doesn’t put him in the league of crazy or supporting quacktastic pseudoscientific notions like water memory, but it does indicate that his intellectual gifts for intuiting the non-intuitive, paradigm changing notions of special and general relativity were essentially squandered in his later professional life.

Stranger

32

Starting from a premise of uniform, selectable, distinct characteristics, eugenics as a culling program to improve the species makes just as much sense as horse or dog breeding. The problem is that many of the characteristics that were selected for by eugenics advocates were not uniformly heritable or selectable, or weren’t even well measured, e.g. intellect, disease resistance, et cetera. (The Nazi concept of eugenics and the anti-Semtic Nuremburg laws were wholly ascientific even by the standards of their day and were just an excuse to feed the German popular hatred for an isolated ethnic group as a distraction from the damage that the Nazis were doing to Germany and the rest of Europe.) The concept of ‘race’ as deliniating groups with definiable differences in intellectual or emotional maturing is bunk, but the basic notion of selecting and mixing genomes with the most desireable or fewest defective genes as a species improvement program is essentially sound, if seemingly ethically reprehensible.

Stranger

33

Peter Duesberg spent the first half of his career on oncogenes and getting elected to the National Academy of Sciences, and the second half claiming that HIV is harmless, and that the real cause of AIDS are recreational drugs used by homosexuals.

Kary Mullis won the Nobel in the 90s for his work in PCR, and has since had some rather radical views on the existence of glowing extraterrestrial raccoons (and LSD, probably not coincidentally). Happens to be buddies with Duesberg and denies that HIV causes AIDS.

34

Can someone expand on this?- I have never heard of Einstein’s UFT work leading to anything useful.

35

It was 12 years from 1905 (the Miracle Year) to 1917 (prediction of lasers/stimulated emission) which is not brief in terms of a theoretical physicist operating at epochal creativity. And later work (e.g. Einstein-Bose stats, EPR) was not a total loss, either, even when, as in the case of EPR, it served mainly to force others strive for greater rigor.

36

German experimental physicists Phillip Lenard and Johannes Stark became out-and-out-Nazis. Fortunately their useful work was behind them during Nazi rule, and they contributed nothing to the eventual war effort.

37

You might even say: He was mistaken, or maybe even wrong, but at least he wasn’t “not even wrong”. :wink:

38

Crazy because Chinese industry is all over Africa. The “West” briefly took hold in Africa but became obsessed with the New World.

39

He was a neurosurgeon or neurological researcher. Then he got all into “New Agey” consciousness raising, altered states, and LSD.

He got into studying dolphins, which he felt had an advanced intellect and language of their own, and did an on-going project in “inter-species communications”, funded by some grant, which eventually didn’t produce any particularly useful results that I ever heard of.

In one of his later books, he acknowledged that he gave LSD to his research dolphin. (I’m only aware of one dolphin that he had, not a whole bunch of them.) He also argued (seemingly seriously) that, once we establish communication with the dolphins, they could guide us or be our interpreters in communicating with other especially intelligent species. (He mentioned elephants in particular.) Once we can do all that, he argued, we should extend full “human rights” to these animals as well, eventually even admitting them to the United Nations. You could tell he must have been doing some acid when he wrote certain chapters.

(He wrote several books about his works and/or beliefs on dolphins. I read them all in the late 1970’s. As best I recall, the book I describe above was Lilly on Dolphins: Humans of the Sea. Each of his books on dolphins was a little nuttier than the one before, and I think this was the last of them.)

He became a laughingstock among serious dolphin researchers, and among the more serious researchers on language acquisition in animals. Most of that work was done with chimpanzees, but you probably all know about Penny Patterson’s work with Koko the Gorilla and Irene Pepperberg’s work with Alex the Parrot. Less popularly known, there was Herman et al working on language acquisition with dolphins; several other similar dolphin projects, and Schusterman’s project with California Sea Lions. I worked on the Herman dolphin project for several years (1980-1984). Everyone was familiar with Lilly’s work, and we always got a good laugh out of it. We also got a good laugh watching Day of the Dolphin when it came on TV.

40

Great answer, thanks. So he does qualify for the list, as the Wiki article indicates that he has made recognized contributions to the field of neurobiology. A friend of mine once met him at a party. He was high on ketamine and was standing on the roof of the house buck naked, pontificating to anybody who would listen. Not exactly the poster boy for the Caltech Alumni Association.