YES, WE HAVE NO NEUTRONS

Why do good scientists fall into error? Here are eight case studies, analyzed with entertaining irreverence by a former Scientific American columnist. Dewdney (The Planiverse, 1984) notes that scientific advance consists of two parts: getting an idea and testing it. The public image of scientists tends to focus on the flash of inspiration- -Archimedes in his bathtub or Newton with the falling apple—but without the unspectacular process of designing and carrying out experiments and measurements, even the most brilliant idea cannot aspire to the name of science. Spectacular scientific blunders— such as cold fusion or the ``N-rays'' announced early in this century by the French scientist RenÇ Blondlot—usually arise from flawed or inadequate experiments. Often the source of such error is plain old wishful thinking; Fleishmann and Pons, the ``discoverers'' of cold fusion, afraid of being beaten to one of the greatest possible discoveries of all time, rushed to announce their results without adequately checking them. Blondlot wanted to see French science match the recent triumphs of the Germans and persuaded himself that he had found a new kind of energy. When cooler heads investigated the alleged phenomenon, it evaporated. Dewdney saves a large measure of scorn for psychology, singling out Freud's career as a prime example of pseudoscience. For this author, Freud's half-dozen published case studies appear too weak and inconclusive to support the elaborate theoretical structure he erected upon them. Likewise, the measurement of intelligence has long been suspect; what IQ tests measure is often the product of the cultural bias of those administering the tests. Dewdney goes to particular pains to discredit attempts to tie IQ scores to racial background, pointing out that differences within a given group far surpass alleged differences between groups. Dewdney manages to make this catalog of error entertaining as well as instructive; good medicine for both skeptics and true believers.