That's a good summary of many conspiracist quirks.
"I have proven that [some theory] ... is wrong"Crackpots seem to display almost no understanding of what it means to prove or disprove something. A working theory must have theoretical soundness as well as empirical validity. Unless you know
how the theory predicts an outcome, you can't be sure you got the theory right. And unless the theory
does predict a controlled outcome, all you've got is fancy words on a page, or fancy lines on a photograph.
"But it's obvious nonsense!"I try to use the word "obvious" carefully, and I generally question when others use it. That's because both sides of any debate are often tempted to preface a flimsy proposition with it, hoping to intimidate the opponent away from questioning it. "The astronauts are obviously lying in the press conference." Sounds like something you can't reasonably question.
But the funny thing about "obvious" propositions is that they're the
easiest ones for which to make factual arguments. Something is obvious if the data and associated lines of reasoning are so blatant that they don't require belaboring. But if push comes to shove, you can
always make an explicit case for an obvious proposition even if it is belaboring something. Therefore it may seem pedantic to ask for one, but if all you get in return is bluster and indignance, then you've successfully called someone's bluff.
Here, for example, is an obviously doctored photo.
zombietime.com/reuters_photo_fraud/20060805BeirutP.jpgI use that word because the artifacts from the digital "clone" tool are easy for me to spot, and I believe are easy for others to spot. But if someone questioned my conclusion, I could easily draw their attention to the repeated patterns in the smoke plume. And I could further compare the large patterns of pixels digitally to show how closely and inappropriately the correlated from one region of the photo to another. I could validate that examination by showing the utter lack of correlation in similar regions of authentic photos. In short, I can make a very detailed case here, but I hope I don't have to.
I remember when David Percy tried to tell everyone that shadow vanishing-point analysis was nonsense because it notably ignored the "actual" directions of shadows in favor of a purely theoretical, contrived direction: that of the (invisible) light ray casting it. Either deliberately or ignorantly, Percy fails to understand the important differences between his notion of direction and mine, and what can be inferred reliably in each case.
It's rather easy to
call something nonsense, but it's usually quite a bit more difficult to
prove something is nonsense.
"My theory is prettier than the accepted one."I wonder if by "pretty" he means elegant.
Elegance and parsimony usually get the same nods. We want to believe the universe is simple at heart. We abhor special cases. We therefore look for theories that explain a lot using only a simple formulation. And it's not wrong to look for those, since we can gain insight by discovering commonality. But it's wrong to presume there is a simple explanation, and wrong to shave off inconvenient data points in order to fit the data set into a simple theory.
You can put together a very elegant model of radiative heat transfer that shows the relationship between temperature, absorption, flux, wavelength, transmission, and emission. But when you throw fluorescence into the picture, the simple model falls apart. Where fluorescence is significant you can't just pretend it doesn't exist. And you can't argue the virtues of the fluorescence-free model by saying it's more elegant and therefore predicts more for the amount of math you need. Some models are "messy" because they
need to be in order to reflect accurately the pertinent observation.
"My theory makes more sense.""Makes sense" is subjective. Often this kind of statement is made simply to appeal to lay intuition. A structural design "makes sense" to me, for example, if it appeals to what I know about the various expected loads, the geometry of structural systems, and the properties of the intended materials; and if it avoids certain pitfalls like criticality or resonance. A design might "make sense" to a layman only if it looks like it ought to stand up.
A layman's expectations are generally not as sophisticated as an expert's. Therefore a layman's judgment of sufficiency doesn't mean much. My accounting system might "make sense" to me, but that's no guarantee it will satisfy the IRS's regulations on financial accountability. Drawing lines on photographs might "make more sense" to someone who doesn't fully understand how shadows work, but that doesn't make it correct.
"My theory doesn't need any complicated math."Usually that's because the proponent doesn't know any math. Many conspiracy theories use dumbed-down premises because the proponent is trying to fit the problem to his capacity, not trying to expand his capacity to encompass the problem.
Mathematics is simply another language. It is optimized and formulated to express most effectively the relationships between values. Obviously no communication benefits from a surplus of expression, regardless of the choice of language. "Prithee would'st thou be so kind as to indicate to me the direction toward which I might find facilities suitable for the elimination of bodily waste?" has little over "Hey, where's the john?" But by the same token, "Want cookie," doesn't convey enough disctinction in meaning to ferret out the speaker's intent. Is he asking for a cookie? Is he offering me one?
A model must be as complicated as required to predict behavior faithfully enough for some task. As the task requires greater precision, the model often requires greater complexity. For example, the impulse of a rocket is sometimes given as F * t, where F is the thrust of the rocket and t is the time over which it fires. If all you need to know is whether your rocket will land in New Mexico or Utah, that may be all you need to compute. But if you need to drop that rocket onto a certain street address in Albuquerque, then you have to consider that F is not a constant value but instead varies over time. Then the impulse problem requires solving an integral. If you don't know calculus, then you lack the tools to solve that problem to the required precision.
As the author notes, it's not enough to get the causation right qualitatively. You need quantitative predictiveness.
"How you explain something is more important than the numbers."No. You need both an understanding of the causative mechanism
and confirmation that your model is practically predictive. Both are essential; over-wreaking one does not compensate for ignoring the other. The whole point of understanding gravity's attraction is being able to know how fast I have to move my foot away from the falling hammer.
"You have to spend some time studying my theory."No, I don't. If you draw lines along a shadow on a photograph and tell me it represents a geometrically reliable lighting angle, I
know it's wrong. It is possible in many cases to identify a single fundamental mistake in a conspiracy theory. It doesn't matter how much else might have been defensibly reasoned from that one poor premise. If the premise doesn't hold, there's no point worrying about the rest of the theory.
Since what conspiracists really want is attention, they'll often beg and plead to have a lengthy analysis of their findings. They're often unaware of just how wrong their theories are. So, for example, if you reject someone's claim that a 250 F oven melting photographic film proves the implausibility of Apollo photography, you'll quite often get a rejoinder like, "Well then what temperature should I set the oven to in order to make my theory work?" He is unable to conceive that the oven is
qualitatively the wrong environment and that no temperature he can dial up will faithfully reproduce the space thermal environment.
A similar condition persists in validating FE models for the WTC. As long as conspiracists wrongly believe that the model is validated only by recovering samples showing the hottest temperatures predicted, it won't matter how many pages of correct metallurgy analysis they produce. It doesn't matter how eloquent you wax over the virtues of some tree if you're in the wrong forest.
Not all crackpot theories are so easily dismissable. But it's a waste of time to search them for all
possible errors, or to demand some trivial refinement when you can easily see a glaring or overarching mistake.
"Experimental verification isn't important in science."Experimental verification
is science. It is the means by which scientific ideas are tested before relying on them.
More importantly, it is the means by which the need for additional theoretical work is discovered. Theories are revised only when experimentation shows them to be incomplete or wrong. Theories are not dogmatic prescriptions. They are attempts to describe what actually occurs in the universe. If you never look at the universe, your theory is worthless.
In a more practical sense, experimentation makes up for acknowledge flaws in our models. I can use fluid dynamics models to predict the airflow over an aircraft wing of a specific shape. I can also use structural dynamics models to predict how the wing structure will respond to certain loads. Previously these factors had to be studied in isolation because they don't have closed forms and they must be solved through tedious iteration. We always knew that as the wing deformed to accept structural loads, airflow patterns over it would change. and we always knew that airflow imposed often hard-to-predict structural loads on the wing. Basically, we knew that those two factors were deeply interrelated. But we lacked the computational ability to unify them. And now we can add thermal factors. Again, previously that was studied in isolation. Now we can unify airflow, structure, and heat transfer and compute (with great effort) how those effects combine.
But we've always been able to do an end run and blow lots of air past a physical wind-tunnel model. We don't need to have a detailed, unified model of wing behavior under all types of influences in order to observe that a wing of a certain shape behaves a certain way.
Experimental testing allows all the natural factors to apply -- both known and unknown factors. It lets us observe the confluence of known fators, and reveals to us the unknown ones. But the overall confirmatory or falsificatory finding is very important.
"My theory totally replaces the accepted one."
"I know my theory is right, without wasting my time learning the accepted theories."It irks me how adamant conspiracists are that we use their
ad hoc methods and disregard those that work in the general case.
Shadow vanishing-point analysis works. It's based on sound principles of physics. It's based on sound principles of geometry. It shows an appropriate convergence in true photos to which we apply it, and it shows tell-tale divergence on the fake ones. It's even the method by which artists are taught to synthesize accurate shadows in manual renderings. It's also the method by which many computer rendering algorithms operate.
The "draw some lines along the shadows" method purports to be better than all those, even though its proponents don't demonstrate any understanding of photographic analysis in general. (They work only on conspiracy photos.) To be preferred, their method has to do everything the VPA method does -- account for projection through the lens, variations in terrain, phase angle, etc. The fact that it seems to work easier for a few selected cases than the established method doesn't verify that it's founded upon sound principles.
"That's what they told Galileo."Or Tesla, or Edison, or any number of individuals styled as mavericks who turned out to be right.
Galileo was right, of course, and could prove he was right. The people who rejected him didn't do so by refuting his claims on their merits, but by clinging to a predetermined belief. In conspiracism the tables are usually turned. It is the conspiracist who generally fails to consider ideas on their merit and it is the debunkers who can command a richer and more objective understanding of the fact. The
sine qua non of Galileo's experience is not that the presence alone of opposition establishes that opposition as poorly-founded.
They also laughed at Charles Dawson (the Piltdown Man forger), Franz Gall (phrenology), Billy Meier (Swiss UFOs), and a whole host of other crackpots not fortunate enough to have their names preserved for posterity. And they laughed with good reason. None of those theories could be demonstrated predictive or founded upon discernible causations, and many were exposed as outright deception. Just because you're laughed at doesn't mean you're one of the very few legitimate mavericks.
"The establishment always rejects new ideas."
"I knew you wouldn't listen, you scientists are too arrogant and closed-minded."This gets to the meat of the issue, which I'm not sure this author has fully conceived. Pseudoscience, including conspiracism, is based on the presumption that the only purpose of traditional science is to maintain the hegemony of the Powers That Be.
It isn't arrogant to employ one's hard-won expertise. Long nights spent coding finite-element systems pays off in my ability to recognize relatively quickly when someone else doesn't really understand them. Just because questions are uncertain for some doesn't mean they are uncertain for everyone, and those who have earned the appropriate knowledge don't have to coddle those who won't admit they haven't. Conspiracists desperately want to be put on par with legitimate experts, no matter how poorly they deserve it.
As we've said, scientists are hardly closed-minded. The entire enterprise of science is based on the notion that no theory is ever sacred. Even our most hallowed principles will have to be set aside if experimentation reveals them to be wrong. It isn't closed-minded to want to test an idea before putting stock in it. Most conspiracists don't want their ideas tested, so they have to find some way of dismissing those who want to.
Often psuedoscientists value creativity and imagination over skepticism and deliberation. Science must of course be imaginative. New hypotheses to explain discrepancies in experimentation must imagine what
could be. But they are, of course, no substitute for mental processes that verify the ideas imagination generates.
"I spend my time helping humanity, you waste your time on garbage."This too irks me. As an engineer, I'm held legally liable for the correctness of my findings. The public rightly demands high standards of reliability from those who propose to help humanity. The ability to help goes hand in hand with the ability to hinder and destroy. Yes, I can build an airliner to take people long distances in comfort at great speed. But that same airliner has the potential to send people to certain gruesome, fiery death if not properly built.
Helping humanity requires a trust, and that trust must be earned. It is earned through demonstration of the correctness of one's findings, not through "imagination".
