True Science Is Not Necessarily What A Scientist Says, Nor Is Everything A Scientist Says Necessarily True
30 Aug 2006
Have you ever noticed our tendency to elevate some professions above reproach? For instance, many people unquestionably accept anything said by a scientist. We recently illustrated this point with our article: Al Gore & the Mad Scientists. According to the Associated Press, Al Gore’s documentary film on global warming—An Inconvenient Truth—is good science simply because a majority of surveyed scientists say so. Regardless of facts and evidence, the say-so of some of today’s scientists is all it takes for something to be deemed good science.
To question anything said by modern-science is to open oneself up to ridicule, since the modern-world holds that lay people, like you and me, have neither right nor reason to question anything a scientist says. Yet, scientists are often proven wrong. Take for example the recent controversy over and demotion of the planet Pluto.
For 75 years scientists have been telling us that Pluto was the ninth, tiniest and most distant planet in our solar system. Now, however, they insist that they were wrong. Instead of a full-grown planet, Pluto has been demoted to one of four “dwarf planets.”
Although this admission of error by today’s astronomers may mean little to you, it has left many present-day astrologers with egg on their face. Having used Pluto, which astronomers are now saying is nothing more than an icy, orbed rock pile, to predict people's moods, lucky numbers and chances of getting a date on Saturday night; astrologers are now being forced to save face by fighting for Pluto’s place in their horoscopes. As Shelley Ackerman, one face-saving astrologer has vowed, “Whether he’s a planet, an asteroid, or a radioactive matzo ball, Pluto has proven himself worthy of a permanent place in all horoscopes.”
Far more disturbing than being frequently proven wrong is the fact that today’s unquestionable scientists are sometimes proven liars. Do you remember “Piltdown Man”? Reportedly discovered among other bones in a gravel pit near Sussex, England, these fragments of a skull and jawbone were immediately proclaimed by the scientific community as the long sought after “missing link” between man and the ape. All over the world, acclaimed scientists began declaring that evolution was a fact, that the Bible was fiction, and that anyone who disagreed was a fool. The only problem was: “Piltdown Man” was a fraud.
“Piltdown Man” turned out to be nothing more than a human skull and the jawbone of a monkey that had been treated with chemicals to make them look older than they were. Despite such an amateurish fraud, it took scientists more than 40 years to expose it. In the mean time, “Piltdown Man” was put on display in London’s prestigious Museum of Natural History where thousands came to see the unquestionable proof that they had evolved from the ape. By the way, we’re still waiting for the scientific community to apologize for its part in perpetrating such a fraud on the world’s unwitting masses.
Lest you think “Piltdown Man” an anomaly and the scientific community rarely guilty of subterfuge, let me remind you of the plethora of physicians who propagate the lie that partial birth abortions are rare and only performed to save the life of the mother. The truth is thousands of these gruesome procedures are performed annually on partially born babies being delivered by perfectly healthy mothers. This ruse alone, in my honest estimation, is reason enough to hold today’s scientific community suspect. I mean if some medical scientists will purposely lie to cover up and perpetuate the slaughter of innocents, then they’ll lie about anything.
Perhaps, the best place to turn to see modern-day scientists weaving a web of deceit is the relatively new frontier of stem cell research. To begin with, ask yourself why the scientific community is demanding that this “promising” new research be subsidized by government funding. Why isn’t the private sector chomping at the bit to invest in what scientists are heralding as the potential cure-all for all of our diseases? The answer is obvious; private investors see stem cell research as far less promising and far more risky than today’s scientists pretend.
Second, do you remember Hwang Woo-suk, the Korean stem cell researcher once heralded by the scientific community as destined to open up a people factory and cure all of our ailments? It has since turned out that good ole Hwang was a fraud and all of his research phony. Just like a fake, faith healing televangelist, this scientific shyster formed a healing line of desperately ill people only to disappoint them in the end with his inability to perform the promised miracle.
Now, in an obvious attempt to defuse the opposition of the pro-life movement to embryonic stem cell research, the scientific journal Nature is reporting that scientists at Advanced Cell Technology in Worcester, Massachusetts, have developed a method for making stem cells without harming human embryos. According to these scientists, a single cell can be removed from an eight-cell embryo without harming the embryo; afterward, the extracted cell can be coaxed to grow into colonies of stem cells. What the scientific journal Nature fails to report, however, is that none of the embryos used in these experiments survived and that none of the extracted cells grew into colonies of stem cells on their own. Furthermore, the picture of a mature embryo poised to grow into a healthy fetus that Nature published along with its report is obviously not a picture of one of the destroyed embryos used in the experiments.
While I do not intend for this article to cast aspersions upon all scientists nor to suggest that scientists should never be given deference in their preferred fields of study, I do intend to warn people, as did the Apostle Paul, not to be deceived by what is falsely called science (1 Timothy 6:20). Contrary to popular opinion, good science is not whatever some scientist says, nor is everything scientists say necessarily so. Scientists are often mistaken. What I find far more disturbing, however, is that today they are becoming more and more misleading. Although honest mistakes are understandable and an inevitable part of the scientific process, deliberate deceptions are not. Therefore, they should be roundly condemned by everyone, lest many end up deceived and the scientific community discredited.
Don Walton
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