 |
Venus. Image taken
by Mariner 10
|
Errors
are not rare in scientific research. Since man is doing science (i.e. since man
is man), errors have been made. Science often progresses by trial and error, which means that something is
tried, found to be wrong, and then something else is tried. From that point of
view, making mistakes and verifying that they are errors is one of the typical procedures
of the scientific method, so no one should be criticized for using it.
The
problem is, in late times the way to publish the results of an observation or
an experiment has changed. Up to now, a well-founded article was written,
criticized by a number of scientists in the field, and published in a magazine,
which disseminated the finding. This is still being done today, but mass
media are often used, before or after the article is published, to
spread the "discovery" much more quickly and to many more people. If
we take into account that the knowledge about science in mass media is
usually ridiculously small, the news is often accompanied by misleading
headlines (and sometimes misleading texts), as I have denounced in previous posts
in this blog.
Since
the dissemination of scientific discoveries is done in this way, the general
public frequently finds out about the supposed "discovery", but not about its refutation, because this has not
the same appeal and the media don't usually publish it. For this reason, the
supposed "discoveries" can be engraved in the people's mind, and it's
very difficult to eradicate them.
Let's
look at a few examples of striking mistakes made in scientific research:
•
The discovery of polywater: in the late 1960s, some Soviet chemists claimed to have discovered a
new form of polymerized liquid water, which would arise spontaneously when
normal water passes through very narrow capillaries. At that time, the media
did not spread it much. For example, the Spanish major newspaper La Vanguardia just
published an article on October 21, 1969, saying this:
The surprise has
now come from water, as it seems that there exists a polywater. That such a
simple liquid, so familiar to us, which has been studied a lot, can still give
us surprises, will seem strange to some.
Another piece of news, published
on March 26, 1972, is a review of a lecture given by Luis Miravitlles, where he
was already suspicious about the existence of polywater:
Despite the many
results obtained to date... it is still impossible to decide whether polywater
is a true polymer or an artifact produced by conditions in the preparation.
The second alternative turned
out to be true. Experiments carried out around the world showed that the
properties of polywater were a consequence of the presence of impurities in
ordinary water. But La Vanguardia did not publish another article on the
subject, so the final refutation did not receive the same diffusion as the
original news.
•
The discovery of cold fusion: 20 years after polywater, this new "discovery" received much
more attention by the media. In the archive of La Vanguardia, for instance, there
are dozens of news items related to this, the first of which was published on
April 13, 1989. This was due to the fact that, for the first time in the
history of science, a "scientific discovery" was disseminated through
a press conference before being published in a scientific magazine. And since,
from the beginning, most physicists considered the "discovery"
impossible, the media echoed them, so just a year later it was considered a
failure by almost everyone.
 |
Thalidomide molecule.
A scientific mistake
with awful consequences |
Let's
look at a few recent cases, which not so long ago made big headlines and then
faded away:
•
A bacterium uses arsenic rather than phosphorous in its DNA: Announced with fanfare by NASA in December
2010, this "discovery" was removed from the scientific heritage less
than two years later.
•
Neutrinos faster than light. The news came out in 2011, but it was soon refuted by the discoverers
themselves, who found a loose cable that had broken synchronism between the
starting point and the arrival point of the neutrinos.
• Gravitational waves in the cosmic background radiation. Announced in 2014, the "discovery"
of those waves was supposed to confirm the inflationary theory of the early
universe. (Some media incorrectly spoke of a confirmation of the existence of
the multiverse). In less than a month it was found that the effect detected had
been produced by the dust of our own galaxy. It is still unobserved in the
background radiation.
•
Presence of phosphane in the atmosphere of Venus, news of 2020, which could be considered as an
indication of the possible existence of microscopic life. Subsequent analyzes
have not confirmed the presence of phosphane.
The same post in Spanish
Thematic Thread about Science in General: Previous Next
Manuel Alfonseca
