Evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne has embarked on a regressive campaign to denigrate visionary scientists and theorists who challenge dogma, such as Deepak Chopra, Rupert Sheldrake, and even Rudolph Tanzi. Coyne’s self-conceit that he is uniquely qualified to differentiate science from pseudoscience would be comical if he did not abuse it as a bully pulpit for obscurantism.

Both the proposal and the subsequent proof of alternative theories are integral to the advancement of science. To argue that only theories consistent with dogma can be proposed prior to validation is anathema to science and common sense. Virtually all of the current beliefs of modern science have evolved from the vigorous defense and ultimate rejection of prior dogma. Einstein, Galileo, Dalton, Darwin, Pasteur, and others are among the many pioneers who would have been prematurely silenced with the censorship of scientific theory that Coyne espouses.

The scientific breakthroughs of many recent Nobel laureates such as Prusiner (prions), Marshall (Helicobacter pylori in peptic ulcers), Schechtman (quasicrystals), Haroche & Wineland (manipulation of individual quantum systems) were scorned by critics as pseudoscience for years before being vindicated. Those who defend dogma often erroneously insist that the lack of proof for a new theory is proof that the theory is false. The renowned scientist Martin Rees responded to this fallacy with the maxim “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”. Carl Sagan decried the “impatience with ambiguity” that often leads to hostile rejection of advances in science as they proceed from a novel groundbreaking theory to scientific validation.

We are in an age of rapidly accelerating breakthroughs in virtually every field. The once falsely labeled pseudosciences of induced stem cells, epigenetics, quasicrystals, microbiomes, superconductors, nanotechnology, quantum computing, and other disciplines have moved from the realm of science fiction to reality. The science fiction author Isaac Asimov was prescient when he said, “science is in a far greater danger from the absence of challenge than from the coming of any number of even absurd challenges.” Coyne and others with an aversion to theories that challenge dogma have heightened the danger by becoming active obstructionists to scientific progress.

Scientific obstructionism is not an abstract hypothetical concern without profound consequences. The sciences are replete with inflated egos and glaring deficiencies in study design, performance, and reporting. The degree of academic fraud and dishonesty is amplified by academic and financial self-interest. The most visible consequences are in the life sciences, with one third of all health care expenditures in the US expended on the pseudoscience of non-evidence based medicine. Besides the enormous financial burden well over 200,000 lives are tragically lost to medical errors each year in U.S. hospitals alone.

A hierarchy that discourages dialogue and funding research into novel theories jeopardizes scientific progress. The established biomedical research literature is glaringly deficient in having omitted from studies important populations such as females, children, racial and ethnic groups. Other critical variables such as genomics, epigenetics, and the microbiome were not incorporated thus challenging the validity of the vast majority of prior research in the life sciences.

Evolutionary biology is a relatively new science that was once denigrated by regressive critics as pseudoscience. The endosymbioitic theory that intracellular mitochondria evolved from previously free-living bacteria is just one of many now accepted concepts that challenged convention. The field has been revolutionized anew by the current paradigm shift with genomics and epigenetics.

Coyne as a disciple of evolutionary biology is exhibiting an arrogant hypocrisy to label others who challenge dogma as pseudoscientists. The “Emperor Has No Clothes Award” he received from the Freedom from Religion Foundation in 2011 has become a double entendre exposing his shortcomings. It is either a sardonic irony or poetic justice that an evolutionary scientist of his potential has regressed into a caricature of a pseudoscientist. Perhaps an epigenetic event will allow him to evolve into a true scientist.

Joseph B. Weiss, MD, FACP
Clinical Professor of Medicine
University of California, San Diego

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115533/rupert-sheldrake-fools-bbc-deepak-chopra

http://www.newrepublic.com//article/115600/deepak-chopra-responds-pseudoscience-allegations

What can I say about this? The most important thing is that every quack and pseudoscientist sees himself as an unappreciated genius—as (to use Weiss’s characterization) a more obscure equivalent of Einstein, Galileo, or  Newton—as a purveyor of truly important scientific breakthroughs, if only people would listen!  Yet 99% of these people are quacks. As I’ve said, I put Sheldrake and Chopra into that category.  If Weiss had his way, we’d have to pay careful attention to every claim that comes from the mouths of people that Wikipedia founder characterized as “lunatic charlatans.”

That’s pretty much all I have to say, except to impart a bit of science history. (Let me add, though, that Weiss’s claim that evolution was denigrated as a “pseudoscience” is a canard; evolution was accepted pretty quickly after Darwin proposed it, with only religious creationists resisting it. Further, stem cells, superconductors, and the phenomenon of epigenetic inheritance were never, as far as I know, considered “pseudosciences”.)

Let’s look at Weiss’s claim that Barry Marshall (and his collaborator Robin Warren, whom Weiss forgot) were “scorned for years” by the scientific/medical community for suggesting that Helicobacter pylori was a cause of ulcers.

Their suggestion first appeared in 1983, and in 2005 both researchers were awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology.  Were they scorned in the interim? An article by Kimball Atwood  at CSI says “hell, no.” He analyzes the history of Warren and Marshall’s discovery in detail, which I won’t reprise except to give a quote or two:

 I have no reason to doubt that many physicians scoffed when first faced with the notion of a bacterial basis for peptic ulcer disease (PUD). It is not the case, however, that the medical mainstream dogmatically rejected the proposal for an undue period of time. A brief history shows that the hypothesis was accepted right on schedule, but only after “appropriate initial skepticism”—the premise of my challenge—was satisfactorily answered. Some of the other particulars of the mythical version of the story are also incorrect.

. . . By 1987 [four years after the proposal]—virtually overnight, on the timescale of medical science—reports from all over the world, including Africa, the Soviet Union, China, Peru, and elsewhere, had confirmed the finding of this bacterium in association with gastritis and, to a lesser extent, ulcers. Simpler and less invasive diagnostic methods were devised (Graham et al. 1987; Evans et al. 1989). The possibility of pyloric campylobacter being the cause of gastritis or ulcers was exciting and vigorously discussed, even as it was acknowledged by all, including Marshall and Warren, to require more evidence.

. . . The first trial that was both large enough and rigorous enough to be noticed was conceived by Marshall and Warren in 1984 and published in Lancet at the very end of 1988 (Marshall et al. 1988).

. . . By early 1992, at least three more studies had been published that, in the aggregate, convinced the academic medical world of the causative nature of H. pylori in PUD.

The “delay” in accepting the hypothesis was not due to scorn and rejection, but to the simple difficulty of doing tests with animals (Atwood and Tanenbaum, cited below, recount other experimental problems), and establishing the hypothesis to the satisfaction of scientists.

So it was only nine years from the suggestion to the confirmation, and that’s not a long time for such a radical hypothesis. Certainly a few physicians were skeptical, but Warren and Marshall provided sufficient data to make their claim worth investigating.

Chopra has no such data, only bluster.  And it’s sad that I, an evolutionary biologist, have to correct a professor of medicine about this! But do read Atwood’s piece, which was written to answer the Weiss-like claim that bacterial involvement in ulcers was not recognized for years because of unwarranted skepticism. The delay, as I said, was caused solely by the difficulty of testing Warren and Marshall’s hypothesis, a conclusion also supported in a piece by Jessica Tanenbaum at the Journal of Young Investigators. 

Certainly some claims that challenged received “wisdom” have met with resistance. Right off the bat I can think of two: Lynn Margulis’s idea that mitochondria were the descendants of bacteria (Weiss mentions this one), and Alfred Wegener’s claim in 1912 that the continents moved was not accepted for about 50 years because we didn’t know of a mechanism whereby continents could drift. So yes, some theories that prove correct are delayed. But Chopra’s claims are not of that nature: not only do we not know of a mechanism for “universal consciousness,” but Chopra can’t even explain what that means.  And if you can’t even couch your theories in intelligible English, and in a way that makes those theories susceptible to test, you get put in the circular file of science. Chopra’s claims qualify not as science, but New Age woo.

I’m saddened that a medical doctor emits the old bromide that “They laughed at Marshall, and they laughed at Chopra, too.” They didn’t laugh at Marshall, nor at Warren either. They took them seriously, for they made a comprehensible claim that could be tested. And that claim wasn’t couched in obscurantist jargon.

If Chopra finds a way to substantiate his claims that the universe has consciousness, and the moon doesn’t exist in the absence of consciousness, and that we can “simmer down the turbulence of nature” by mass meditation (maybe Chopra can reduce that turbulence a tad through a smaller experiment), and that intelligence is inherent in nature, I’d stop laughing at him, too. In the meantime, he remains figure of fun bedecked in diamond-studded glasses. Granted, a rich figure of fun, made wealthy by those who, flummoxed by his fancy verbiage, buy his claims and his merchandise. Somebody had to pay for those diamonds!

Oh, and it’s also sad to see the woo-ey minions that have come out to support Weiss and Chopra since Weiss’s comment appeared. Below are two of those minions commenting at the New Republic after Weiss’s letter. I weep for this world.

But who, exactly, is “us”? Those who reject science?