However, I did just finish his set of rebuttals to Worlds in Collision by Immanuel Velikovsky. I had never heard of the book, to be honest. It apparently made the bestseller list back in the 50s and had generated such a stir by the 70s that the American Association for the Advancement of Science held a meeting over it with both Sagan and Velikovsky in attendance. Sagan not only gave a talk there where he picked through Velikovsky's claims but also clearly felt that the explanations he gave for why Velikovsky was wrong needed to take up a relatively significant part of his next book, Broca's Brain.
I find this whole thing fascinating for two reasons. First, Sagan clearly states in his book that he is appalled by the scientific community's actions in suppressing Velikovsky's ideas. I can do no better than quote him, for he explains it quite well without me:
"In the entire Velikovsky affair, the only aspect worse than the shoddy, ignorant and doctrinaire approach of Velikovsky and many of his supporters was the disgraceful attempt by some who called themselves scientists to suppress his writings. For this, the entire scientific enterprise has suffered. [...] But scientists are supposed to know better, to realize that these ideas will be judged on their merits if we permit free inquiry and vigorous debate. To the extent that scientists have not given Velikovsky the reasoned response his work calls for, we have ourselves been responsible for the propagation of Velikovskian confusion. But scientists cannot deal with all areas of borderline science. The thinking, calculations and preparation of this chapter, for example, took badly needed time away from my own research. But it was certainly not boring, and at the very least I had a brush with many an enjoyable legend."He is very much correct, and it reminds me of earth science's current dealings with so-called "climate deniers," who claim that anthropogenic climate change is a myth. In this day and age, there are some scientists who still try to suppress the writings and ideas of anyone who denies climate change is caused by human beings. However, the difference today is that many of these "climate skeptics" refuse reasoned, public debate with scientists who reach out to them, whereas it seems that Velikovsky was at least willing to participate in such a debate if someone would only give him the space to do so. Many earth scientists point to backing from oil companies or similar organizations when refusing to deal with scientists whose conclusions from research do not back anthropogenic climate change. However, would not the better, more scientific thing to do be to recreate the research or to analyze the findings separately, as scientists are supposed to do when disbelieving someone's findings? After all, that is what the "peer" part of "peer-reviewed research" is supposed to refer to.
Propaganda today is rampant, more so I believe than when Sagan was dealing with Velikovsky. We have both scientists and non-scientists publishing books on climate change, popular media taking sides, and popular faces holding forth on ideas which they may or may not have the scientific background to know. This is on both sides, mind you. To acknowledge that the science of climate change has nearly lost its scientific, reason-based footing and slid into the emotional and visceral response for nearly everyone is a bitter pill to swallow for those who are trying to hold to that science and discuss it rationally. Sagan responded to what likely seemed to him a challenge to the science he held dear in the best way he could: with a calm, reasoned rebuttal in terms that everyone - scientist or not - could understand. He utilized the scientific channels he knew as well as the popular cultural channels he was familiar with: books and TV series episodes. Would, then, the best idea for climate scientists today to respond to the "shoddy" research and to the well-thought-out research which does not agree with their own findings be to analyze them on their merits through free inquiry and rational debate through scientific channels, popular media, Facebook, blogging, Twitter, and every single element at their disposal just as the "climate skeptics" are doing? After all, it would make sense that Dr. Sagan would have done the same if such tools were at hand.
The second thing that fascinates me about that section is that I have never heard of the book at all. I took a history of science course in college which really had me hooked. I have been reading history of science type books ever since (in between novels, scientific reading, and other hobbies, of course!), and yet this is the first book that mentions this controversy. It is not surprising that it mentions it, for after all this was a contemporary book to the controversy written by one of the principal actors then. But it makes me wonder how many such controversies - those where a popular idea based in erronious understanding of scientific data was confronted by scientists at the time, trying to change the opinion of a public which had very little understanding of the science anyway - have occurred over the history of science. We may think that the climate debate is a huge, looming, colossal problem. That is certainly because we are living it, and it is a major split in society (though not too much within the scientific community - many scientists can at least agree the climate is changing, though often the debate is over how much of the change is caused by humans). However, it will merely be a footnote or short paragraph in one history of science textbook fifty years from now.
