Science and Junk-science:

 

The Distinction between Modern Petroleum Science

and

the “Biological-Origin-of-Petroleum” [BOOP].

 

 

 

 

1.      The conflict between science and junk-science.

          The recent confrontation by modern Russian petroleum science of the hypothesis of a “biological origin of petroleum” [BOOP] is an example of the collision of science with junk-science.  This type of conflict has been an on-going phenomenon for more than two centuries.

          Historically, science developed contemporaneously with its applications which created wealth.  The consequential generation of wealth by science stimulated in turn the development of junk-science.  In the 19^th century, the junk-sciences of phrenology, Mesmerism, Marxist economics[sic], and a host of snake-oil nonsense arose simultaneously with electrodynamics, chemistry, and modern medicine.  Today, there are groups in the U.S.A. which try to inject very restrictive religious doctrines into the elementary and secondary schools under the guise of a (emphatically, junk-) science which they call “Creation Science[sic].”

          The reader should understand clearly that the hypothesis of a “biological origin of petroleum” [BOOP] is not a matter of scientific error as were, for examples, the “caloric” theory of heat, and the “undulating-ether” theory of light.  Those two (substantial) scientific errors were seriously thought to have been subsumed by the overriding principles of science in their respective times.  When put to the test and shown false, both were promptly discarded.

 

2.      The recognition of junk-science.

          Many scientists habitually use a somewhat casual approach toward the definition of junk-science and apply a quasi-Potter rule:  “I don’t need to define junk-science, but I know it when I see it.”  (This designation of such obviously practical reasoning obtains from the famous dictum of Supreme Court Justice Stewart Potter in the Jacobellis case involving pornography:  “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be [pornography], … but I know it when I see it.”¹)

          Such perspective usually serves men working in real (not junk-) sciences adequately well;  for those men have been educated in the philosophy of science and trained in scientific procedure.  Almost intuitively, they do correctly recognize junk-science when they see it.  A few obvious examples follow:

 

·        Chemistry is a science;  alchemy is junk-science.

 

·        Astrophysics is a science;  astrology is junk-science.

 

·        Cranial neurology is a science;  phrenology is junk-science.

 

·        Cognitive science might be considered an infant science;  Freudian psychology[sic] has been discredited as junk-science.

 

·        Economics cannot be considered a science;  Marxist economics[sic] must be acknowledged as a junk-science, - better, as “junk-economics.”†

 

One could continue this list extensively to include such as faith-healing, and feminist gender-studies[sic], and a host of currently-fashionable nonsense.  The general subject of junk-science, and of the current plague of same, and of the (regrettably neglected) responsibility of the scientific community to confront and contend with junk-science is taken up at length in a series of essays in the excellent book The Flight from Science and Reason.²

          Unfortunately, many scientists entertain a grossly false, inverse-Gresham’s-law‡ notion about the interaction between science and junk-science in the open market-place of ideas and human discourse.  They prefer to believe that good science drives out bad.  Such is a comforting illusion, but utterly false.  One needs only to consider the ratio of the numbers of persons who daily read astrology columns in the newspapers to those who can recite Kepler’s rules.  Junk-science flourishes;  true science must always struggle for a fair hearing.  As Ben Franklin wrote, “Falsehood travels half around the world while Truth is still pulling on its boots.”

          This problem is much worse for the difficulty of modern petroleum science contending with the junk-science of BOOP;  for, in the U.S.A., the British/American geo-phrenologists have established this dogma as their “official truth” and have insinuated themselves as the official arbiters of all matters supposedly connected with petroleum.  In this respect, British/American-style petroleum geo-phrenology has positioned itself in the English-speaking world similarly as did the Marxist junk-economists in the former U.S.S.R.

 

 

3.      The test to distinguish science from junk-science:  Subsuming authority.

          Junk-science can often be identified readily by one of more of several measures.  Often the junk-science is recognized to be based upon utterly erroneous notions, as are alchemy and phrenology.  Not infrequently, the particular junk-science has been tested and demonstrated to be nonsense, as have Marxist economics[sic] and astrology.  Quite often a junk-science can be recognized as simply a belief-system that cannot be put to any scientific test, like Freudian psychology[sic] which bizarrely claims for itself some spurious exemption from scientific testing.

          However, for a person without training in one of the rigorous sciences, the recognition of junk-science is too often neither automatic nor necessarily obvious.  A simple, clear-cut, intellectual test is needed to identify junk-science infallibly and to distinguish it for genuine science.  Such test is provided by scrutiny of the authority by which any science claims validity for its assertions.  In short, on what are the assertions of the science (or the junk-science) based ? 

 

3.1.   Real science is based upon mathematics.

          The authority and validity of real science rests ultimately upon the independent rigor and internal consistency of mathematics.  Galileo stated the matter exactly right when he wrote:  “The language of Nature is mathematics.”§

          This ultimate authority of mathematics holds for all sciences, however little mathematics may seem to be applied in a specific case.  For example, when a botanist specializing in, say, conifers completes an investigation from which he draws certain conclusions, his conclusions must always be consistent with the general overriding body of botanical knowledge and assumptions, which assumptions themselves are always consistent with, and subsumed by, the general principles and knowledge which comprise biology.  The principles of biology rest upon chemical science, for biology is the study of those chemical compounds and systems that are characterized by self-replication and self-organization.  Chemistry is the specific branch of physics which deals with the dynamics of chemically combining atoms and molecules.  The laws and authority of physics rest in turn upon the internal consistency and rigor of mathematics, which exists itself independently of any physical theory.  This hierarchy of authority is always implicitly present in every genuine scientific argument.  Galileo put it correctly.

 

3.2.   Junk science is always based upon dogma.

          By contrast to real science, junk-science is dogmatic and admits no higher authority than itself for validity of its assertions.  The authority of Marxist junk-economics is always:  “Karl Marx said so.”  The authority of Freudian junk-psychology[sic] is likewise always:  “Sigmund Freud said so.”  And so on.  One is not supposed to question the dogma of the founder(s).  Every junk-science demands of its adherents slavish, unquestioning reverence for whatever ipse dixit nonsense might once have been asserted by its founder(s).

          BOOP is a classic example of junk-science, or what Richard Feynman called “Cargo Cult Science.”  Although the original hypothesis that natural petroleum might be a material which somehow evolved from biological detritus was the great Russian scientist of the 18^th century, M. V. Lomonsov, modern physics and chemistry had already established by the last quarter of the 19^th century that hypothesis to be insupportable.  The American and British fellows who style themselves “petroleum geologists” were (and remain) comfortably undisturbed by the constraints of physics and thermodynamics upon chemical transformations, for the simple reason that the great majority of them lack even a rudimentary education in modern physics.

 

 

1          Jacobellis v. Ohio, 1964, United States Supreme, 378 US 184, 197.

2          P. R. Gross, N. Levitt and M. W. Lewis, "The  Flight from Science and Reason," ed. B. M. Boland, New York Academy of Sciences, New York, 1996, vol. 775, 593.