Kicking the Sacred Cow

by James P. Hogan

  Rejected Call for Reappraisal

  Eric Larrabee, whose original preview article in Harpers in 1950 of Worlds in Collision could be said to have started the whole thing off, wrote again thirteen years later, in the August 1963 issue of the same magazine, a piece called "Scientists in Collision," citing the new discoveries in astronomy, space science, geology, and geophysics that supported Velikovsky's case and calling for the establishment to reappraise its position.

  "Science itself," he wrote, "even while most scientists have considered his case to be closed, has been heading in Velikovsky's direction. Proposals which seemed so shocking when he made them are now commonplace. . . . There is scarcely one of Velikovsky's central ideas—as long as it was taken separately and devoid of its implications—which has not since been propounded in all seriousness by a scientist of repute."

  The responses were fast and ireful, but for the most part repeated all the old fallacies. On the subject of conducting plasmas and magnetic fields in interplanetary space, the tune changed to "we knew all that before Velikovsky" (maybe because of publication of Alfvén's work?). The debate carried on through the August, October, December 1963, and January 1964 issues of Harpers. Larrabee's performance in taking it upon himself to answer the opposition was described by one commentator as "a classic example of the demolition of a scientist's arguments by a non-scientist." The "scientific" side was reduced to arguing that since nonscientists did not understand scientific issues and the scientific method, they should be restrained from debating in a public forum. 110

  In the same period, Velikovsky, feeling optimistic that the new findings might have earned him a more considered hearing by now, prepared an article entitled "Venus, a Youthful Planet," which Harry Hess agreed to recommend to the American Philosophical Society for publishing—the same organization whose publications committee in 1952 had rejected Velikovsky's corrections of Cecilia Payne Gapschkin's misquotations in its Proceedings. This time the committee was split into two belligerent camps who argued for something like six months. In January 1964, the decision was taken not to publish Velikovsky's paper.

  An article entitled "The Politics of Science and Dr. Velikovsky," documenting the scientific community's treatment of the whole affair and accusing it of conspiracy and suppression, appeared in the September 1963 issue of American Behavioral Scientist, requiring a second printing even though the initial run had been unusually large in anticipation. The response of the readership, composed mainly of specialists in fields that Velikovsky's work hadn't touched upon, was predominantly favorable. A number of sociologists felt the ABS account should be required reading in social science courses. Professor G. A. Lundberg of the University of Washington wrote, "[T]he A.A.A.S., not to mention individual scientists and groups, must now prepare a detailed answer. What is really at issue are the mores governing the reception of new scientific ideas on the part of the established spokesmen for science." 111

  Since the issue was essentially one of scientific ethics, the seemingly natural choice for a vehicle to pursue the matter in was the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which prided itself on being a medium for expression of such issues. In a later letter to Harry Hess, the editor of the Bulletin, Eugene Rabinowitch, acknowledged the reawakening of interest in Velikovsky's theories and alluded to the situation as requiring "remedial action," i.e., rallying to the defense of the threatened citadels. The ensuing piece, "Velikovsky Rides Again" (Bulletin, April 1964), was jeering and uncivil, employing all the devices seen when the earlier outcry was raised, of unfounded charges, misrepresentation, and dogmatically presenting received opinion as established fact. The writer given the assignment was unfamiliar with the fields of ancient languages and Egyptology in which he chose to attack Velikovsky—and even, apparently, with the elementary French needed to read one of Velikovsky's sources. But these were areas that typical readers of a journal like the Bulletin would have to take on trust, and the tone met with satisfied and often eager approval.

  One protector of the faith sent a copy of the Bulletin article to Moses Hadas, Jay Professor of Greek at Columbia University, who had remarked in an earlier review that Velikovsky appeared to be approaching vindication. Doubtless to illuminate him as to the error of his ways, Hadas was told that he should find the piece "of interest and perhaps amusing." But the ploy backfired. Hadas replied that he had no opinion about Velikovsky's astronomical theories "but I know that he is not dishonest. What bothered me was the violence of the attack on him: if his theories were absurd, would they not have been exposed as such in time without a campaign of vilification? One after another the reviews misquoted him and then attacked the misquotation. . . . [Regarding the Bulletin article] It is his critic, not Velikovsky, who is uninformed and rash." 112

  Eric Larrabee was promised an opportunity to reply in the Bulletin, but on meeting the stated deadline he was informed that space was not available. When challenged, Rabinowitch affirmed that the matter should be resolved in the "spirit of scientific argumentation" and agreed that since the Bulletin's article had made claims involving Hebrew and Egyptian paleographic and philological evidence, it should devote space to material disputing them. Velikovsky, however, would not consent to entering into such a debate, since in his view the author of the piece had amply demonstrated incompetence in those subjects. Instead, he proposed publication of "Venus, a Youthful Planet," which Hess had again agreed to submit. This was turned down on the grounds that the Bulletin was "not a magazine for scientific controversies." But wasn't that the reason why it had been chosen as a forum in the first place? The article was returned unread with a letter from Rabinowitch stating that he wasn't qualified and didn't have the time to study Velikovsky's books. But he knew enough about the absence of dogmatism in modern science to trust the pronouncements of qualified experts. As Epictetus observed almost two thousand years go, "A man cannot begin to learn that which he thinks he already knows."

  The summer of 1965 saw the release by Delta of paperback editions of Worlds in Collision and Earth in Upheaval, provoking another round of reactions along the same general lines that had been seen before. One reviewer, ridiculing the former book, flaunted his own ignorance of the content of the latter by declaring blithely that the alleged events couldn't have happened since "animal life went through the fateful year of 1500 b.c. without any disturbance." Science and Scientific American both refused to accept advertisements for the Delta editions.

  The Planets Speak, Regardless

  An interesting twist to the suppression or ignoring of inconvenient facts was added by Sky & Telescope, a journal for amateur astronomers published by Harvard Observatory. Their report on the findings of Mariner 2, a summary from the book Mariner, Mission to Venus (1963), by the staff of Jet Propulsion Laboratory, deleted references to (a) Venus's retrograde motion; (b) an interpretation of the clouds as consisting of condensed hydrocarbons held in oily suspension; (c) absence of water and the possibility of small lakes of molten metal; and (d) the paltriness of sunlight, if any, finding its way down through the fifteen-mile-thick cloud blanket (effectively demolishing the notion of a "runaway greenhouse effect" that had been cobbled together in an attempt to explain the temperature). It could, of course, have been coincidence that these were precisely the points that lent the most support to Velikovsky's contentions. As Larrabee had commented in his 1963 Harpers piece, science itself continued to unfold at its own pace regardless of what some scientists tried to make of it.

  Theoretical studies showed that the tidal pumping effect of a large, plastic, plasma object orbiting in a strong gravitational field would convert orbital to thermal energy and was consistent with the rapid circularization of Venus's orbit. 113 (Einstein was of the opinion that Velikovskian orbits could arise through purely gravitational influence, although it would require some fortuitous coincidences.) It had also been shown that a combination of electromagnetic and gravitational forces on the scale envisioned for a Venus encounter was quite capable of producing an arre
st of apparent celestial motions as seen from Earth without violent deceleration by tilting the Earth's axis and producing a temporary transfer of momentum from axial spin to a precessional wobble. 114

  From Jupiter: In April 1964, radio astronomers measured a sudden change in the rotation rate, speculated as caused by interaction of its intense electromagnetic field with fields permeating the Solar System.

  From the Moon: The Explorer 18 satellite measured a lunar magnetosphere extending at least 68,000 miles. Unexpected volcanic and seismic activity was detected on the Moon—supposedly a tectonically dead body for billions of years. Dome structures were identified all over the surface that seemed to be bubbles of once-molten magma that had failed to burst—raising the question of how many other crater formations might be the marks of bubbles that had. The first tests of lunar rock brought back by the Apollo astronauts yielded unexpected amounts of neon and argon. The solar wind was excluded as a source, yet the elements had to have come from the outside, since the concentration was found to be proportional to the area of the soil grains, not the volume. Hydrocarbons were also found. The Apollo 11 crew observed peculiar glazed regions where the surface appeared to have been molten too recently for erosion of the reflective surface by meteorite and dust infall. Experiments performed by the Apollo 15 team measured a temperature gradient in the surface layers indicating heat flow from the interior, which surprised scientists.

  From Mars: In 1965 Mariner 4 had shocked scientists by finding Mars to be more Moon-like than Earth-like. By the early seventies, pictures from Mariner 9 were showing large surface tracts of lava flows crossed by faults and fissures, as well as apparently recent water channels and runoff patterns covering huge areas. The motion of Mars exhibited peculiarities that could be explained by its path being disturbed at some time. From studies of the distribution of mass and angular momentum across the Solar System, it appeared that Mars had lost much of its spin momentum, rotating in slightly over twenty-four hours against the eight hours that calculation said it should exhibit, but had gained far more in orbital momentum.

  And from the Earth itself: A paper in Nature in 1971 115 suggested interaction between Earth and an external body as the cause of magnetic pole reversals and claimed that tektites—a type of small, glass stone—were deposited on Earth at the time of the last reversal. This had previously been believed to have occurred 700,000 years ago, but later studies of ancient hearthstones and pottery brought it down first to 12,500 years ago, and then to the eighth century b.c.

  Velikovsky had been trying for over a decade to have dating tests performed to check his theories of Egyptian chronology but met evasion and obstruction. Eventually, the radiocarbon laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania determined dates for samples of wood from the tomb of Tutenkhamen as being 200 to 300 years younger than the fourteenth century b.c. that accepted chronology assigns. Velikovsky had placed Tutenkhamen in the ninth century. The reported dating fell midway between the two, but it doesn't present a problem for Velikovsky's revised chronology because the objects that the samples were taken from could have been fashioned from wood that was older. On the other hand, they could hardly have been made from trees that grew centuries later, which means that the conventional system can only admit a discrepancy.

  There are other reasons why wood can yield incorrectly high radiocarbon dates. Shorter-lived items should be more reliable. In a 1964 letter to Dr. Elizabeth Ralph at the University of Pennsylvania, Velikovsky had stated that he expected short-lived items from Tutenkhamen's tomb would give figures around 840 b.c. The British Museum finally reported tests on reed and palm nut kernels as giving 846 b.c. and 899 b.c. respectively (designated by the Museum as BM 642A and BM 642B). Despite an assurance that these results would be published "shortly," they weren't. But they were discussed in the May 1972 issue of the journal Pensée. A Dr. Van Oosterhout of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at the University of Delft, the Netherlands, wrote to Pensée in 1973, saying that he could find no details in the published radiocarbon data from the British Museum and asking for additional information. After follow-up and questioning, an official of the British Museum admitted that results deviating substantially from the expected values were often discarded without being published. Another letter from the Museum to Van Oosterhout denied that tests on materials from the tomb had ever been performed at all. 116

  Slaying the Monster: The AAAS

  Velikovsky Symposium, 1974

  Through all of this, two traits stand out in the treatment of Velikovsky by his detractors. One is repeated admissions, frequently boasts, by his most vehement critics that they hadn't read the material they castigated—as if the touch of it might be somehow unclean and defiling. They just "knew" that he couldn't be right, and that was sufficient. The other was that after solemnly reciting commitment to such scholarly principles as scientific objectivity, fairness, and civility of discourse, they would then go on to immediately violate every one of them. Organized science had tried every tactic of distortion, evasion, misrepresentation, intimidation, vilification, and suppression of evidence to slay the monster that threatened the entire foundation of the collective uniformitarian worldview and mind-set. But after twenty years, interest in Velikovsky's theories was not only getting stronger with the apparent vindication from all quarters that was getting past the censorship and receiving coverage, but Velikovsky was no longer virtually alone. Scientists from many disciplines were beginning to organize in his defense, bringing the message to a new generation of readers and students. The topic became included in university courses, and Velikovsky symposia and invitations for Velikovsky to speak on university campuses multiplied. The list of venues from 1970 to 1974 included Harvard; SUNY-Buffalo, Notre Dame, and North Carolina Universities, as well as McMasters and Lethbridge in Canada; NASA Ames Research Center; Lewis and Clark College, Portland; the IBM Research Center; and a conference in Switzerland devoted to his work. In 1971 the editors of Pensée decided to publish a special issue on the purely scientific aspects of Velikovsky's ideas, but the amount of material available was by then so vast that it became a ten-issue series—later compiled into book form as Velikovsky Reconsidered (1976)—which attracted widespread attention.

  It couldn't be allowed to go on. The occasion for exorcizing Velikovsy and his heresies from the land and reaffirming the true faith was selected to be the 1974 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), which that year was scheduled to be held in San Francisco. 117

  A Glimpse of the Ground Rules

  In the summer of 1972, a past president of the AAAS, astronomer and atmospheric scientist Walter Orr Roberts, had written to Stephen L. Talbott, the editor of Pensée, suggesting that a symposium be held on Velikovsky's work. It seems that Roberts's motives were fair and aimed at an honest reappraisal. The following year an announcement appeared in Science, inviting suggestions for the 1974 AAAS meeting agenda. Dr. C. J. Ransom, a plasma physicist, AAAS member, and Velikovsky supporter, proposed the topic of "Venus—A Youthful Planet," offering himself as conference organizer and proposing several more names as speakers. This was rejected without explanation, but less than a month later a similar proposal was accepted from the AAAS Astronomy Committee, the salient difference being that it was to be organized by noted critics of Velikovsky: Ivan King, astronomer at U.C. Berkeley; Donald Goldsmith, assistant professor of astronomy at the State University of New York, Stony Brook; and Professor Owen Gingerich, historian of science at Harvard. Because of time limitations, it was decided that the symposium should concentrate on the nature and motions of the planets, with particular regard to Venus and Jupiter.

  It soon became clear that the intention was not to stage an impartial debate but a court of inquisition, where the verdict already had been determined. The aim was not to give Velikovsky a hearing but to discredit him in the eyes of the press and the public, and banish his ideas from the forum of acceptable scientific discourse. In this it was resoundi
ngly successful and for the most part remains so to the present time.

  The agreement had been that there would be six panelists, three pro- and three anti-Velikovsky, and that Velikovsky would be allotted excess time since he would be presenting his own paper as well as answering his opponents. The promises were promptly broken. The two others that Velikovsky nominated to make up his side were Ransom, cited above, and Professor Lynn E. Rose, a specialist in the history, philosophy, and method of science, who had also taught ancient history and classical languages. These would have made up a formidable team indeed, fully conversant with Velikovsky's theories and between them amply informed to speak on all of the important issues. That was probably why the rules were hastily changed to exclude them. Rose was disqualified on the grounds that he was not from the "hard sciences"—although nothing about such had been said up to this point. Ransom obviously fitted this stipulation, but it suddenly became necessary to be an "academician," whereas he was at the time employed in corporate research. Velikovsky was unwilling to go away and come back with further names when the ones he'd said he wanted were turned down, which later resulted in his being blamed for the blatant inequality that he was to face.

  However, the AAAS committee dropped its criteria when it came to selecting their own speakers: Norman Storer, a professor of the hard science of sociology at Baruch College, part of the City University of New York; Peter Huber, professor of mathematical statistics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, whose qualification was what he described as his "hobby" of cuneiform writing; J. Derral Mullholland, professor of astronomy at the University of Texas, Austin; and, doubtless to secure the popular vote, the scientific celebrity figure Carl Sagan, from the laboratory for planetary studies at Cornell University. A further speaker, not listed on either side of the panel since he gave his position as neutral, was Dr. Irving Michelson, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology.