The formula of deception

Igor Slutsky aka uncleslu

CAGLIOSTRO: The truth is that man is unhappy, heaven has turned away from him...
I'm the only one on Earth who makes him happy. He wants wealth, and I cook him gold.
He wants to know the future, and I predict fate...
LORENZ: But this is a deception...
CAGLIOSTRO: A person wants to be deceived, remember that.
Everyone deceives everyone, but they do it too primitively.
I alone turned deception into a high art, so I became famous...

Grigory Gorin, Mark Zakharov "Formula of love"

Science, as a kind of human creative activity, is akin to art. Just like in art, where there are author's directions, and there is pop, science has its own pop. Someone aptly called this kind of activity pop science. Die, you can't be more precise.

Pop science has three main features.

1. Lack of scientific apparatus and academic scientific literature.

All information about pop science is published in the media and popular books. There are no academic textbooks on extrasensory perception, homeopathy, bioenergetics, astrology and other junk science (a term actively used to refer to pseudoscience, junk – in English "junk"). Academic publishers will never publish such a thing, risking their reputation. And there is simply nothing to publish – all the literature about pop sciences has a pronounced popularization, agitation, Messianic connotation.

2. Most of the provisions of pop science contradict the fundamental laws of nature.

So no Academy in the world will accept the perpetual motion project for consideration. Due to the proven impossibility of implementing it.

Thus, the principle of multiple dilution used in homeopathy contradicts Avogadro's law, the most fundamental law of molecular chemistry. Based on this law, it is not difficult to calculate that after the 13th dilution, there will be practically no active substance molecules left in the solution, and homeopaths dilute both 100 and 200 times.

In response to such arguments, one has to hear nonsense about the alleged ability of water molecules to memorize the properties of a dissolved substance. This is anti-scientific nonsense, which, however, consumers of pop science cannot identify as fraud, due to the lack of relevant knowledge.

I think two examples are enough? They can be multiplied.

3. Claims to globality.

Any pop science claims to solve ALL the problems in its field. Stanislav Lem was ironic about this in the "Star Diaries of John the Quiet", bringing out a character who created a "general theory of everything".

The clearest example from the field of pop medicine... Medicine gets the most from charlatans. Being the most complex earthly science, medicine often plays cruel jokes with ordinary people, pretending to be a simpleton. I don't know about the rest of the world, but in Russia and in Russian-language editions of Israel, appendices to newspapers under the heading "Health" are popular, where they write such nonsense that their ears turn. Of course, all signatures like "doctor name" under such articles are pure deception, they are all written by journalists (as well as horoscopes composed on the principle "today Virgo will be disappointed with Cancer").

So, the promised example. The sad field of medicine is oncology. By the word "cancer" doctors understand about 200 different diseases, with different etiologies, different pathogenesis, clinic, treatment approach and prognosis. That is, it is impossible to create a universal way to treat all types of cancer, even theoretically. Medical scientists do not do this, investigating individual oncological problems. And the message in the scientific journal "such and such a drug in such and such trials showed an improvement in the prognosis in such and such a number of cases of such and such an oncological disease" in the media will take the form: "Sensation! A cure for cancer has been found!". That is why the charlatan Malakhov-plus from the first channel of Russian TV offers the most venerable public a solution to all health problems, and people haves.

But it also happens that a completely normal conventional scientist suddenly gets carried away with false theories. Most often it is associated with mental problems and the solution to these mysteries lies in the field of psychiatry. For example, Academician Kaznacheev, a good doctor, a major specialist in the field of diagnostic theory, suddenly became interested in physics, and pop physics. There are no torsion fields or other nonsense promoted by him in academic physics. But it was these works of his that made him known to a wide circle of consumers of tabloid science. Because in his professional activity, the one for which he was elected an academician, a person without an education will not understand.

Why, I have a higher natural science education, I am an organic chemist with a decent knowledge of biochemistry, but when I open the book "Internal Diseases", the professional subject of my doctor wife, I understand no more than 50% there. Most healers generally think that the Earth is flat, and have no idea about anatomy, but they do not doubt their ability to heal.

Another completely Kafkaesque example is Academician Fyodor Uglov, already deceased. A brilliant cardiac surgeon, he became interested in promoting a healthy lifestyle. What led him into such a jungle, from which he himself did not get out. Primitive anti-Semitism became his most important idea and idea-fix. Under this nonsense, he began to adjust all his calculations. He pulled out of his sleeve an old jack of cards – "the Jews have drunk the Russian people", and began to propagandize the harm of alcohol in microscopic doses. Declared the brainchild of treacherous Jews... kefir, which has half a percent alcohol, and with which they want to lime Russian babies. Does he, a professional qualified doctor, not know that ethyl alcohol is a participant in metabolism and is present in the body even of people who have never drunk a drop of alcohol in their lives? I knew, of course. But for the harmony of his theory, he easily abandoned scientific truths.

What is most striking is that all apologists of pop science necessarily declare themselves witnesses. Witness miraculous cures, flying saucers, aliens, prophetic dreams and tunnels beyond the grave.

All this can be considered funny, as long as it does not come to medicine. The number of healers of various kinds – from homeopaths for the advanced public to sorcerers for simpler people – is amazing. For Russia, this phenomenon is understandable – an untenable health care system could not but lead to such aberrations of mass consciousness. The All - Russian sessions of television kamlaniya with Kashpirovsky and Chumak made us remember the famous song of Vysotsky:

Expensive transfer,
On Saturday, almost crying,
The whole Kanatchikov dacha
I was rushing to the TV...

Now they have been replaced by Malakhov-plus, for whom there was not even a suitable heading in the Catalog of quack resources – they were named "just a fool".

But while myth-loving citizens have benign ailments, you can count on a placebo effect; if the disease is serious, then there is a danger of at least missing precious time...

When I spoke about the signs of pop science, I did not mention another one that can be considered a consequence - tabloid science is always accompanied by the phenomenon of faith. Mathematics does not matter whether you believe in the Pythagorean theorem or the multiplication table. But homeopathy helps only those who believe in it.

But the nonsense of remote healing, diagnosis by photography and other malignant quackery cannot be compared with harmless placebo methods. And if anyone believes in this nonsense, then it is no easier to warn such a person from potential trouble than to discourage adherents of totalitarian sects from their false prophets.

Count Cagliostro, the charming swindler from the charming film, devoted his life to building a formula of love. He wanted to make mankind happy. Alas, as usual, his followers are concerned about human happiness in the twenty-eighth place. They are more interested in cash. And the fact that at the expense of patients who spend precious time, sometimes at the price of life, to satisfy their wallet – they care little. The fraer himself is to blame for his troubles – these are the concepts. The formula of love in their picture of the world has long been replaced by the formula of deception. And their victims didn't notice it.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru 15.06.2011