Re: Michael Crichton dies

[Michiel Pillet <blackalpha195@gmail.com>]

On Fri, Nov 7, 2008 at 4:15 AM, David Marjanovic
<david.marjanovic@gmx.at> wrote:

> Oh no. The worst is State of Fear, where he made clear he seriously believed 
> that almost all climatologists worldwide, thousands of people, were part of a 
> conspiracy to keep the whole world population in a, well, state of fear! And 
> there are people out there who _eat this up_!

He does state at the end of the book, as he does in almost every book,
that his work is supposed to be fiction. In State of Fear he views
climate change as being a topic of popular science, being
misrepresented by scientists for economical and political reasons.
Crichton even includes an extensive (though indeed selective)
bibliography at the end of his book.

> That does, unfortunately, not mean that he had any idea about the scientific 
> method, let alone any knowledge about matters outside of medicine. Indeed, 
> his knowledge of dinosaurs had large holes, his knowledge of climatology was 
> more like a net, his knowledge of chaos theory seems to have consisted almost 
> only of misunderstandings -- and yet he wrote about all those topics as if he 
> had understood them. That's simply not defensible from a scientific point of 
> view.

Then how does one gain knowledge of the scientific method? Certainly
not through only pure research or publishing. Medicine, too, is about
applying the scientific method.

> Now _this_ is an unscientific attitude. Why should we stop criticizing 
> someone's ideas just because that someone happens to have recently died? Is 
> there any defensible reason for that? Isn't it an ad hominem argument, sort 
> of?

Indeed, that's an unscientific attitude, it's more of a moral thing.

> It's not as if we suddenly started criticizing _now_ and hadn't said anything 
> during Crichton's lifetime.

Definitely true. That said, I agree that Spielberg had more of an
influence than Crichton on the field on paleontology. If Crichton
would ever have pretended to be a climatologist or a paleontologist or
a chaotician, he would just make a fool out of himself. But he didn't,
and that's my point. He was a good writer that liked to do a lot of
research for his books (about 2 or 3 years of research for State of
Fear), and promoted being critical towards science.

I am very sorry however if I made the impression of accusing you or
someone else.