Failing journalism
2007-07-31 08:45
George Claassen
If anyone had any doubt about the atrocious understanding the media have of science, last Sunday evening's broadcast of Carte Blanche should have removed that.
Ruda Landman's superficial and pseudoscientific, even laughable treatment, of the disappearance of the young girls of Pretoria and the East Rand in the eighties and early nineties and the suicide of Gert van Rooyen and Joey Haarhoff after the police cornered them on suspicion of the disappearances, must be the best example ever of how little very serious and senior journalists such as Landman understand science.
In the programme Landman lends her ears to an "inventor" Danie Krugel whose machine using principles of "quantum physics", leads the television team to an open piece of land near Van Rooyen's Capital Park home where it is suggested that the remains of the girls would be found.
Landman and producer George Mazarakis must please explain to the viewers of Carte Blanche where and how Krugel's machine was tested by independent scientists. Has anyone been allowed to independently, through double blind testing, experimentation and observation under controlled scientific circumstances, to verify the claims Krugel makes?
The phrase quantum physics is the most misused phrase by unscientific people to obscure their lack of knowledge about science and to mislead gullible scientifically illiterate people. Deepak Chopra, the so-called holistic writer, is the leading user of this phrase to explain virtually anything you do not understand.
Astonishing
But what really boggles the mind is that Landman had left her baloney detector totally at home when she presented this programme. She not only put her trust in Krugel's outrageous "quantum physics", but then totally destroys any credence of reliability by asking the psychic Marietta Theunissen to visit the scene where Landman and Krugel have been trying to prove beyond doubt that the remains of the girls would be found.
The abrakadabra Theunissen speaks at the scene is so funny one would have thought Landman and Mazarakis have ventured into a new field of comedy writing. That any serious journalist could make her viewers believe that Theunissen has any credibility, is astonishing.
Scientists have long ago exposed the psychics such as John Edward in the USA. My invitation to kykNET to allow Sceptic South Africa and the scientific community through James Randi's foundation to test Theunissen's claims that she could speak to the dead, has not been taken up.
Despite the fact that Randi has promised $1m to any pseudoscientific claimant if their claims could pass the independent double blind testing, experimentation and observation under controlled scientific circumstances.
We at Sceptic South Africa now challenge Krugel and Theunissen again, in the presence of the Carte Blanche and Die Ander Kant teams and Landman and Mazarakis, to allow independent scientists to undergo the Randi-tests.
Do some reading
Carte Blanche has sunk to a new low with this pseudoscientific baloney - and that under the name of serious investigative journalism.
Before Landman and Mazarakis venture into this kind of pseudoscientific journalism again, they should both read the physicist Robert Park's words in his brilliant analysis of the way pseudoscientists make a fool of reputable journalists, and specifically these words from his book Voodoo Science: The Road From Foolishness to Fraud (Oxford University Press):
"That's the aim of science: to make the universe less strange, but only in the sense that it becomes more predictable. And in that sense, the universe is not nearly as strange as it used to be. The message the public should take away is that it is not the psychics and fortune-tellers who can see into the future, it is the scientists."
The evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins made an observation about this phenomenon in society where scientifically illiterate journalists regularly lead the gullible astray. In the 1998 Science and sensibility, Queen Elizabeth Lecture Hall Series: Sounding the century he said the following:
"Astrology books outsell astronomy. Television beats a path to the door of second rate conjurors masquerading as psychics and clairvoyants. Cult leaders mine the millennium and find rich seams of gullibility: Heaven's Gate, Waco, poison gas in the Tokyo underground. The biggest difference from the last millennium is that folk Christianity has been joined by folk science-fiction."
Extraordinary claims
Next time Landman, Mazarakis, and Theo Erasmus of kykNet consider making such farcical programmes, please remember the words of the late eminent scientist Carl Sagan who wrote in The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark that "extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence":
"But superstition and pseudoscience keep getting in the way, distracting us, providing easy answers, dodging sceptical scrutiny, casually pressing our awe buttons and cheapening the experience, making us routine and comfortable practitioners as well as victims of credulity."
Would Landman have taken notice of this before thousands of rands were spent on carting people around the country, asking real scientists to test the bones found at the site (without any success), and lending her ears to shysters such as Krugel and Theunissen?
Journalism in this developing country needs better quality than this knee-bending before superficiality and pseudoscientific thinking.
George Claassen is director of Sceptic South Africa (SSA) and former science editor of Die Burger.
www.scepticsa.com
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