Alan Alda Explores The World Of Pseudoscience Wednesday
If you are convinced that aliens crashed a space ship near Roswell, N.M., despite Air Force explanations of what happened and the evidence to the contrary, you won't have any interest in watching "Scientific American Frontiers" on KCTS-TV at 8 p.m. Wednesday.
In a key segment of the episode titled "Beyond Science," a re-creation of the controversial alien autopsy that has been shown many times on television is exposed as a hoax by Alda and Hollywood special-effects technician Steve Johnson.
Don't plan on hiring a dowser to determine where you should put your well on that new parcel of land in the country you just bought. Alda and a group of scientists confuse a dowser with simple scientific techniques. The poor guy won't be able to find his hat on the table in front of him after what he's gone through.
Thus, as the program progresses, graphology, therapeutic touch and palmistry all get the scientific treatment, and are found wanting.
"I wanted to be careful as we did the show that we didn't attack people's belief systems," says Alda. "But if they are going to make life-and-death decisions, and they want to make sure they aren't flirting with danger, it might be a good idea to understand the way science works, and put the odds in your favor."
It is this point that Alda sees as critical. Various systems of thought have developed traditions and methods which are supposed to help determine the nature of reality. Science is different from
astrology, graphology, dowsing, even some forms of alternative medicine, because the scientific method is either simplified or ignored as these systems pursue their therapeutic or predictive ends.
"The show does two things," Alda says. "One is to talk about the specific areas we examine. But the other thing the show does is to - and this is the only time we have ever done this on the program - talk about what makes science different from other ways of looking at the world. And some of the things that make science different are you have to be able to reproduce the results, you have to expose yourself to criticism.