Crichton – New Work and Pseudo Science

This is all very convenient

Two new works from Jurassic Park author Michael Crichton, who died last year, have been discovered on the writer’s computer and are to be released over the next year-and-a-half, his publisher HarperCollins has said.

Well, not quite two one works more like one, and I suspect, a very small percentage of a second. H & C are looking for a co-writer to complete the project. Anyway that is not the main subject of this post.

Crichton was that most dangerous type of individual, a contrarian with good communication skills and an ego that required feeding. Crichton satisfied these traits by doing the opposite of that which good science demands, he found a topic , then found the least popular opinion among the people who had taken the time and trouble to actually study a subject, then he built a case against them. Good science would assume an open mind- Crichton came at every subject with anything but an open mind.

He operated more as a bar room lawyer than as an academic but the veneer of intelligence and his writing fame meant that he was taken much more seriously than he ever should have been.

An example, a quick analysis of the data pertaining to climate change would show that increase in CO2 is directly related to the Earths temperature. CO2 started a steep rise at the beginning of the industrial revolution which was obviously entirely the product of man. The lines on a graph for CO2 content and Earth temperature are almost identical. The measurements of CO2 using ice cores is great science.

But holding the good science point of view held no personal gain for Crichton whereas playing the contrarian held plenty. He stated that consensus science was dangerous I would argue that ill informed, cherry picked, self serving pseudo science is a whole lot more dangerous.

Any back to Crichton’s computer, apparently there are many files to be gone through. It would be good if one of them was a simple plain text file with the I lied because it sold books and got me speaking engagements somewhere in it.