Mysterious origins

A survey of 2 006 U.S. adults last year revealed that 48 % believe the earliest humans lived at the time of the dinosaurs. This survey is often cited as evidence of Americans’ dismal understanding of science. But earlier this year, a television program from the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) told those muddled masses that they could well be right. The program, called The Mysterious Origins of Man and narrated by a very earnest Charlton Heston, presented “evidence” of human footprints astride those of dinosaurs. It further suggested that intelligent life walked the earth 2.8 billion years ago; that the North Polar ice cap grew so heavy 12 000 years ago that the earth’s crust slipped and shoved the lost city of Atlantis toward the South Pole, where it now lies buried under the ice; and that scientists have been covering all this up for decades. American television is filled with pseudoscientific drivel, from ‘specials’ about the Loch Ness Monster and the Bermuda Triangle to regular shows dealing with the paranormal. Topics like these must sell a lot of cereal and cleanser. They don’t generally create an outcry. But The Mysterious Origins of Man was different. In the first place, it started out with a legitimate, even interesting question: how do scientists deal with new information that seems to conflict with the conventional wisdom? Here was an opportunity to talk about how ideas that run counter to accepted theories sometimes prove to be the springboard to new paradigms. The art of science, of course, is differentiating the startling insight from the just plain wrong. Unfortunately, it quickly became evident that The Mysterious Origins of Man didn’t really care about that question. For an hour, viewers were guided by “a new breed of scientific investigators,” whose credentials were carefully obfuscated. They presented all sorts of evidence, supposedly suppressed by the scientific establishment, showing that modern evolutionists have it all wrong. But this was not the usual suspects pushing ‘scientific creationism’ — instead, it seemed to lead nowhere at all. Intelligent life on earth is either 55 million years old or 2.8 billion years old, depending on the argument of the moment. ‘Science is wrong’ seemed to be the binding idea.