The True Face of Scientific Dissent

We hear a lot about how scientists are supposedly squelching dissent on issues such as evolution and climate change. This is nonsense, but it might be helpful to have a case study of how accespting science is to dissenting views, as long as they are presented in the form of scientific arguments - novel explanations that are supported by data and analysis.

The March 2010 issue of Reviews of Geophysics just arrived in my mailbox. In this issue is a paper by Kutcherov and Krayushkin on "Deep-Seated Abiogenic Origin of Petroleum: From Geologic Assessment to Physical Theory." Most petroleum geologists, reject this idea and instead accept the biogenic theory (petroleum is derived from the thermal breakdown of fatty material in the remains of dead single-celled organisms in oxygen-poor sediments.) Not only that, but the abiogenic hypothesis posits that petroleum is super-abundant and that we could find it anywhere. If this were true it could case a global crash in petroleum prices, which depend on a belief in scarcity. There is a powerful incentive to suppress this hypothesis in favor of the current dogma, especially by Western petroleum geologists, most of whom work for petroleum companies. So how did this article get published?

It's very simple, they wrote it and submitted it, but most importantly, they generated evidence and the editors could not find any substantive problems with their data. These authors create a case, documenting the production of hydrocarbons from the reduction of carbonates at mantle temperatures and pressures. These experiments were not easy to do, but they document a methodology that is reasonable and they provide results that match natural petroleum profiles in at least a few cases.

This paper may well be wrong. In fact, it still seems very unlikely that most of the petroleum we extract came from anything other than dead organisms. However, the editors of the journal not only published the paper, they celebrated it, by putting two of the authors' illustrations on the front cover of this issue. That's because, whether they are ultimately right or not, the authors have produced an important new body of data that should cause everyone to re-examine the existing data and their ideas on the subject.

The truth of the matter is that novel scientific ideas, no matter how far-fetched or anti-orthodox they are, usually get more press than the accepted idea, not less, provided that they are scientific ideas, based in data and supported by analysis. The next time someone tells you that a scientific alternative is being suppressed by scientists, ask to see their data and their analysis. It is very likely that the alternative is not so scientific, after all. Otherwise, it would probably be on the front cover of some journal somewhere.