Two Examples of Leaping to Conclusions without the Facts

Let me give you two examples of leaping to conclusions without the full facts. Back in the 1890’s, a certain California newspaper was apprehensive about the harmful effects the railroads would have on the environment. If the trains crossed the Mojave to get to the Pacific, this newspaper editorialized, “the huge iron rails will reverse the Earth’s magnetic field with catastrophic effects.” Now that’s real science! One hundred forty years ago, the Royal Society in England warned against the railroads, claiming that at speeds over 30 mph, the air supply to the passenger compartment would be cut off and people would die of asphyxiation. And the college of physicians in Munich, for its part, warned that at 30 mph, travelers would suffer headaches, vertigo, and possibly lose their sight because of a blurring effect. Over 30 mph, great catastrophes were predicted, because everyone knew that even a twig would shatter the wheels. In 1936, to come closer to the present, a War Department colonel visited Robert Goddard, the father of American rocketry, who had by then clearly demonstrated the practicality of the rocket. The colonel, doubtless fresh from the calvary in George Custer’s historic triumph at Little Big Horn, dismissed Goddard’s work as “sheer poppycock of no practical use in modern warfare.” After World War 11, Wernher von Braun said that it was Goddard’s work that led the Germans directly to both the V-1 and V-2 rockets. It was Goddard, by the way, who left us with this legacy: “It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dream of yesterday is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow.” To put it another way, as Santayana did, “Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat its mistakes.”

Jules Bergman, Accomplishments of Science by the Year 2000 (1985)

• error
• facts
• prescience