Tuesday, July 04, 2006
Shockley unmourned...
The New Statesmen loathes everything about him. Can't blame them, however that's not the whole story...
I saw Shockley in person arguing for his position at Harvard, and he was repellent at first glance, just striding onto the stage. My first impression was of a demented marine officer who just liked to bully. But his arguments and evidence, stripped of the intimidating body english, were pedestrian and correct. He wildly exaggerated the broad implications of his results, and the other side even more wildly exaggerated the implications of what they had found. Both sides simply spoke past each other, imagining that they were contradicting one another. What a pity that political correctness had so taken hold by then that almost no competent researcher then dared to do a better job, and it was left to Shockley, who was far more competent at the job than this article suggests, but not exactly a good mascot.
The real story is the cowardice of his contemporaries, which helped obscure (prevent the discovery of) fetal alcohol syndrome for many, many years, allowing the political correctness of the day to do untold damage.
I also saw Vernon at work, at the University of Calgary, talking about his studies, revealing what was really an epidemic of FAS amongst native populations in Alberta. Vernon, I'm sorry to say, did strike me as a racist, which was a tag I couldn't pin on Shockley's comments during his talk. But his results were not imaginary – just sorrowfully ignored as “unacceptable”. The consensus of those I went with was that Vernon shouldn't have been allowed to publish or to perform the studies at all – FAS was undreamt of then, and would remain "undicovered" for long years afterward. Venron's prejudice kept him from making the discovery, his audiences prejudices kept them from taking in the facts they were presented with at all. Many suffered terribly as a result.
Someday, maybe scientists will start to consider more than one opinion acceptable at a time before the evidence is in. Maybe – but don't bet your tenure on it.
I saw Shockley in person arguing for his position at Harvard, and he was repellent at first glance, just striding onto the stage. My first impression was of a demented marine officer who just liked to bully. But his arguments and evidence, stripped of the intimidating body english, were pedestrian and correct. He wildly exaggerated the broad implications of his results, and the other side even more wildly exaggerated the implications of what they had found. Both sides simply spoke past each other, imagining that they were contradicting one another. What a pity that political correctness had so taken hold by then that almost no competent researcher then dared to do a better job, and it was left to Shockley, who was far more competent at the job than this article suggests, but not exactly a good mascot.
The real story is the cowardice of his contemporaries, which helped obscure (prevent the discovery of) fetal alcohol syndrome for many, many years, allowing the political correctness of the day to do untold damage.
I also saw Vernon at work, at the University of Calgary, talking about his studies, revealing what was really an epidemic of FAS amongst native populations in Alberta. Vernon, I'm sorry to say, did strike me as a racist, which was a tag I couldn't pin on Shockley's comments during his talk. But his results were not imaginary – just sorrowfully ignored as “unacceptable”. The consensus of those I went with was that Vernon shouldn't have been allowed to publish or to perform the studies at all – FAS was undreamt of then, and would remain "undicovered" for long years afterward. Venron's prejudice kept him from making the discovery, his audiences prejudices kept them from taking in the facts they were presented with at all. Many suffered terribly as a result.
Someday, maybe scientists will start to consider more than one opinion acceptable at a time before the evidence is in. Maybe – but don't bet your tenure on it.
