Chapter 15 DS summary

William Crookes was elected to the Royal Society although he later almost got kicked out after releasing a paper that endorsed the pathological science of spiritualism. Pathological science pick out whatever "marginal and unlikely phenomenon" that appeals to them and amass scientific evidence for it, and once this has been done, the masses just have ammunition. The megalodon is a perfect example. Science discovered the shark teeth and discovered a great many things about it, although when people began to cite irrelevant evidence pointing towards the fact that it is still around it began to drift towards a pathological science. Fleischmann and Pons also provide an example of people wanting a result to be true that they ignore all the evidence to the contrary. This pair, after passing a current through a palladium electrode in a chamber of heavy water declared completely incorrectly that they had discovered cold fusion. When the rest of the scientific community essentially essentially came crashing together to prove them wrong, they completely lost their credibility and may have become known as some of the world's biggest frauds. In rare cases though, what seems like a pathological science at the start because it is so unbelievable, actually turns out to be legitimate. Rontgen discovered X-rays and valiantly spent weeks trying to prove himself wrong before he showed anyone.