The Right to be Unorthodox
Contents Updated: Thursday, August 05, 1999
A Footprint Expert
Blindness struck a footprint expert only to be followed by omniscience. According to Don Johanson, discoverer of Lucy, the most complete hominid skeleton yet found, the astonishing pre-human footprints at Laetoli were almost ignored. American footprint specialist, Louise Robbins pronounced that the first print discovered was merely that of a horse.
Paul Abell (who had found the print under the turf), Tim White and Peter Jones felt sure the print was hominid and wanted to continue excavating, hoping to find prints that were more easily identifiable. Because they were not specialists in footprints, Mary Leakey, for many years one of Britain's topmost paleoanthropologists, who was directing the excavation, felt obliged to respect the opinion of her footprint professional. She ordered that the scarce resources of the team should be used elsewhere. But, faced with the protests of the trio, she then agreed to compromise by putting one of the untrained native workers on to the job. Only after the trainee successfully revealed several more human looking footprints did Mary Leakey relent and agree to put Tim White in charge of excavating the tracks.
They proved to extend for almost 30 yards and induced a miracle—Louise Robbins' skepticism suddenly turned to revelation. She not only conceded that the prints were hominid but found her expertise returning to such an extent that he knew which prints were male and which were female, that the female prints were those of a pregnant ape and that the apes came from a line of bipedal walkers that stretched back for a million years. Johanson does not record whether she revealed the sex of the pregnant lady's baby!
Don Johanson also illustrates the extent to which offended experts aim to go to revenge themselves. Johanson was attending a conference in New York in 1974. He had just announced his remarkable find of the knee joint of an ape over three million years old which showed that its owner was plainly bipedal and therefore seemed to be in the direct human line. At lunch, Mary Leakey told him she had overheard some anatomists saying they were positive the knee was that of a monkey. Carried away with self-assured expert malevolence they agreed to wait until he goes into print, then we'll carve him up. But Johanson's identification was sound—he was not carved up.
Neglect
The trail of fossil footprints discovered by Mary Leakey's team in 1979 has already been half destroyed by neglect. The footprints were in a six inch layer of volcanic tuff, a fragile fossil, but one which had survived millions of years. Now half has gone.
The footprints prove that these primitive humans walked upright by habit and so had begun to develop a modern brain a million years before fashioned stone tools were found. The creature that made them was small, less than five feet (140cm) tall and weighing less than 6 stones (40kg).
The excavators made casts of the best footprints 
then covered them with layers of sand and polythene topped off with boulders to keep elephants from trampling over them. The protection was meant to be temporary pending preservation plans by the Tanzanian authorities. No action was taken for over a decade. Meanwhile the site had grown a lush cover of vegetation including young trees with trunks two inches across! The polythene had failed to prevent them putting down of roots as thick as your thumb—it had gone! Termites must have eaten it. Roots were actually growing through some of the prints.
This was a unique site. An excuse is that a developing country like Tanzania has the problems of its 26 million people to bother about, and the west could have provided the money and expertise if it was bothered. Indeed help was offered by UNESCO. The Tanzanian Director of Antiquities, Amini Mturi rejected their plans, because he "didn't like them". The site properly preserved and presented would have been an added attraction for the tourists who want to go to Tanzania. Either way, the outcome is a disaster. However, Tanzanian preservation at Olduvai is arguably even worse. The buildings erected have been looted and campfires have been built on the excavations! The reason is that the government commandeered all the funds and gave very little back for preservation. The Getty Conservation Institute offered to send experts to protect and preserve the Laetoli site but just as the team of eight was about to depart in1992 the Tanzanian authorities had a change of mind. they accused the GCI of incompetence and that more advice was needed. Meanwhile the site continues to decay.
Egypt, a wealthier country, is faced with a much larger problem. It has vast numbers of sites and artefacts to preserve and is having negligible help from the west. No wonder that its treasures are decaying before our eyes. But the GCI has also offered help and has cleaned and stabilised the painting of Nefertari, the wife of Rameses II, in her tomb.
Harold Hillman and the Right to Unorthodoxy
It can be even worse. Dr Harold Hillman, a medical doctor and qualified research worker with degrees in neurobiology and physiology joined an English university as a lecturer and soon became its director of Applied Physiology. His credentials seemed admirable and for ten years he was highly respected in his field—until 1980. In that year Hillman criticized much of the basis of biochemical research. He claimed techniques for preparing tissues for the electron microscope altered the structures of the tissue being examined.
The electron microscope has, on the face of it, been a great boon to biologists because it gives beautiful pictures under huge magnification with a depth of field that is veritably three dimensional. It apparently shows immense details of the very basic processes of life. But Hillman questioned the validity of what was seen when the preparation of the sample was so harsh that the original structures were lost or modified and spurious structures replaced them.
Even to a layman the question seems justified when it is considered that the scientists are taking samples of living cells which are largely water, drying them out, coating them with molecules of gold and finally belting them with beams of electrons to create the picture.
The electron microscope depends on electrons mimicking light in an optical microscope: they have to travel in straight lines and so have to be in a vacuum otherwise molecules of air knock them in all directions. In a vacuum any water present in the sample would evaporate and likewise scatter the electrons. The gold coating makes sure that the electrons do get deflected efficiently where they should be—from the surface of the sample—to ensure a clear photograph.
If the structures seen in an electron microscope are often artifacts of the techniques of preparation of the samples, as Hillman claims to have demonstrated, then a lot of experts are spending a lot of money concocting theories that depend only on what has been created by accident in the laboratory.
Hillman was removed from teaching—even of topics unconnected with his criticisms. He was told that his work was unorthodox and of little general merit, that there were insufficient funds to support it and that he should retire. Hillman protested and found an independent source of funds for a year. But the authorities moved the goalposts—he had to find funding for three to five years.
Hillman's views might be thought damaging by those whose electron microscope is a nice little earner of reputations and whose interests are vested in a nice set of comfortable theories generated thereby, but that is not the point. The UK Sloman report, which was published in response to a different case of academic disagreement, said quite forcefully, academic staff must not be inhibited by any tradition of accepted views. They have the right to be unorthodox.
Foolish or Helpful Analogies
Some of the greatest advances in science have come about because some clever person spotted an analogy between a subject that was readily understood, and another still mysterious subject, writes Richard Dawkins. Yet he warns that one of the hallmarks of futile crankiness is overenthusiastic analogizing. The trick is to strike a balance. The successful scientist and the raving crank are separated by the quality of their inspirations, which amounts to an ability to reject foolish analogies and to pursue helpful ones.
It sounds reasonable. But is it really wise to inhibit originality even if cranky? Who knows how many important ideas do not see the light of day because their originator feels wrongly they are a bit too cranky, or is timid about the response of his peers. What is the criterion of the quality of an inspiration other than the influence it ultimately has? Perhaps scientific journals should have a section entitled Wildly Speculative Letters in which overenthusiastic analogizing is encouraged.
Dawkins does not like what he regards as ill-founded attacks by creationists and others critics of evolutionary theory. Yet out of these attacks has come Dawkins own brilliant book, The Blind Watchmaker, defending the theory. Perhaps he will concede that good can come even of cranky ideas even if indirectly.
Many will regard the proposals put in this book as cranky. That is why I have devoted space to seeking to persuade the reader that: (1) experts are fallible, yet; (2) they are so cocksure they consider it a philanthropic duty to suppress those who contradict them; (3) unorthodox thinkers have a right to be unorthodox; (4) good can come of crankiness.
If you are not so persuaded then you can read on for amusement or put the book down, as you wish. Otherwise you can read on with the confidence that some unorthodox, interesting and perhaps frightening views will be unveiled.