[Wikipedia-l] Non-notability "abuse"

[Ian Tresman]

At 12:21 19/09/2007, you wrote:
>On 18/09/2007, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Yeah, unfortunately unless you know the history here (Sagan was
> > monumentally unpopular in his field, as popular as he was to the
> > public), it's easy to be confused.
>
>And Sagan was particularly annoying even by his own standards in this
>set of arguments, I vaguely recall.
>
>It's a single quote from a "mainstream" astronomer; given the
>circumstances surrounding the debate, I think we can safely assume it
>was someone calling Sagan a twerp rather than calling Velikovsky a
>respected scientist! The dangers of contextless quotation...

Yes, context is important. Jastrow noted: "Dr. Velikovsky had his day 
when he spotted a major scientific boner in Professor Sagan's 
argument" concerning the odds against the collisions in Worlds in 
Collision. The "error lay in the assumption that the collisions were 
independent of one another.... Dr. Velikovsky pointed out that the 
collisions are not independent; in fact, if two bodies orbiting the 
sun under the influence of gravity collided once, that encounter 
enhances the chance of another, a fact well known in celestial 
mechanics. Professor Sagan's calculations, in effect, ignore the law 
of gravity. Here Velikovsky was the better astronomer." Robert 
Jastrow, "Velikovsky, a Star-Crossed Theoretician of the Cosmos," The 
New York Times (December 2,1979), p. 22E.

We may speculate that Jastrow was knocking Sagan, but his quote notes 
specifically that Velikovsky was better on this point (which is not 
the same as suggestion he was a respected scientist).

Jastrow had also noted that Velikovsky was "a man of extraordinary 
talents" with "powers of scholarship and intellect", and his theory 
as "radical, exciting, and potentially fruitful", and acknowledges 
three correct predictions: "Venus is hot; Jupiter emits radio noise; 
and the moon's rocks are magnetic" (and then notes seven false predictions).

Regards,




Ian Tresman
www.plasma-universe.com