From the October 2001 Scientific American Magazine | 0 comments

I Was Wrong ( Preview )

Those three words often separate the scientific pros from the posers

By Michael Shermer

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October
2001 Issue
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Antigravity The Farm Report
In Brief IN BRIEF
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My friend James Randi speculates--with only partial facetiousness--that when one receives a Ph.D., a chemical secreted from the diploma parchment enters the brain and prevents the recipient from ever again saying "I don't know" and "I was wrong." As one counterexample I hereby confess that in my column on Chinese science in the July issue I was wrong in my conversion of Chinese yuan as 80 to the dollar (it is eight).

More serious was a statement I made in the June issue about a Fox television program claiming that the moon landing was faked. I said that the lunar lander rocket showed no exhaust because there is no oxygen-rich atmosphere on the moon. I was partially wrong. The lack of an atmosphere plays a minor role; the main reason is that the lander's engine used hypergolic propellants that burn very cleanly. In both instances, readers were kind enough to provide constructive criticism.

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