Here's that letter from the August 14 Ann Arbor News I promised
to enter when I had time.  It contains a number of errors in
fact and misconceptions, as well as a general anti-science
undercurrent.  Typos are probably mine.

        In times of knighthood, each returning knight told great
        stories of his adventures to their peers - peer review,
        so to speak.  they slew dragons, saved maidens and did
        courageous battle against many fantastical mystical foes.

        Of course, these stories were untrue.  Still, through the
        years, we still hear the stories of many of these heroes
        and their exploits.  Fantasy is hard to destroy, if not
        impossible.

        In modern times, nothing has changed except that heroic
        knights have been replaced by self-serving "scientists".
        The fantastical stories of dragons and wizards and other
        wondrous events have been replaced by whole-cloth tales
        of "scientific" breakthroughs and discoveries.

        The latest tale, of course, is the Martian rock.  Even
        the trip to Earth from Mars is beyond belief.  It took,
        we are told, 16 million years.  Why so long?  A rock
        falling through space to the sun would only take 44 years
        from the orbit of Pluto (the former planet, now just an
        asteroid according to the "scientists"), based on uniform
        acceleration of gravity.  And yet the trip from Mars to
        Earth, with an initial escape velocity boost, took 16
        million years, and it landed 13,000 years ago in an area
        that many geologists just happen to want substantial
        funding to study.  And also coincidental to the fact that
        one of these "scientists" happens to be a Mars
        investigation buff.

        Forget the statistical absurdity of traversing the
        asteroid belt and numerous other bits of space debris on
        its voyage without a single impact.  Think only of this
        potato-sized rock falling into the proper at the
        proper time - a time when they are about to ask for
        mega-funding for Mars probes and mega-funding for NASA.

        If the Martian rock story is true, it can be said that we
        have finally proved that intelligent life once existed in
        our solar system.  Lacking facts, however, the quest goes
        on - because the people of Earth demonstrate each day
        that intelligent life certainly doesn't exist here, at
        least in the "scientific" community.

                                        Donald S. Campbell
                                        Pinckney

9 responses total.

What I would like everyone to do is to find as many examples of
factual errors and misconceptions as you can, and then post a
response to the author.  (You can mail it to him also, if you
like, but I doubt his mind is open enough to benefit.)

* Some knights no doubt did save maidens.

* A rock could take anywhere less than a day to over a billion years
  to get from Mars to Earth.  It depends on how fast it's traveling,
  and what orbit it takes.

* 44 years for a rock to go from Mars to the Sun, "based on uniform
  accelleration of gravity," is meaningless.  It depends on where the
  rock started from, and its direction and velocity relative to other
  planetary bodies, among other factors. We've got satellites in orbit
  around earth, some of which probably will hit the Sun some day, but
  they're in pretty solid holding pattern at the moment.

* Nobody has claimed the rock made it here "without a single impact."
  It may have started out the size of Rhode Island, and the potato-
  sized chunk is just one of many parts resulting from some impact.

Ugh, there are too many things to go on.  I would not care to
personally correspond with this person.  I'm reminded of something I
read by a relatively well known mathematician.  He'd receive lots of
unsolicited letters from "amateur mathematicians" explaining how
they'd proven Fermat's last theorem, but the establishment wouldn't
listen to them.  At first, he'd go through their "proofs," and point
out where they erred.  But this was never enough: these people were
fanatical, but not sophisticated enough to even discuss the matter
intelligently.  They would write back as to why he was wrong, or how
he was in on the conspiracy.  It was a losing proposition to try
to correspond with these people.

The author of this letter seems in that category: a fanatic beyond
hope of reasoning, without sufficient background to even discuss
the issue rationally.

That's a very good treatment of some of the issues, but there's a
few really glaring errors still to go.  Anyone?

Well, notwithstanding the fact that we have no idea how many impacts it might
have encountered traversing the asteroid belt, the most likely number would
be zero, because the asteroid belt is a lot more like a vacuum than most
people imagine.

However, more importantly, the asteroid belt is sort of outside the orbit of
Mars, and therefore it  would not have had to traverse it.

I'm with rob (ajax) -- this is awfully silly. Ugh.

Bingo.  Campbell had the asteroid belt in the wrong place and
vastly over-estimated the impact probability.

It may be awfully silly, but it's something that is at least
presented as public opinion.  Countering it with correct information
is worthwhile, maybe even essential.

The statement that if the rock is from Mars "it can be said that we have
finally proved that intelligent life once existed in our solar system" is
at best a non-sequitar, if it is meant to mean intelligent life
*elsewhere* in the solar system. 

Moving from errors in orbital mechanics to errors in logic, also
dead on.

This response has been erased.

Actually, Pluto has an atmosphere and a moon (Charon).  It is in
no danger of being re-classified as an asteroid any time soon, 
though there were some people proposing to do that.  Of course,
Campbelll shows no sign of knowing that.

The original reason for going to Antarctica was for national security
and prestige, if I'm not mistaken.  For Campbell to complain now
that the return is scientific is.... odd. ;-)

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