If Getting It Wrong Is Wrong, I Don't Want to Be Right

Scientists often get things wrong, at least if they're doing their jobs. That's because they're investigating things they don't understand, and in so doing they have to try out different answers. Many answers may be partially right, or perhaps a given matter may have more than one completely right answer. But there are at least an equal number of answers that are flat-out wrong.

This is OK, because each wrong answer is a possibility crossed off the list and one step closer to the right answer. The wrong answer may rule out a whole area of possible answers, too, taking the search several steps ahead.

It's also possible that the experiment which found the answer wasn't properly conducted. Human beings are the ones who do experiments, even with mechanical and computerized help, so their fallibility comes into play.

The only problem, the article notes, is when scientists act just like everyone else and won't admit they're wrong or that someone made a mistake somewhere. The dimensions of a person's head tell us nothing about that person's intelligence. The Earth and the other planets of the solar system orbit the sun, not the other way round. Light doesn't propagate via luminiferous aether. And yet, all of these ideas have been at one point or another in history been taken as accurate descriptions of things in the world around us by sober and sane people who relied on the best experimental knowledge they had.

If an experiment suggests a conclusion, but repeated experiments don't back it up, then something's obviously wrong. Yet some folks, even behind the rational armor of the white lab coat, won't admit that, the article says, and choose to select the result they prefer. That way, we have seen by experimentation aplenty throughout human history, lies madness.

From the Rental Vault: The Wrath of Khan (1982)

The pattern of Star Trek movies to stink up odd-numbered films but do quite a bit better as even-numbered ones was only half-established when Harve Bennett and Nicholas Meyer created what would become Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Gene Roddenberry's 1979 Star Trek: The Motion Picture had taken care of the stinker half, but there was as yet no way to know what its sequel would create.

Paramount was happy with neither the performance of the first movie nor the time-travel script series creator Roddenberry had produced for the sequel. Studio executives felt that the first film's plodding script and Roddenberry's own over-meddling as producer made the first big-screen voyage of the starship Enterprise a box-office and critical disappointment. So they promoted Roddenberry to "executive consultant," didn't consult him, brought in Bennett and Meyer and told them they had about a quarter of the first movie's budget to play with -- $11 million (It was actually about $8.5 million to start but the purse strings were loosened when execs saw and liked the initial work).

Both men approached the project like it was a movie to be made rather than an icon to be worshiped -- neither had ever watched the original TV show before working on Khan. The lack of deification helped produce one of the best of the Star Trek movies or --depending who you ask -- maybe the best Star Trek movie.

Starfleet Admiral James T. Kirk (William Shatner) is traveling with the Enterprise, under command of his friend Captain Spock (Leonard Nimoy), on a training voyage for new cadets. The ship receives a distress call from the space station Regula 1 and investigates, only to find that the station was attacked by Khan Noonien Singh (Ricardo Montalban), a genetic superman who had tried to hijack the Enterprise in the television episode "Space Seed." Khan seeks access to the Genesis device, a terraforming system that can also be used as a weapon, in order to have his revenge on Kirk.

Meyer and Bennett worked the themes of aging and death into the storyline throughout, and not only in the well-discussed climax. The difference in tone from Roddenberry's optimistic viewpoint for his series, which was so upbeat it didn't allow for much thought about such things, was greeted at first with uncertainty by the cast. You could die at the drop of a hat -- especially if you wore a red shirt -- but you didn't do much reflecting on mortality. When they finally bought into it, though, they brought what were easily some of their best performances as the iconic characters. Shatner has his scenery-chomping ham blazes of glory, but some of his best moments come when he uses only his face to show his despair. DeForrest Kelley's Leonard McCoy, often the moral ballast of the show, brings that weight to his questions about the wisdom of unexamined technological advance. James Doohan's Montgomery Scott, too often relegated to almost comic technobabble laments, becomes a signal of the significant human cost of confronting evil. Montalban, so often reserved, debonair and urbane even when a villain, lets his freak flag fly as he portrays the ravaged, Ahab-like Khan, whose thirst for power has been replaced by an almost holy crusade for vengeance.

And Leonard Nimoy seems to have finally found peace with the character that defined him, showing the "emotionless Vulcan" of the television show comfortable enough in his own skin to crack jokes, poke fun at himself and indulge illogical human customs while remaining recognizable as the summer of 1982's favorite alien who didn't have a glowing fingertip. The presence of the earnest Kirstie Alley as the cadet Saavik, acting in many ways as the by-the-book Spock would have done in the past, gives him a good foil for all of these moves.

Khan didn't gross as much as the first movie did, but since it worked from a smaller budget it made Paramount much more money and has had much better staying power. Its success encouraged Paramount to continue the franchise and Nimoy enjoyed it so much he decided to participate in the series as it moved forward, as a star and a director. Although nothing was ever on record, the likelihood of a continuing franchise would not have been high if Khan had tanked the way The Motion Picture did. To say nothing of subsequent television spinoffs, a publishing empire and the current reboot. Nimoy's work in making Khan the success it was played a huge role in that future.

In a significant way, he really did save the ship. And he saved them all.

Fair solar winds, Mr. Spock, into the undiscovered country.

Particle Accelerator Available -- Some Assembly Required

A couple of the scientists who work at the Large Hadron Collider got together and designed a model of their accelerator made from LEGO bricks.

Their goal is to get enough people to support the design that the company begins to work on it officially and then may actually offer the kit for sale. But, as the story on Physics World's blog notes, you can also download a set of the instructions which tells you what kind of pieces you need and shows you how to build them.

I kind of hope they get LEGO to sign off on the project, because this would make one cool offering in the LHC gift shop. If the LHC has a gift shop, that is.

I would advise against LEGO offering a powered model of the collider, though. Just because it's smaller doesn't mean it can't create a black hole that would destroy the universe.

Miracle Examined

Earlier this week marked the 35th anniversary of the Miracle on Ice, or the United States Olympic hockey team defeating the Soviet hockey team in the semifinals. Sportswriter Joe Posnanski nosed around a little to find out 10 things that you may not (or may) have known about it.

Feel free to send this link to a Commie to darken his or her day.

EEEE-vil!

The good folks at io9 offer a dozen tips to help you make your run as an evil wizard a much more successful one than we usually see depicted onscreen. The twelve blunders listed are usually fatal to your plans for worldwide domination and very often fatal to you yourself, should you be the aforementioned evil wizard. The list might help you to avoid the unpleasant aftereffects of said blunders, such as the aforementioned death.

Of course, you might also avoid death by not being an evil wizard but instead use your powers for good. That one didn't make the list, though.

Based on a True Story

Try this story pitch: Illegitimate son of an aristocrat and slave returns to his father's native land to live the life of a privileged son until the surrounding revolutionary fervor convinces him to volunteer as a buck private -- who will rise to the rank of general by the time seven years have passed and be feared by his nation's enemies while lauded by its leaders. Then treachery on the part of jealous men results in his imprisonment and obscurity upon being freed.

Sound like a tough sell? It has the advantage of actually happening. Thomas-Alexandre Davy de la Pailleterie was born in 1762 in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, later known as Haiti. His father was Alexandre Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie, a minor French nobleman who returned to France after a 30-year sojourn under the radar in Saint-Domingue accompanied by a tall, handsome and undeniably African young man who was later found to be his son by a woman named Marie-Cessette Dumas. Marie had been Alexandre's slave in Saint-Domingue, and although he claimed to have married her, he sold her and two children to another farmer before returning to France. For reasons of his own, when the young Thomas-Alexandre embarked on his military career, he began using only the second part of his first name and took his mother's surname, rising to fame and honor as Alexandre Dumas. He would name his third child and only son the same, and that young man grew to some fame himself as a novelist.

Prior to Tom Reiss's 2012 biography The Black Count, the historical record on General Dumas was spotty and relied heavily on the versions promoted by his son. The only trouble there was that the elder Dumas perished when the younger was only four, and most of the versions of events relayed by the son are significantly influenced by the kind of hero-worship a four-year-old boy maintains of his father. Reiss began with that information, adding in and correcting as he uncovered mentions of General Dumas in military correspondence of the time. He eventually located a cache of material about as well as by the General, which helped round out the personal details of his life.

General Dumas and other mixed-race persons like him were known in Revolutionary France as "Americans," given that most of them had a parent or at least a grandparent who was either a slave or African-descended freedman or freedwoman from France's New World colonies. Several such officers combined to serve in the "Free Legion of Mixed Americans," which earned approval and fame for its daring and risky operations and became known as The Black Legion, both in reference to its members and the fear and despair it inspired in its enemies. Reiss details how the French Revolution itself, in one of the few things it got right (my words and not his), eliminated some of the restrictive segregationist laws on its books. Given this move and Dumas' acumen as a military leader, it isn't surprising that he dedicated himself to fighting for the idea of republic-style government both in France and in neighboring countries. His courage on the battlefield, strategic genius and determination helped Republican France conquer territory in Italy where it set up new democratic governments.

But as Napoleon Bonaparte began to use the new government's own ambivalence and tendency to dither against it in order to gain and consolidate power, Dumas' dedication to the ideals of the Republic would prove a source of friction between them. Napoleon didn't move against Dumas directly, but when a shipwreck on the journey home from Egypt put Dumas in enemy hands, the rapidly-rising "First Consul" of France didn't do much to win his freedom, either. Dumas was imprisoned for two years, almost completely incommunicado -- as though he had vanished from the Earth. The novelist son would use the theme of unjust imprisonment to advance the fortunes of the unscrupulous as the theme for his 1844 novel The Count of Monte Cristo.

Reiss's research and determination uncovered an absolutely fascinating story of an absolutely fascinating man -- the highest-ranking officer of African descent in the military of any Western nation until Gen. Daniel James Jr. received his fourth star in the United States Air Force in 1975. His writing style is a little breezier than most biographies and includes probably a little more room than necessary for his own little asides. But his thorough explanation of the life and economics of French colonial Haiti, racial politics and cultural feelings in France leading up to the Revolution of 1789 and of the wastrel role played by General Dumas' father more than makes up for this minor quibble.

Reiss justifiably won the 2013 Pulitzer Price for Biography or Autobiography, and as of late 2014, The Black Count was in development as a movie. He successfully manages to make his subject, General Alexandre Dumas, both the larger-than-life hero he became in the pages of his son's novels and the real man he was. The Black Count is worthy of the effort Reiss put into it and worth the time to take a few afternoons and read it.

Whether you like swashbuckling adventurers or not.

You'd Like Us to Think That, Wouldn't You?

This photo of the Crescent Nebula (NGC 6888) is the Feb. 22 pic for Astronomy magazine's "Astronomy Picture of the Day:"

At least, that's what Astronomy would like its readers to believe. Thought the idea that it's a giant brain coming straight at us from outer space to control all of our brains would slip right past, us, eh? Too bad; we're wise to your plans now, and scientists will begin developing two giant aspirin to lull this Galactic Space Brain into oblivion.