SCIENCE AND SNAKE OIL

While perhaps not as determinedly – some might say wilfully – sceptical of mainstream science (and most other modes of human enquiry) as was Charles Fort, FT readers would probably err on the side of caution when confronted with supposedly definitive scientific answers to complex problems: the mantra of “Follow The Science” repeatedly trotted out during the Covid pandemic to justify a host of major public health interventions must have set a few fortean eyes rolling (see Ian J Kidd’s reevaluation of Fort’s New Lands on pp.48-49 for some relevant discussion). Still, while one might charitably put such attempts to justify policy made on the hoof with an appeal to an outmoded idea of a definitive scientific ‘truth’ down to the genuine difficulties of addressing a novel public health crisis, there’s no doubt that ‘The Science’ has sometimes been mobilised in the service of particular ideologies other than that of supposedly scientific objectivity. In this issue SD Tucker – whose ‘Strange Statesmen’ column has lifted the lid on many political peculiarities – brings us three linked extracts from his new book on totalitarian abuses of science, drawing on prime examples from the Communist Soviet Union, Nazi Germany and, bringing us up to date, Putin’s Russia. And then,of course, there’s good oldfashioned snake oil and brazen quackery, as embodied by this month’s cover star, Dr John R Brinkley, the Texas ‘goat gland’ guru who promised to cure ‘men’s problem’s’ by transplanting goat testicles into his human patients. But Brinkley’s successful career was characterised by mixing such dubious ‘science’ with political campaigning and a savvy grasp of modern media: it’s a combination that should still ring alarm bells.