The Canon Read Free

electrons in each repel each other), what difference does it make? Let the specialists specialize. A heart surgeon knows how to repair an artery, a biologist knows how to run a gel, a jet pilot knows how to illuminate the FASTEN SEAT BELT sign at the exact moment you've decided to get up and go to the bathroom. Why can't the rest of us clip our coupons and calories in peace?
    The arguments for greater scientific awareness and a more comfortable relationship with scientific reasoning are legion, and many have been flogged so often they're beginning to wheeze. A favorite thesis has it that people should know more about science because many of the vital issues of the day have a scientific component: think global warming, alternative energy, embryonic stem cell research, missile defense, the tragic limitations of the dry cleaning industry. Hence, a more scientifically sophisticated citizenry would be expected to cast comparatively wiser votes for Socratically wise politicians. They would demand that their elected representatives know the differences between a blastocyst, a fetus, and an orthodontist, and that one is a five-day-old, hollow ball of cells from which coveted stem cells can be extracted and theoretically inveigled to grow into the body tissue or organ of choice; the next is a developing prenate that has implanted in the mother's uterus; and the third is never covered by your company's dental plan.
    Others propose that a scientifically astute public would be relatively shielded against superstitious, wishful thinking, flimflammery, and fraud. They would realize that the premise behind astrology was ludicrous, and that the doctor or midwife or taxi driver who helped deliver you exerted a far greater pull on you at your moment of birth than did the sun, moon, or any of the planets. They would accept that the fortune in their cookie at the Chinese restaurant was written either by a computer
or a new hire at the Wonton Food factory in Queens. They would calculate their odds of winning the lottery, see how ridiculously tiny they were, and decide to stop buying lottery tickets, at which point the education budgets of at least thirty of our fifty states would collapse. This last figure, alas, is not a joke, suggesting that if a pandemic of rational thinking should suddenly grip our nation, politicians might have to resort to dire measures to replace the income from state lotteries and state-owned slot machines, including—bwah-ha-ha!—raising taxes.
    Lucy Jones, a seismologist at the California Institute of Technology, knows too well how resistant people can be to reason, and how readily they dive down a rabbit hole in search of axioms, conspiracy theories, the rabbit's fabled foot. A hearty, fiftyish woman with short, peach-colored hair and a rat-a-tat cadence, Jones serves as the United States Geological Survey's "scientist-in-charge" for all of Southern California, in which capacity she promotes the cause of earthquake preparedness. She has also been a designated USGS punching bag, officiating at media squalls and confronting public panic whenever the continental plate on which Southern California is perched gives a nasty shake. Like seismologists everywhere, she is trying to improve geologists' ability to predict major earthquakes, to spot the early warning signs in time to evacuate cities or otherwise take steps to protect people, their domiciles, that treasured set of highball glasses from the 1964 World's Fair. Jones has heard enough earthquake myths to shake a trident at: that fish in China can sense when a temblor is coming, for instance, or that earthquakes strike only early in the morning. "People tend to remember the early-morning earthquakes because those are the ones that woke them up and scared them the most," Jones said. "When you show them the data indicating that, in fact, an earthquake is as likely to happen at six P.M. as six A.M. , they still insist there must be some truth to the story because