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`State of Fear’ by M. Crichton. Harper Collins 2005
I have just finished Michael Crichton’s `State of Fear’. At nearly seven hundred pages, promising the reader `as thrilling as they come’ and `gripping’, also `his very best story’, I was soon to find that in reality the propaganda at the back cover is dismally short of the hype. Mr Crichton’s main thesis is presented as an amalgam of some dodgy thesis suffused with subtle and often not so restrained academic posturing. You see his book is about discrediting those scientists who present the case for global warming. This the author discounts due to their suspect methodology and frequentlly spiked results alluding to compelling evidence of global warming. As an aside there is some evidence that the sun’s cycles could be an underlying cause. Even if that is the case then there is an even greater need to reduce carbon emissions.
Most of the book is the author’s preaching about the misrepresentation of science and by default the scientists involved in this complex issue. Mr Crichton floats the notion that according to his characters, the evidence is essentially a chimera of massaged data. He creates lame defenders who just wilt when confronted with the relentless determination of his protagonist so that the reader is left in no doubt that the scientific data is wrong wrong wrong. The research the author disinters proves more the author’s fictional view. His data is very select which is intended to lead the reader to his conlcusions which are beyond all reasonable scientific doubt. The tome becomes at times a sententious swamp of ideological histrionics.
As in the DVC, it’s the Americans to the rescue, with the odd exotic Asian thrown in for good measure. There are the baddies meaning the eco-terrorists, who want to send a tsunami from the Solomon Islands to the US west coast. Even that plot is never explained except to coincide with some high powered conference! With Arnie as governor installed that of course would never happen.
There are plenty of pages which have his right-thinking Americans demolish with graphs and hopefully real data the overwhelming logic that there is only a minimal amount of global warming going on. Most glaciers are not receding, temperatures are really dropping, steady or barely rising. Let it not be said that he does not balance his oh-so-level-headed Americans with some limp counter arguments. Whilst on the subject of scientific data, his hero manages to survive the sting of a blue-ringed octopus which despite some tense moments he survives – when in reality, he should be dead. American heroes never die. Then there the high adventure in the Antartic where our hero gets out of a fix professionals would have thought themselves in deep trouble. It is also unfortunate that the baddies are barely defined as characters and it’s never really explained just who they are working for. More like background noise.
As in that seminal yarns of yarns `Raiders of the Lost Ark’, Crichton’s heroes escape from situations that would tax the most intrepid of seasoned and professional adventurers. Yet the suburbanites he uses are just so practical, so resourceful so one dimensional, as befits the plot. In one scene. a woman takes out a gun-firing native with a pistol and not at close range either. OK she fired twice. Realism. Ask any expert just how accurate pistols really are.
His style is impeccably commercial. Pity about the contents. He adds what I assume are real references at the bottom of the page, which whilst extensively researched does not equate to either fully or balanced research. It’s a bit annoying for this is fiction, not a thesis. But in fiction one can pretend to be scientific, use the right nomenclature to explain the burning issues with epistemological thoroughness which unfortunately he uses as evidence to prove his forgone conclusion. That’s not how scienctists work.
Having `uncovered an unprecedented threat to the future of the entire world…’-undefined by both publisher and author, his intrepid hero is determined to right the wrongs that have been done to the honest doubters regarding the climate change we are all not experiencing.
The author then has a message after the story ends which it must be said is not as biased as the book. Well done! He blows it by adding a little essay on the politicization of science. The message is clear: we are being fed false data about global warming as a terrestrial phenomenon. Yes CO2 levels are rising –using irrefutable logic and backed up by even more irrefutable data - CO2 is such a tiny tiny percentage of all the gases in the atmosphere that even if the data is true-which his characters say is not- becomes none-the-less inconsequential. Case closed.
As regards his mini-essay at the end: scientists who question global warming have been marginalized by being prematurely`retired’; the implications are clear: They have been sidelined. The research is now in the hands of politicized scientists. Not only that, one rich philanthropist in the book is determined to get it right. The American way. He wants to start a new foundation to save us, with the proviso no established eco-friendly organisations are to be involved and yes, no government, either. They must be avoided at all cost. He apparently has never heard of C.S.I.R.O. which works with not against the private sector to solve important problems - scientifically.
To make his point he mentions the hijacking of science by eugenics and it’s awful track record. Then for good measure he adds that hoary chestnut from Stalin’s days: Lysenko. The point: the global warming debate on climate change has been hijacked in much the same manner as Lysenko hijacked biology. Except of course, this essay of his is ideological in substance, which whilst interesting is as skewed as the people he is –fictionally-defending.
The problem is that this ought to be a book of fiction, and even if we go along for the ride and suspend belief the author is doing himself a disservice. The book and his essay is ontologically oriented. The reader is being preached at which detracts from its overall theme. It’s not so much the opinions stated but how they are slipped in with pretentious un-scientific reasoning. It appears Mr Cricthon is caught up in his own polemics which is not unusual in a work of fiction except that here were are led to believe the tenor of his plot is supposedly based on fact. In the US there are still global warming doubters to be sure and it makes for a healthy debate, for science thrives on discourse. Except in this novel, debate is more diktat by fiat.
In case, dear reader, you are wondering about my credentials discussing the scientific method, I trained as a metallurgist, and once ran a laboratory at a brick-making factory: quality control. I have worked in several other heavy industry-related laboratories until `industrial dermatitis’ stopped any future work in that field for me. I also studied History & Philosophy of Science and double majored in Sociology at the University of Wollongong where I obtained my B.A. This doesn’t mean that I’m right but then neither is the tenor of this book. You be the judge.
Lutz Barz © 2008
I have just finished Michael Crichton’s `State of Fear’. At nearly seven hundred pages, promising the reader `as thrilling as they come’ and `gripping’, also `his very best story’, I was soon to find that in reality the propaganda at the back cover is dismally short of the hype. Mr Crichton’s main thesis is presented as an amalgam of some dodgy thesis suffused with subtle and often not so restrained academic posturing. You see his book is about discrediting those scientists who present the case for global warming. This the author discounts due to their suspect methodology and frequentlly spiked results alluding to compelling evidence of global warming. As an aside there is some evidence that the sun’s cycles could be an underlying cause. Even if that is the case then there is an even greater need to reduce carbon emissions.
Most of the book is the author’s preaching about the misrepresentation of science and by default the scientists involved in this complex issue. Mr Crichton floats the notion that according to his characters, the evidence is essentially a chimera of massaged data. He creates lame defenders who just wilt when confronted with the relentless determination of his protagonist so that the reader is left in no doubt that the scientific data is wrong wrong wrong. The research the author disinters proves more the author’s fictional view. His data is very select which is intended to lead the reader to his conlcusions which are beyond all reasonable scientific doubt. The tome becomes at times a sententious swamp of ideological histrionics.
As in the DVC, it’s the Americans to the rescue, with the odd exotic Asian thrown in for good measure. There are the baddies meaning the eco-terrorists, who want to send a tsunami from the Solomon Islands to the US west coast. Even that plot is never explained except to coincide with some high powered conference! With Arnie as governor installed that of course would never happen.
There are plenty of pages which have his right-thinking Americans demolish with graphs and hopefully real data the overwhelming logic that there is only a minimal amount of global warming going on. Most glaciers are not receding, temperatures are really dropping, steady or barely rising. Let it not be said that he does not balance his oh-so-level-headed Americans with some limp counter arguments. Whilst on the subject of scientific data, his hero manages to survive the sting of a blue-ringed octopus which despite some tense moments he survives – when in reality, he should be dead. American heroes never die. Then there the high adventure in the Antartic where our hero gets out of a fix professionals would have thought themselves in deep trouble. It is also unfortunate that the baddies are barely defined as characters and it’s never really explained just who they are working for. More like background noise.
As in that seminal yarns of yarns `Raiders of the Lost Ark’, Crichton’s heroes escape from situations that would tax the most intrepid of seasoned and professional adventurers. Yet the suburbanites he uses are just so practical, so resourceful so one dimensional, as befits the plot. In one scene. a woman takes out a gun-firing native with a pistol and not at close range either. OK she fired twice. Realism. Ask any expert just how accurate pistols really are.
His style is impeccably commercial. Pity about the contents. He adds what I assume are real references at the bottom of the page, which whilst extensively researched does not equate to either fully or balanced research. It’s a bit annoying for this is fiction, not a thesis. But in fiction one can pretend to be scientific, use the right nomenclature to explain the burning issues with epistemological thoroughness which unfortunately he uses as evidence to prove his forgone conclusion. That’s not how scienctists work.
Having `uncovered an unprecedented threat to the future of the entire world…’-undefined by both publisher and author, his intrepid hero is determined to right the wrongs that have been done to the honest doubters regarding the climate change we are all not experiencing.
The author then has a message after the story ends which it must be said is not as biased as the book. Well done! He blows it by adding a little essay on the politicization of science. The message is clear: we are being fed false data about global warming as a terrestrial phenomenon. Yes CO2 levels are rising –using irrefutable logic and backed up by even more irrefutable data - CO2 is such a tiny tiny percentage of all the gases in the atmosphere that even if the data is true-which his characters say is not- becomes none-the-less inconsequential. Case closed.
As regards his mini-essay at the end: scientists who question global warming have been marginalized by being prematurely`retired’; the implications are clear: They have been sidelined. The research is now in the hands of politicized scientists. Not only that, one rich philanthropist in the book is determined to get it right. The American way. He wants to start a new foundation to save us, with the proviso no established eco-friendly organisations are to be involved and yes, no government, either. They must be avoided at all cost. He apparently has never heard of C.S.I.R.O. which works with not against the private sector to solve important problems - scientifically.
To make his point he mentions the hijacking of science by eugenics and it’s awful track record. Then for good measure he adds that hoary chestnut from Stalin’s days: Lysenko. The point: the global warming debate on climate change has been hijacked in much the same manner as Lysenko hijacked biology. Except of course, this essay of his is ideological in substance, which whilst interesting is as skewed as the people he is –fictionally-defending.
The problem is that this ought to be a book of fiction, and even if we go along for the ride and suspend belief the author is doing himself a disservice. The book and his essay is ontologically oriented. The reader is being preached at which detracts from its overall theme. It’s not so much the opinions stated but how they are slipped in with pretentious un-scientific reasoning. It appears Mr Cricthon is caught up in his own polemics which is not unusual in a work of fiction except that here were are led to believe the tenor of his plot is supposedly based on fact. In the US there are still global warming doubters to be sure and it makes for a healthy debate, for science thrives on discourse. Except in this novel, debate is more diktat by fiat.
In case, dear reader, you are wondering about my credentials discussing the scientific method, I trained as a metallurgist, and once ran a laboratory at a brick-making factory: quality control. I have worked in several other heavy industry-related laboratories until `industrial dermatitis’ stopped any future work in that field for me. I also studied History & Philosophy of Science and double majored in Sociology at the University of Wollongong where I obtained my B.A. This doesn’t mean that I’m right but then neither is the tenor of this book. You be the judge.
Lutz Barz © 2008
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