It
was very unfortunate for Reich that he attracted so much support from
intellectuals, artists, novelist, poets, philosophers, and other
non-scientists instead of from the medical doctors and scientists as he
wanted. The suport of these non-scientists made his work look even more
cultish and unscientific than the scientists would have thought it was
otherwise. The orgone accumulator was thought of as a fad for beatniks
instead of as a medical tool to be evaluated on it's merits by
professional experts. Reich would have been rejected anyway by the
experts, of course, because his thinking was too far out of step with
theirs, but he was not helped by being additionally considerd a beatnik
guru.
If
he had been favorably reviewed in Astounding Science Fiction by John
Campbell, for example, a lot of scientists and engineers would have
built accumuators and done experiments with them, more experiments than
Reich could afford to do. The Dean Drive got a good write-up from
Campbell, and within two years more than 100 readers, mostly engineers,
wrote in to say they had built one and tested it. Reich was unlucky in
his choice of fans. What he got were mostly useless intellectuals
instead of people whose opinions counted for something.
And
as I say, the scientific community would have rejected him anyway, but
at least he would have gotten more of a fair chance instead of being
dismissed as a fad for people whose opinions do not
count.
Another
possibility would have been if he had attracted some rich businessman
who saw a chance to make money on the accumulator. THe business world
does not give a damn about the opinions of scientists if there is money
to be mkade. They will buy favorable scientific reports, bribe editors
of scientific journals, give big grants to researchers to discover
whatever facts will help them make a profit, and fund Congress to pass
the laws they want passed. If Reich had gotten a major drug company on
board to market accumulators, they would have become the standard
medical treatment regardless of what scientists thought of them. Look at
how the business community has sold GM foods despite all the scientific
evidence against them. Or look at the Global Warming business, which is
contrary to all the scientific
facts, but
is being marketed successfully because there is so much money in it.
No comments:
Post a Comment