The physician is not the only scientific man who is made the sport of the pseudo-scientist or the disappointed layman. The Scientific American, under the heading “Our Unpopular Weather Man,” draws a pertinent comparison in an editorial that is so good that we quote it in full:
“Who, in all history, ever suffered unpopularity more widespread and more undeserved than the weather man? When his prophecies hit the mark, this is taken as a matter of course, and tomorrow will forget today’s success. But his occasional failures—especially if rain comes when he had given his sanction to our plans for an outing—such impardonable failures are recorded in indelible writing, with illuminated capitals to impress the event on the memory.
And, strangely enough, in this atmosphere of unforgiving criticism, the charlatan weather prophet still flourishes, and with blatant self-confidence foretells to a congregation of believers the weather for each and every day next year or the year after, or any other year. Old myths, negated anew by each year’s experience, seem to have a charmed life, proof against the bullets of obvious fact. The scientific weather man, in modesty, forbears to predict anything but the immediate future—tomorrow, and perhaps the day after. Beyond this lies uncertainty. He hopes, indeed, for a future development of his science when, aided by more complete equipment, he may be able to give at least an approximate indication of more remote events. As yet, however, this is but a pious hope.
But the charlatan is not encumbered with any such impediments of modesty. It is just as easy to foretell the weather a hundred years ahead as a hundred hours or minutes—it is even easier, for there will be none to call you to account if you miss the mark.
In this the popular attitude is much the same as in the matter of medical attention. The doctor’s successes are soon forgotten; his inevitable failures—for the foe is in the end invincible—are burnt into the memory. And those who are most vociferous in their criticism of the bona fide physician faithfully plying his science, are commonly the first to turn to the charlatan for aid in the time of trouble. Truly, they receive their reward.
The harm done is perhaps not so very great. The physician goes on his rounds regardless of undeserved fault-finding; and the weather man continues to publish his bulletin day by day, undisturbed by criticism.
Yet our sense of justice impels us to plead: In mercy, good people, be charitable, and remember that the weather man only foretells, he does not make the weather.”
The weather man, like the physician, deals with factors which, while as old as the universe, are still but little understood and are of bewildering complexity. It is because of this complexity that empirics in medicine and in meteorology flourish. But the quack doctor has a vast advantage over the quack weather forecaster. The charlatan weather prophet has about an even break in the chances of guessing right; the medical charlatan has many more chances of getting credit for curing the patient. For in how large a percentage of all ailments, serious and trivial combined, does the patient get well without treatment or even in spite of treatment? In one other respect the science of meteorology has an advantage over the science of medicine: there are not a thousand-and-one meteorological cults each based on its own bizarre conceptions of the climatic universe, each with its following of enthusiastic ignoramuses and each convinced that scientific meteorology is a snare and a delusion and a deep-laid scheme on the part of the meteorologists to deprive a free people of their inalienable rights to have whatever kind of weather they want. No, much as we sympathize with the weather man, we still feel that he has a tremendous advantage over the medical man. The cocksureness of ignorance will, of course, command a hearing in meteorology as it does in the realm of medicine. The conservative prognostications of the scientific man never make the appeal that is carried by the blatant assurance of the quack. But science goes on the even tenor of its way and the public, when it has something serious at stake, will continue to rely on the reports of the weather bureau and the ministrations of scientific medicine.