#1112: Louis Savain

A.k.a. Mapou (sometimes commenter name on Uncommon Descent)

First, an honorable mention to Terry Savage, formerly finance columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, for this idiotic rant, but it’s not quite enough to earn him his very own entry.

Louis Savain, who calls himself a “rebel scientist”, is probably a minor figure, but deserves exposure as an excellent example of a certain mindset. Savain is a crackpot who disagrees with most of the major discoveries in modern science, including relativity and evolution, and has written several posts of “scientific” takedowns of theories of which he appears to have a rather tenuous grasp. Instead, Savain comes up with his own hypotheses and theories, often based to a greater or lesser extent on the Bible.

Of course, none of his work has yet appeared in any peer-reviewed scientific journals, but there is a reason for that. “Forget it. I believe in going directly to the customer, i.e., the public whom you despise, but who ultimately pays for all science research. They are my peers. I’ll stay away from politically-correct publications, thank you very much.” Ah yes, the corruption of the peer review process. Savain appears to be dimly aware that his work may not pass scrutiny by experts in the relevant fields, and responds in a manner brilliantly illustrative of the crank mindset: “Indeed, the whole peer-review system was designed as a control mechanism intended to exclude a large part of humanity from taking part in the scientific enterprise. This is incompatible with the ideals of a democratic society, in my opinion. We did not get rid of one dictatorship to succomb [sic] under the tiranny [sic] of another.”

At least he makes testable predictions, which is unusual for crackpots. For instance, Savain has repeatedly predicted the fall of Darwinism: “Assuming that the ID hypothesis is correct, one can argue that, since humans are the dominant species on earth, the designers must have had a special interest in us when they began their project. My hypothesis is that they are conducting an experiment, the purpose of which is to distinguish between believers and deniers. Given their vast intellect, it is certain that they anticipated the current conflict. If so, it is highly likely that they would have left us a secret message, a message so powerful that its mere publication would cause the collapse of the materialist fortress.” The secret message is of course found in the Book of Revelation together with the stuff about horsemen. The message will at least ensure that “the Darwinian walls will come crumbling down like the old walls of Jericho. Sweet revenge.” Science, yo.

Here are some predictions Savain has made about the cerebellum and challenged scientists to falsify. Of course, since the predictions contradict current neurology, they must be counted as already falsified, though Savain apparently fails to notice. Here Savain falsifies Einstein’s physics. It really is precious.

Diagnosis: Even after years of looking into crackpots Savain remains a special case for his blatant demonstration of the Dunning-Kruger effect, extraordinary even for a crank. But everything else is very, very typical.