Though he
has claimed to be a research scientist at Argonne National Labortory, Hunter
Haviland Adams is, in fact, an industrial-hygiene technician (who “does no research
on any topic at Argonne”) and whose highest degree appears to be a high school diploma (he calls himself "Professor").
Yet Adams has somehow managed to become a central figure in the pseudo-science
and pseudo-history version of Afrocentricism (and just to be clear: we are not trying
to bash Afrocentrism in general; we are calling out the pseudoscience that has
sometimes been promoted in the name of Afrocentrism).
When the
Portland, Oregon, school district published the African-American Baseline Essays in 1987, a set of six essays to be read by all teachers and the contents of
which were supposed to be infused into the teaching of various subjects, Adams
got to write The Science Baseline Essay
(“African and African-American Contributions to Science and Technology”), a
complete and utter display of sheer lunacy and imagination. The essay contains
a mass of ridiculous claims supported by little or no evidence. It argues for the
existence of the paranormal, advocates the use of religion as a part of the
scientific paradigm, draws no distinction between information drawn from
popular magazines, vanity press books, and the scientific literature, is
riddled with unattributed and inaccurate quotations, and contains a a number of
references to the existence and scientific validity of the paranormal in the
context of its use by the ancient Egyptians.
According to Adams, the ancient Egyptians were black and their culture
ancestral to African-Americans. They also flew around in gliders and were the
inventors of most of modern science, in particular the use of the zodiac and “astropsychological treatises,” which Adams implies is science. Furthermore,
the ancient Egyptians were “famous as masters of psi,
precognition,
psychokinesis,
remote viewing and other undeveloped human capabilities.” His essay does indeed claim that
there is a distinction between magic, which is not scientific, and
“psychoenergetics,” which supposedly is, but gives no basis to distinguish one
from the other, rather defining psychoenergetics as the “multidisciplinary
study of the interface and interaction of human consciousness with energy and
matter.” Indeed, according to Adams Egyptian professional psi engineers, hekau,
were able to use these forces efficaciously, and – for good measure – claims
that that psi has been researched and demonstrated in controlled laboratory and
field experiments today.
And, to
repeat: The essay, endorsed by the school board, was aimed at
grade-school teachers (who, by the way, are not themselves not necessarily
particularly scientifically literate) to help raise scientific literacy among
African-American students. Though widely distributed, the essay will of course do
no such thing – indeed, according to Adams, African-American students should
apparently replace the scientific method with an ancient Egyptian religious
outlook (of dubious historical accuracy) that, according to him, is equal to
science as a source of knowledge about the world (including commitment to a
Supreme Consciousness or Creative Force, both material and “transmaterial”
causal forces, and an emphasis on “inner experiences” as a source for acquiring
knowledge). If the purpose is to remedy the fact that African-Americans are
underrepresented in science, Adams’s essay is, in other words, not going to
help.
Hundreds
of copies of the Baseline Essays have been sent to school districts across the
country. Carolyn Leonard, Coordinator of Multicultural/Multiethnic Education for
the Portland Public Schools, has given more than 50 presentations on the
Baseline Essays, and they have been adopted or been seriously considered by
school districts as diverse as Fort Lauderdale, Atlanta, Chicago, and D.C.,
have been used for several years in Portland, and been adopted by the Detroit
Public Schools.
Adams has
also been associated with the magic melanin group,
the promoters of the idea melanin gives dark-skinned people superpowers, and
Adams is presented as a respected scholar for instance in books like the
anthology Why Darkness Matters: The Powerof Melanin in the Brain (eds. Ann Brown, Richard D. King, Edward Bruce
Bynum, & T. Owens Moore),
which rivals whale.to for pseudoscience content. Although he never explained
why he thought astrology was science in his Science Baseline essay,
Adams did do so at the 1987 Melanin Conference. According to Adams
melanin has an extraordinary ability to absorb and respond to magnetic fields,
and “that movement [magnetic motion] is
reflective of the movement of the sun, moon, planets, and stars. Thus, at
birth, every living thing has a celestial serial number, or frequency power
spectrum. This is the basis for astrology right here.” We’ll admit that it
is probably as good a basis for astrology as any.
Diagnosis:
As anti-science as your most desperate creationist, Adams’s bullshit is still
being treated with respect for political purposes by well-meaning people who
should know better, in the service of goals that his works will ultimately ensure
cannot be achieved if taken seriously.
This is incredible. For a while I was baffled at the things I began seeing black supremacists online saying, but now it all makes sense. This was all brewing offline for decades, and it's finally exploded.
ReplyDeleteAbsolute insanity...
And yet, in a stranger turn of events, decades later, science catches up! at least on melanin and its benefits (and John Hopkins and the federal National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health at least says Blacks hear better than whites): https://newatlas.com/melanin-nanoparticles-cancer/59191/
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nbcnews.com/id/13350015/ns/health-health_care/t/blacks-hear-better-whites-study-shows/#.X4PCkNBKhX8
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#sent/QgrcJHrtstrvCWLwZKvBTlhLqPlLBQVngXG
https://blog.frontiersin.org/2019/03/26/will-cyborgs-circuits-be-made-from-melanin/