The Bell Curve:

The running debate between faith and science, which has increased steadily in intensity this year, has two detours just as harsh but considerably less visible that demand more attention: That would be scientists against other scientists, and pseudoscientists who presume expertise without the credentials. Congressman Dana Rohrabacher’s tirades against global warming offer a sterling example.

The cartoon “Dilbert” captured this succinctly in the Los Angeles Times. When Dilbert brought his pointy-headed boss a “mountain of facts that support my recommended technology strategy,” it was accompanied by “a tiny thimble that holds everything you know about it.”

Most of the people in this country who have turned global warming into a political issue, both pro and con, have no first-hand scientific knowledge in their “thimble.” Only a smattering of facts that will support their thesis while they ignore facts that don’t.

In such a mix, it’s quite possible to find experts to support virtually any facts or position — even the non-existence of the Holocaust during World War II. This makes for serious problems for the ordinary citizen who honestly wants to examine issues in order to come to intelligent — rather than pre-determined — conclusions.

So the question from technical illiterates like me becomes: Who should I believe?

This is a question I asked four decades ago when I found myself briefly in the middle of an impassioned and sometimes angry debate between theoretical physicist Edward Teller and chemist Linus Pauling over the above-ground testing of nuclear weapons.

Pauling, twice a Nobel laureate (for peace and technology), believed strongly that the radioactive fallout from such testing posed a significant public health problem. Teller felt that the contribution of the testing to national defense was much greater than the probability of dangerous fallout.

In the midst of these salvos, I was assigned by Science Year to interview the disputants and translate their arguments into lay terms, apparently on the accurate theory that if I could be made to understand the technology, anyone could.

So I spent a day with each of these scientific giants, Teller in San Francisco and Pauling, a day later at his office on the campus of UC San Diego. And I found the people much more interesting than the technology.