It was the 1950s when Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky began possibly the greatest kerfuffle in the history of science. In his audacity, he published a book which ignited a firestorm of scientific contempt. Some very big-name scientists organized a boycott of Velikovsky's publisher, who not only handed off this top bestseller to another publisher like a hot potato, but, in order to appease the scientific rank and file, fired the editor who had signed the book on in the first place. Unprecedented! You! You signed us a bestseller! Out!
The controversy over Velikovsky's ideas never quite died out. During a 1974 symposium, Velikovsky was set up like a paper doll against four of his critics who proceeded to stamp him out like a smoldering ember. There are still journals, web sites and books published by his aging disciples, but no one takes them seriously and Velikovsky is widely hated. His very name is synonymous with scientific quackery and hucksterism. It is a lost cause. He is dead now. A real Charlie Brown of the scientific Peanuts gang, they just kept pulling away the football.
Why did the scientific community hate him so much? Well, for one thing, he had much more of Lucy's temperament than Charlie Brown's; he was pretty ornery. His ego was like a steel trap and he was not about to take back one word of anything he ever said-an attitude out of step with the self-correcting methods of science. Plus, much of his source material sprang from myths and legends, which he tended to interpret as literal records of celestial phenomena. This is, at best, a dubious proposition. Strike three, V.
Here is an example of Velikovsky's wack style. His reading indicated to him that in the ancient world there was confusion about the morning star and the evening star, both of which are of course the planet Venus. The Greeks called the evening star Athena and the morning star Aphrodite, after the love goddess who came to be known as Venus. These facts established for Velikovsky that Venus and Athena were the same entity. Then he turned his attention to the myth of Athena's birth from Jupiter's head. Since myths were actually records of celestial phenomena, according to Velikovsky's view, then the myth of Athena's birth was really an ancient astronomical observation of the planet Venus erupting from the planet Jupiter, whereupon it proceeded to tear willy-nilly about the solar system wreaking havoc as a giant comet before it settled into its present orbit.
What Velikovsky and his disciples failed to acknowledge is that anything can be "proved" using mythology. It's unscientific. Velikovsky didn't just strike out. He never even made it to the plate. You're outta there!
Recommended reading: Worlds in Collision by Immanuel Velikovsky; Carl Sagan and Immanuel Velikovsky by Charles Ginenthal; Scientists Confront Scientists Who Confront Velikovsky ed. by Lewis M. Greenberg and Warner B. Sizemore.
(A version of this piece may be found in our book Gonzo Science: Anomalies, Heresies, and Conspiracies , along with an interview with arch-Velikovskian Charles Ginenthal.)