McKenna says the answer he got left him shocked and stupefied.
"The two people with me were a couple," he says. "The woman was an
Australian aborigine named Moondancer. The guy was an Englishman named
Nava. Turns out that Nava had been a very important member in their
core group, he had been the man who negotiated the purchase and then
managed their sheepfarm in Australia. He basically said he was being
punished and had been reduced to being just a speedboat crew member
because he had married someone outside the core group. Here we are
sitting around the campfire in the Amazon in 1980 and I said 'Core
group, what core group? What's the bottom line?' And he looks at me
and says: 'The bottom line is, we are going to Mars.' I said, 'Whoaaa!
Hey, you must be smoking too many of these little brown cigarettes.'
But, man, they were serious."
Harvard-educated researcher Wade Davis [[ITALICS]The Serpent and
the[italics]
[ITALICS]Rainbow[italics]] had also spent some time on board the
[ITALICS]Heraclitus[italics], and wrote a
letter back to a friend describing the atmosphere surrounding the
project as "oppressive. . . almost totalitarian. . . hippie fascism.
Most importantly they seem to have no knowledge nor interest in
botany." In 1985 Davis denounced Allen's group publicly and told the
press he had been lured into working with them for money. The allure
seems strong.
Another veteran of the [ITALICS]Heraclitus[italics] adventure--
constantly touted
by Biosphere managers as proof of their expert background in
ethnobotany-- is Dr. Al Gentry, of the Missouri Botanical Garden and
current Secretary of the Organization for Flora Neotropica. "I work
out of Iquitos frequently and some years ago someone from the
Institute of Ecotechnics came to me and asked me to go out on their
boat to do some ethnobotany on the Amazon. I said sure," Gentry
recalls in an interview with the [ITALICS]Voice[italics]. "I went to see
them on the
boat a few times where they were doing some theater. We did do some
plant collecting in the Amazon. But mostly, I would say, they tried to
pass themselves off as something they were not. There was one person I
would be the most critical of, one guy who was passing out cards in
Iquitos saying he was a Ph.D. when he wasn't, Robert Hahn." Hahn is
today director of marketing for the Biosphere project.
Since then, Gentry says, the synergists have twice tried to
associate the Missouri Botanical Gardens with their global projects.
"They kind of wanted to use our name for a Puerto Rico project and
when the Biosphere came along they were again trying to associate us.
But no way. When I saw on TV that they were doing this space dome
thing, I just couldn't believe it."
[BOLD]Rent-a-Scientist[bold]
The tactic of hustling up respected scientists to window-dress
scientifically hollow projects-- the highest expression of which is
the Biosphere-- has been refined since the synergists' origin.
Professor Veysey's 1971 account of his stay on the Synergia Ranch
describes John Allen's attempt to organize a conference on ecology.
His followers were given stiff deadlines for pulling expert panels
together and were sent on frenzied searches for information based on
"milking local sources," Veysey wrote. "These forays sometimes led
them to libraries. . . where in the span of a few hours they would try
to become familiar with the scientific literature. An important part
of the challenge was to be able to locate the most trustworthy
information. . . proceeding from scratch."
Numerous researchers and academics have told the [ITALICS]Voice[italics]
of similar
attempts to be contracted or just straight-out used by the Biosphere
core group as scientific cover for their science fiction. Physician
and natural medicine researcher Dr. Andrew Weil described a 12-year,
on-and-off courtship by the synergists which, he says thankfully, was
never consummated.
"I was first approached back in 1979 when I was at the Harvard
Botanical Museum," Weil tells the [ITALICS]Voice[italics] in an interview
conducted at
his Tucson home. Kathelin "Honey" Hoffman, now of the Biosphere's
"Scientific Research Committee," came to him "like a ball of energy"
about the [ITALICS]Heraclitus[italics] project and-- in Weil's words
"pumping me for a
lot of information on plants." Weil was invited to the Synergia Ranch,
witnessed one of the howling dinners, talked for hours with John Allen
and was "pumped for more" of his expertise. Weil says for years he was
enticed with grant offers from the synergists, exploited for his
knowledge, and then left in the cold, mostly because he had made a
public statement suggesting the group might be a cult. "I feel that I
was just ripped off, constantly pumped, enticed with promises, and
always left dangling. And as the years went by I was really disgusted
to see all these academics, who should know better, just jumping
through hoops for them."
When the time came to build the Biosphere, the group realized
that a mere university library of the sort used during the days of the
Synergia Ranch conferences would be insufficient to fill in the
scientific gaps of a $100 million project. John Allen needed bigger
patsies. He found an entire university research lab-- the
Environmental Research Laboratory of Tucson's University of Arizona--
at his disposal. Or at least, he found a lab management willing to
compromise its honest scientists.
An estimated $5 million in Biosphere funding was thrown at the
cash-starved ERL, which became chief scientific consultant to the dome
project. At least $400,000 of that sum was routed through Oasis
Systems, a private company that the University allowed ERL director
Carl Hodges to establish for himself and select associates. Needless
to say, Hodges-- himself with no advanced scientific degrees, being
much more an administrator than a scientist-- became a zealous
defender of the Biosphere. "They are visionaries and scientists, they
have excellent science, they have in-house people trained in almost
every field." Hodges says in an interview with the [ITALICS]Voice[italics].
"This is an
incredibly significant project."
At any given time, as many as 40 ERL scicntists were deployed on
the Biosphere project, concentrating their work primarily in the areas
of intensive agriculture and oxygen/carbon cycles.
But soon a number of ERL scientists found themlselves aghast to
be connected with scientific managers who knew nothing of science.
Biosphere directors simply claimed credit for the real work done by
the hired expert drones.
"lt works like this," says one former ERL scientist who quit the
project in disgust. "The SBV people came to us and showed us their
original drawings for the Biosphere, probably done by Margret
Augustine. Really, they were laughable, idiotic designs. No value of
any kind. After they chose Pearce Systems as an engineering firm I
suppose Pearce gently moved Margret into accepting his own design to
make it functional."
Another source, a key contractor with Pearce, confirms that "co-
architect" Augustine's original draft plans were "primitive, a
sketch." At least hundreds of thousands of dollars were given to
Pearce to present several feasible options on the original sketch.
"About six highly efficient counterproposals were given to the
Biosphere people," says the source, who sat in on the design meetings.
"All I can say is that Margret and Allen, after spending all that
money, quickly looked at Pearce System's drafts and said, `Thanks very
much, but just do the original version we gave you.' They didn't
really listen to Pearce's engineering arguments. So what Pearce
Systems did was deftly translate Margret's sketch into something as
performance-driven as possible, but certainly not all that it could or
should be. For example, Augustine had this vision of a dramatically
vaulted structure, a very complex one, for their intensive agriculture
area. Pearce wanted to eliminate some of that complexity to make the
agricultural area more efficient. But Allen and Augustine said no.
They wanted it to look just like Margret's drawing."
[BOLD]Never Let Science get in Your Way[bold]
Other contract consultants soon sickened of having their best
scientific opinions-- the ones they were being paid to offer-- be
simply ignored, or in some cases, shouted down by John Allen. ERL
scientists Merle Jensen and David Stumpf as well as ERL administrator
Wayne Collis-- all of whom resigned from the project-- told the CBC
that research review meetings were often marked by an atmosphere of
"verbal {*filter*}" perpetrated by John Allen.
"Two instances stand out," Stumpf tells the [ITALICS]Voice[italics].
"Back in '85
at one of the introductory meetings al ERL, I presented some first cut
information about the human plant oxygen/carbon dioxide
interrelationship, indicating that CO2 buildup could be a serious
problem. John Allen vigorously interrupted, telling me, `I don't know
why you're approaching the science this way. . . everything will
balance properly.' It was apparent that conflicts between our
traditional approach and the Biosphere 2 New Age approach was going to
be a problem.
"Approximately a year and a half later," Stumpf continues,
"during the yearly Biosphere 2 conference, I presented a poster on
ERL's computer models. And the next day I gave a short presentation of
our results to a gathering of approximately 50 staff and sscientists.
We had determined that our first computer modelling efforts indicated
that seasonal variations in CO2 could be dramatic and possibly too low
in the summer for plant growth. I didn't get very far into the talk
when Allen stood up and began to attack the model as ridiculous,
unrealistic, unnecessary, and a waste of time. As his na ve critique
continued, I was given no opportunity to reply.
"Traditional science was not the correct approach for these
people, it was not giving them the results they required. More
ominously, ERL director Carl Hodges, instead of defending the efforts
of his scientific staff, sided with John Allen."
"Let's put it this way, Allen and his people are driven by a
vision and they don't let anything get in their way," as one ERL
scientist at the meeting put it.
Indeed, Hodges apparently shares John Allen's disdain for open
debate and criticism, one of the pillars of scientific method. After
Stumpf appeared on screen for the CBC, he was repeatedly threatened
with legal action by Hodges, whose attorneys drafted several
recantations to be signed. Stumpf steadfastly refused. But Jensen and
Collis both signed disclaimers after their TV appearance, indicating
they had no intention of doing any harm to Biosphere. When contacted
by the [ITALICS]Voice[italics] to speak about his experience, Jensen
said, "I'm a
college professor with a limited income. I can't afford to talk to the
press."
But through independent sources the [ITALICS]Voice[italics] has
obtained a 1987
memo from Jensen-- a Ph.D. from Rutgers with 19 years of time spent on
the ERL staff-- written to ERL management that underlines the tension
between authentic scientists and the Biosphere hustlers. ln his memo,
Jensen complains that "Safari"-- one of Allen's cofe group members--
called him in regard to his "recommending five books in Horticulture
which she can read in order for her to qualify for a degree in
Horticulture from the Institute of Ecotechnics. I personally will not
mentality toward higher education and science that has given rise to a
complete disregard to the fundamentals and principles of plant
science. . . ERL has indeed a challenge to not only pioneer the cooking.net">food
support systems for Biosphere 2 but [to also] maintain its
credibility."
Following in the best authoritarian traditions established by
Allen back on the Synergia Ranch, the CBC itself was threatened by
legal action before it even aired its 1989 documentary. The CBC did go
ahead with thc program, even mentioned the threats in a coda, but has
been scared out of circulating its documentary in the U.S. Earlier
that year, the [ITALICS]Christian Science World Monitor Television[italics]
magazine did
a short segment questioning the scientific basis of Biosphere and also
immediately came under threats-- legal and otherwise-- from Allen's
group.
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Brian Siano, Delaware Valley Skeptics
Rev. Philosopher-King of The First Church of the Divine Otis Redding
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