Testimony of Michael Crichton before the US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works 9/28/05

Thank you Mr. Chairman, and members of the Committee. I appreciate the opportunity to discuss the important subject of politicization of research. In that regard, what I would like to emphasize to the committee today is the importance of independent verification to science.

In essence, science is nothing more than a method of inquiry. The method says an assertion is valid-and merits universal acceptance-only if it can be independently verified. The impersonal rigor of the method means it is utterly apolitical. A truth in science is verifiable whether you are black or white, male or female, old or young. It's verifiable whether you like the results of a study, or you don't.

Thus, when adhered to, the scientific method can transcend politics. And the converse may also be true: when politics takes precedent over content, it is often because the primacy of independent verification has been overwhelmed by competing interests.

Verification may take several forms. I come from medicine, where the gold standard is the randomized double-blind study, which has been the paradigm of medical research since the 1940s.

In that vein, let me tell you a story. It's 1991, I am flying home from Germany, sitting next to a man who is almost in tears, he is so upset. He's a physician involved in an FDA study of a new drug. It's a double-blind study involving four separate teams---one plans the study, another administers the drug to patients, a third assess the effect on patients, and a fourth analyzes results. The teams do not know each other, and are prohibited from personal contact of any sort, on peril of contaminating the results. This man had been sitting in the Frankfurt airport, innocently chatting with another man, when they discovered to their mutual horror they are on two different teams studying the same drug. They were required to report their encounter to the FDA. And my companion was now waiting to see if the FDA would declare their multi-year, multi-million-dollar study invalid because of this contact.

For a person with a medical background, accustomed to this degree of rigor in research, the protocols of climate science appear considerably more relaxed. A striking feature of climate science is that it's permissible for raw data to be "touched," or modified, by many hands. Gaps in temperature and proxy records are filled in. Suspect values are deleted because a scientist deems them erroneous. A researcher may elect to use parts of existing records, ignoring other parts. But the fact that the data has been modified in so many ways inevitably raises the question of whether the results of a given study are wholly or partially caused by the modifications themselves.

In saying this, I am not casting aspersions on the motives or fair-mindedness of climate scientists. Rather, what is at issue is whether the methodology of climate science is sufficiently rigorous to yield a reliable result. At the very least we should want the reassurance of independent verification by another lab, in which they make their own decisions about how to handle the data, and yet arrive at a similar result.

Because any study where a single team plans the research, carries it out, supervises the analysis, and writes their own final report, carries a very high risk of undetected bias. That risk, for example, would automatically preclude the validity of the results of a similarly structured study that tested the efficacy of a drug.

By the same token, any verification of the study by investigators with whom the researcher had a professional relationship-people with whom, for example, he had published papers in the past, would not be accepted. That's peer review by pals, and it's unavoidably biased. Yet these issues are central to the now-familiar story of the "Hockeystick graph" and the debate surrounding it.

To summarize it briefly: in 1998-99 the American climate researcher Michael Mann and his co-workers published an estimate of global temperatures from the year 1000 to 1980. Mann's results appeared to show a spike in recent temperatures that was unprecedented in the last thousand years. His alarming report formed the centerpiece of the U.N.'s Third Assessment Report, in 2001.

Mann's work was immediately criticized because it didn't show the well-known Medieval Warm Period, when temperatures were warmer than they are today, or the Little Ice Age that began around 1500, when the climate was colder than today. But real fireworks began when two Canadian researchers, McIntyre and McKitrick, attempted to replicate Mann's study. They found grave errors in the work, which they detailed in 2003: calculation errors, data used twice, data filled in, and a computer program that generated a hockeystick out of any data fed to it-even random data. Mann's work has since been dismissed by scientists around the world who subscribe to global warning.

Why did the UN accept Mann's report so uncritically? Why didn't they catch the errors? Because the IPCC doesn't do independent verification. And perhaps because Mann himself was in charge of the section of the report that included his work.

The hockeystick controversy drags on. But I would direct the Committee's attention to three aspects of this story. First, six years passed between Mann's publication and the first detailed accounts of errors in his work. This is simply too long for policymakers to wait for validated results.

Second, the flaws in Mann's work were not caught by climate scientists, but rather by outsiders-in this case, an economist and a mathematician. They had to go to great lengths to obtain data from Mann's team, which obstructed them at every turn. When the Canadians sought help from the NSF, they were told that Mann was under no obligation to provide his data to other researchers for independent verification.

Third, this kind of stonewalling is not unique. The Canadians are now attempting to replicate other climate studies and are getting the same runaround from other researchers. One prominent scientist told them: "Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it."

Even further, some scientists complain the task of archiving is so time-consuming as to prevent them from getting any work done. But this is nonsense.

The first research paper I worked on was back in the 1960s, when all data were on stacks of paper. When we received a request for data from another lab, I had to stand at a Xerox machine, copying one page a minute, for several hours. Back then, it was appropriate to ask another lab who they were and why they wanted the data. Because their request meant a lot of work.

But today we can burn data to a CD, or post it at an ftp site for downloading. Archiving data is so easy it should have become standard practice a decade ago. Government grants should require a "replication package" as part of funding. Posting the package online should be a prerequisite to journal publication. And there's really no reason to exclude anyone from reviewing the data.

Of course, replication takes time. Policymakers need sound answers to the questions they ask. A faster way to get them might be to give research grants for important projects to three independent teams simultaneously. A provision of the grant would be that at the end of the study period, all three papers would be published together, with each group commenting on the findings of the other. I believe this would be the fastest way to get verified answers to important questions.

But if independent verification is the heart of science, what should policymakers do with research that is unverifiable? For example, the UN Third Assessment Report defines general circulation climate models as unverifiable. If that's true, are their predictions of any use to policymakers?

I would argue they are not. Senator Boxer has said we need more science fact. I agree-but a prediction is never a fact. In any case, if policymakers decide to weight their decisions in favor of verified research, that will provoke an effort by climate scientists to demonstrate their concerns using objectively verifiable research. I think we will all be better for it.

In closing, I want to state emphatically that nothing in my remarks should be taken to imply that we can ignore our environment, or that we should not take climate change seriously. On the contrary, we must dramatically improve our record on environmental management. That's why a focused effort on climate science, aimed at securing sound, independently verified answers to policy questions, is so important now.

I would remind the committee that in the end, it is the proper function of government to set standards for the integrity of information it uses to make policy. Those who argue government should refrain from mandating quality standards for scientific research-including some professional organizations-are merely self-serving. In an information society, public safety depends on the integrity of public information. And only government can perform that task.

Michael Crichton

New from Michael Crichton - State of Fear

Biographical Information:

As you will find in many of his books, Michael Crichton was born in Chicago, in 1942. He went the Harvard Medical School. After graduating, Crichton embarked on a career as a writer and filmmaker. Called "the father of the techno-thriller," his novels include The Andromeda Strain, The Great Train Robbery, Congo, Jurassic Park, Rising Sun, and the sequel to Jurassic Park, The Lost World. He has also written four books of nonfiction, including Five Patients, Jasper Johns, and his autobiography, Travels.

His novels have been translated into at least twenty languages. Many have been made into films, including the phenominally successful Jurassic Park. Crichton has directed six films, among them Westworld, Coma, and The Great Train Robbery. Always interested in computers, he once ran a software company, FilmTrack, and made a computer game, Amazon. His film, Westworld, has the distinction of being the first feature film to employ digitized images in 1973.

Michael was a star basketball player in High School (he was 6' 7" in 10th grade) and he graduated from Roslyn High School in 1960. Crichton then decided to go to Harvard University and become a writer. But Harvard proved to be very disheartening for the young writer. His writing style was severely criticized and his grades hovered around a C. At the age of eighteen he decided that it was Harvard, and not he, that was in error. Convinced of this he hesitatingly retyped an essay of George Orwell's and submitted it as his own. The professor did not catch his plagiarism, and gave Orwell a B-. Crichton was convinced that the Harvard English Department was too hard for him.

Crichton then decided to study anthropology. After graduating from Harvard summa cum laude (GPA 3.8-4.0) in 1965, with a major in anthropology, Crichton, now twenty-three, was a visiting lecturer in anthropology at Cambridge University, in England. Crichton also won a Henry Russell Shaw Fellowship and got to travel in Europe and North Africa for a year.

Upon his return to the States, Crichton began training as a doctor. He eventually graduated with his MD from Harvard Medical School in 1969, but never became a licensed practitioner of medicine.

Crichton made it through all the uncomfortable parts of medical school, despite almost passing out every time he had to draw blood, and witnessed many unsettling things during his medical days. Every year of medical school he tried to quit, and each time he was persuaded to give it another try.

Crichton paid his way through medical school by writing thrillers under different names. Under the name John Lange he wrote Odds On, Scratch One, Easy Go, Zero Cool, Venom Business, Grave Descend, and Drug of Choice, all spy thrillers. Another book written during his medical days under the name of Jeffery Hudson, A Case of Need, had many lightly disguised references to people at Harvard, and they were not all complementary. So, Crichton was in trouble when the book won the Edgar Award for the Best Mystery of the Year. He claims that grades at Harvard were given according to people’s informal opinion of the student. Students who wrote, especially one who wrote about the medical profession, were asking for trouble. Despite winning and accepting the award for the novel Crichton was never found out at school.

During Crichton's final year at medical school The Andromeda Strain was published. It was a best-seller and Crichton sold it to Hollywood. Crichton then gained a celebrity status around the hospital that he did not particularly want. Although, it may have helped him get the hospital directors cooperation in researching his first non-fiction publication, Five Patients: The Hospital Explained. For that book Crichton was named the 1970 Medical Writer of the Year by The Association of American Medical Writers.

Crichton then served (1969-70) as a postdoctoral fellow at the Jonas Salk Institute for Biological Science in La Jolla, California, before taking up writing full time. Later, Crichton said of his decision: "To quit medicine to become a writer struck most people like quitting the Supreme Court to become a bail bondsman."

His tightly plotted, briskly written stories immerse the reader in the cutting edge of science, technology, and culture. He is meticulous in his research, and he makes excellent use of it. As Time Magazine wrote, "Michael Crichton didn't really have to get the science right to make sure The Lost World would be a bestseller. But he got the science right anyway." His books, Time said, are "suffused with scientific detail that has clearly been lifted from the latest research journals...Crichton knows more than just how to tell a riveting story."

In Crichton's early works most of his books deal with preexisting literary forms. The Andromeda Strain is influenced by H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds. Congo plays with Sir Henry Rider Haggard's classic King Solomon's Mines. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein inspired The Terminal Man, and Eaters of the Dead is swayed by Beowulf. Crichton said in an interview with Andrea Chambers of People Weekly, "The challenge is revitalizing the old forms." In most of his recent works though, he challenges his audience to think about topics of concern in our day to day culture. From the Japanese, in Rising Sun, to the topic of a man being sexually harassed in the novel Disclosure.

Besides the Edgar Award for A Case of Need, Crichton also won the Mystery Writer's of America Edgar Award in 1980 for The Great Train Robbery. Crichton was the visiting writer at MIT in 1988 and his novels have been translated into twenty-four languages.

Crichton has also directed seven movies, including Westworld, Coma, and The Great Train Robbery. In 1972 two of Crichton’s books were made into films. One, called Dealing (or, The Boston to Berkeley Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues), was co-written with his brother Douglas and made into the movie Dealing. A Case of Need was released in film as The Carey Treatment. After watching the filming of these two movies, Crichton decided to try his hand at directing. He sold a new book, Binary, to movie makers and insisted he be allowed to direct the made-for-television movie. It broadcast in 1972 as Pursuit. Other books of his that have been made into movies include The Andromeda Strain, Congo, Disclosure, Jurassic Park, The Lost World, and Rising Sun. He has also written many screenplays, including the hit Twister, which was co-written by his wife.

Crichton is also the Creator and Executive Producer of the television series ER, which he actually created right after his medical days. In 1995, ER won eight emmys and Crichton himself received an award from the Producers Guild of America in the category of outstanding multi-episodic series. Later that year, he also was honored with the prestigious George Foster Peabody Award for ER.

Crichton is a computer expert who wrote one of the first books about information technology (Electronic Life, 1983). Crichton once indulged his interest in computers by operating a software company, FilmTrack, which has been used by major studios to perform budgeting and scheduling functions for film and television projects. He also created a computer game called Amazon in 1982. His 1973 film Westworld was one of the first feature films to use digitized images. In 1994, Crichton also won an Oscar for Technical Achievement (Scientific and Technical Award).

Crichton is also a collector of modern art and an accomplished traveler. In fact, he has written a non-fiction biography of Jasper Johns, a contemporary artist, and a partial auto-biography, called Travels, about his many travels across the globe, which include trips to Bangkok, Malaysia, Pakistan, Kilimanjaro, Jamaica, and New Guinea. Crichton has also had many experiences in the "psychic" and "spirital" realms and has also done such "mystic" things as seeing auras, spoon bending, and an exorcism.

For an in depth account of Crichton's life you will want to read Travels.

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