For Everyone's Sake: Check Your Facts!

Seth Godin is a marketing specialist, and he's written a slew of books. I recently challenged his idea of RadaR - because no matter what he might like to think, it doesn't work.

In his recent blog post Gravity is just a Theory (and I'll admit he disagreed vehemently with my analysis) Seth bodly spouts that Newton (as in Sir Isaac Newton) only named gravity.

Seth's a marketeer - or something like that - but something seems that seems to have convinced him that it's OK to run fast and loose with science facts.

Seth and I come from different backgrounds. As a former technology journalist and erstwhile computer programmer I deal in hard facts - in a business where facts count. Marketing is, I assume, rather more "fuzzy" in this regard.

Seth declares that Newton only named gravity (he didn't, the word was already in use before he was born). He further asserts (wrongly) that we don't know how fast it travels (essentially, at light speed - the electromagnetic and gravitational forces are closely related). In a couple of short sentences, Godin slags off Newton to the undoubted cheers of his assembled throngs.

Newton was a very smart guy. He was also a creationist (that shouldn't be a surprise) and a complete arse (not for being a creationist, that was par in his day).

He deserves to be slagged of for being an arse, but we can't deny he was more or less cock-on where gravity is concerned.

Sir Isaac didn't name gravity, he described it - with incredible accuracy - so accurately that guys who probably need girlfriends, used the same equations to predict the motion of the toolbag that an astronaut dropped in earth orbit. It took something like 300+ years before Albert Einstein proposed a (demonstrably) more accurate set of equations.

None of this is relevant to marketing, but it matters nontheless.

It matters when people of influence (will somebody please tell Prince Charles Windsor to shut up?) get a bee in their bonnet about stuff they think they know something about. Seth's errors could have a butterfly effect - it matters because people listen to him and take every word as gospel.

It must be part of the human condition but it never ceases to amaze me how people confuse the size of their audience (or wage packet) with the size of their intellect.

Rich scientists are almost unheard of yet they are the most learned among us.

Pop stars, footballers, journalists, unelected heads of state (to name four examples) are liable to drop some amazing clangers and for the most part it doesn't matter a fig; until they start talking science: and then it does. Not because I care for science any more than I care for the cost of my weekly shopping. but because science is something that affects all of us. Good science helps us - bad science can destroy us and junk science is the most dangerous of all.

I'm very fond of the Winnie Churchill quote (which may be only an attribution) that, "A lie can get round the world faster than the truth has time to get his pants on" but there's a lot to be said for that shrewd observation.

So if you're going to open your mouth and a lot of people are going to believe you, for heaven's sake, check with someone who actually knows first.