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In 1996, a then-unknown professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University, in Pennsylvania, published a book in which he claimed to be the author of a scientific discovery of the magnitude of those of Copernicus or Newton. Those of us in academia who interact with the general public know only too well that there are many people out there with this kind of belief. At least once a week I get a thick envelope containing pages on pages of mathematics showing that God is truly the number pi, or that world peace can be found in the outer reaches of modern topology. The internet has only made things worse. At least these people, unlike many of my other correspondents, feel no need to assure me that they will pray for me—or, conversely, regret that I am past praying for.
People like this are not necessarily clinically unsound, but they are—shall we say—a little unbalanced. And persistent. Never make the mistake of responding, and certainly never ever make the mistake of responding in a friendly manner. They never give up. All of which is true of the Lehigh biochemist. He too shows signs that he will never give up, and he is certainly persistent. What separates him from the crowd is that this last summer no less a person than the President of the United States of America, George W. Bush, allowed that he thought the professor’s ideas were so far worth considering that they should be introduced into the science classrooms of the nation. The time has come to “teach the issues.”
