WGN Morning News Blog

In recent months, I've written about some strange ideas

*The UFO congress, with its lecture on "How to talk to a ball of light."

*A numerologist who believes the letters in your name can offer insight into how to improve your life by tapping into vibrations in the nervous system.

* A ghost hunter who believed he could detect the sounds of spirits in a downtown Chicago Hooters.

Most of this stuff is pretty laughable -- but that is not what makes it invalid.

After all, they laughed at Copernicus, Galileo and Darwin, too, but those three scientists got it right.

Each year, respected scientists on the faculties of major universities gather to discuss ideas that seem silly. The Society for Scientific Exploration held its annual meeting last month at Michigan State University. According to their Web site, they talked about:

*A fourth dimension of space

* Tracking the mysterious (alleged) Qi "energy force" of the body

* And a "Global Consciousness Project," which has something to do with proving that the entire planet has a consciousness that can be measured through major world events.

This meeting of the minds could solve some of the mysteries of the universe. But unlike the UFO congress, numerologist and ghost hunter, these conventioneers are held to rigorous standards of scientific evidence. The conference is a chance for scientists to put their ideas about a "wild theory" to scientific tests and the scientific scrutiny of their peers.

Roy Machal, a retired professor from the University of Chicago, has spoken at seminars during past conventions. In his presentations, he insists the Loch Ness Monster is real. He wrote a book "The Monsters of Loch Ness" in 1975. He says these animals are found in many lakes in the Northern Hemisphere.

"These animals are primitive whales, known from the fossil record known as zeuglodon cetoides. It ended approximately 19 to 20 million years ago, but is preserved at the Smithsonian They are NOT monsters, but perfectly normal animals that have survived over 75 million years," Mackal told me. "I worked in Lake Champlain two months ago and made contact with one of the animals on sonar, 45 feet in length."

But at this point, the evidence has been circumstantial. Nobody had a carcass or a skeleton to examine.

Forensic investigator, Steve Alten of Ohio, believes Nessie is a giant sea eel and he's making a documentary on the Loch Ness. He says that in March of 2005, two students from Wisconsin found a half-eaten deer carcass and a four-inch barbed palate tooth of a water predator that attacked it at Loch Ness.

But wait a minute, If the eel has to come out of the loch to hunt, wouldn't we have more sightings? I'm no scientist, so I'll leave the verdict to the experts.

"During the 26 years that the SSE has been in existence, none of the anomalous phenomena under study has made a transition from "fringe science" to mainstream science," said Marty Cawthon of the SSE. "That such research goes on with mostly ambiguous and unconvincing results is a form of progress," she claims.

Why is so much failure progress? Albert Einstein said that in his scientific pursuits, imagination was more important than knowledge. The attendees at the fringe scientist seminar seem to have a wonderful imagination, and it is important that they have an outlet to push the limits, but in a responsible way.

Copernicus and Darwin were on their own; two "wild and crazy ideas" separated by 300 years. It will be fun to see the next wild and crazy idea that turns out to be right, and that solves another mystery of the universe.